Cop-killer verdict blends justice, tears
TORONTO — In the stirring language of the imperfect but noble beast that is Canadian justice, Richard Kachkar put himself upon his country. It’s a phrase from jury selection, where an accused is told to look at each of the faces of the people chosen as his judges and they at him.
The jurors are every accused’s country. Wednesday, Kachkar’s found him not criminally responsible in the Jan. 12, 2011, death of Toronto Police Sgt. Ryan Russell because of the psychosis he suffered at the time.
While sometimes perceived as the equivalent of “getting away” with a crime, a finding of NCR means nothing of the sort and only rarely has that sort of effect.
Kachkar was not released, but remanded in custody until he appears before the Ontario Review Board, an independent tribunal appointed like others across Canada by each province, made up of psychiatrists, lawyers, judges and, the eternal saving grace, lay people.
The board will determine where he is hospitalized, and treated, and in annual reviews measure his progress.
It was a brave decision, if only because Sgt. Russell was a serving officer — indeed, a rising star — killed in the line of duty, and citizens are rightly grateful for all those who rush to danger in the service of others.
Early that January morning, Kachkar, who is now 46, had stolen a huge truck-cumsnowplow and gone on a rampage of property destruction and citizen intimidation in the central part of the city. In the freezing, snowy pre-dawn, he wore no jacket and was barefoot.
Only because of the hour — the streets were still largely deserted as Kachkar, on a one-man demolition derby, side-swiped parked taxis and yelled bizarre and threatening things at the few folks he saw — no one had been hurt.
But the city was about to get busy, and Russell would have known that when he got into his squad car to respond to the flurry of 911 calls coming in. With his emergency lights flashing, he caught up to Kachkar, who did a U-turn and headed right at him. The 35-year-old officer began to reverse.
Kachkar slowed down, almost to a stop, and opened the driver’s door. He had done that several times already that morning, the better to yell at passersby, but to a police officer, it must have appeared awfully like the universal gesture of, “I give up.”
Russell got out of his car, Kachkar slammed shut his door and drove the 5,050-kg truck straight at the young officer.
Russell began firing his gun as the vehicle bore down on him, but the blade of the plow knocked his legs out from under him, then fatally clipped his head.
He died shortly after at St. Michael’s Hospital, leaving behind his wife Christine, their baby son Nolan, then two years and 24 days old, and doting parents.
Russell had conducted himself precisely as even the most critical citizen might want, especially with someone reportedly behaving as a crazy man: He had tried to avoid a confrontation, responded to what he thought was a sign Kachkar was giving up, and resorted to his weapon only when his life was in danger.
So while the jury’s decision was founded firmly on the evidence — no fewer than three top forensic psychiatrists, including the one hired by the Crown, testified that Kachkar was in the throes of a real psychosis at the time and should not be held criminally responsible — it was also unsettling for police and profoundly disappointing for Russell’s family. His widow, Christine, slumped in her seat as the jury forewoman delivered the verdict; it was the human equivalent of a balloon suddenly deflating.
After Ontario Superior Court Judge Ian MacDonnell thanked the jurors for their service and they filed out of the courtroom, Christine didn’t get to her feet as is the custom and as others did.
If it was a protest, and not a function of unsteadiness, it was a quiet one.
Later, she joined Russell’s father, Glenn, in reading a victim impact statement, she on behalf of her young son, who has now lived longer without his beloved father than he did with him.
Because Kachkar’s formal “disposition hearing,” as it’s called, will be held at the review board within the next 45 days, allowing the impact statements to be delivered here was a kindness of the judge, and defence lawyer Bob Richardson. The impact statements lived up to their name: They were powerful and wrenching.
Glenn Russell, a retired Toronto officer himself, spoke of the last Christmas Eve dinner the family had with his only son. He looked about, he said, at all the people he loved, and thought to himself, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
Nineteen days later, Sgt. Russell was dead. Tracey Russell, Russell’s big sister by 18 months, remembered the boy she spoke for before he could talk (perhaps for that reason, when he began speaking, it was in near-complete sentences).
After a false start, during which Christine held out the little family’s last formal picture and said fiercely, looking directly at Kachkar, “Richard, I’d like you to look at that” before the judge stopped her and called a brief recess, the widow spoke on behalf of her son.
Nolan and his daddy were close; the young officer was a modern, hands-on father who dearly loved his little boy. She explained, she said, as delicately as she could, to the wee boy that his daddy had gone to heaven, but he was so young, that after the funeral, “He asked, ‘Where’s daddy?’”
Only after about nine months, she said, did Nolan really begin to grasp what had happened. Face in his pillow, he sobbed for his daddy and wailed the terrible fear common to all who have lost someone they love, “I don’t see him any more.”
The verdict will have one harsh effect upon Russell’s family: To give voice to their young man, several of them, including Christine, will attend Kachkar’s yearly reviews. Put another way, just as a tender scab may be forming over the rawness of their hurt, the wound will be ripped open.
But the verdict doesn’t diminish the size of their loss. It never does. Whatever they are, verdicts have so little to do with grief. Justice is a dish always served, without fail, with a huge side of tears.