Kind words to comfort jurors

Judge has advice for coping with grim evidence

Somewhere, somehow, someone probably has measured the distance between indifference and kindness.

But in case not, it looks to be maybe six feet, or how far it is from the corner of the prisoner’s box where accused killer Douglas Garland sits in his trademark hunch, to the bench that is a de facto office for Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Judge David Gates.

Thursday, after prosecutors Shane Parker and Vicki Faulkner formally closed their case, Gates asked defence lawyers Kim Ross and Jim Lutz if their client had “made his election.”

That’s court talk — court hand you might call it — for had the three of them decided yet whether they would be calling a defence.

Ross stood to say, “The defence is calling no evidence,” and that was that.

There’s no burden upon Garland, of course, to testify, present any evidence or call any witnesses.

He is pleading not guilty to three counts of firstdegree murder in the June 2 014 disappearance of Kathy and Alvin Liknes and their wee grandson, Nathan O’Brien, and is presumed innocent until and unless the jurors say otherwise.

The trial is now on fast forward to the finish: Monday, the lawyers will make their closing submissions, Tuesday, Gates will deliver his legal instructions, and then it’s all up to the jurors.

But before Gates sent them away for a long weekend, he offered them “a few words about how you might take care of yourselves” over the next few days and beyond.

There’s a new- f ound concern in the air for the well- being of jurors, and Alberta, like Ontario, now has a program of free confidential counselling for them, and Gates had mentioned it here at the start of the case.

He mentioned it again Thursday, urging the jurors not to be shy about asking for help. But mostly, his was a simple warm message of resilience.

Most people, he said, find they can cope with the stress of jury duty. They may feel symptoms of anxiety and frustration, depression, anger and even hostility, but jurors should give themselves permission to feel those things, he said, because these feelings are part of “adjusting to a powerful event” such as the gruesome evidence they heard and saw at trial.

He urged them not to “try and block” what they experienced in the 12th- floor courtroom, but rather to confront it gradually. “Your reactions are normal,” Gates said. “Be confident.”

Sounding paternal but not paternalistic, he told the jurors to be careful about their use of alcohol, caffeine and drugs, to talk to the people they love about how they’re feeling, and to offer one another support because they are, in effect, bound together now.

He even urged them to “maintain a balanced diet and regular sleep habits,” and said, “Regular sleep has helped me cope with my own stress these past few weeks.”

Get a massage, he told them, take a nap, or start a journal, and remember to do the things “that bring you joy.”

With that, and a reminder to “remember that what you are doing is of fundamental importance to your fellow citizens … and the democracy,” Gates sent them on their way.

Mercifully, the evidence ended on a bit of a high note, with the arrest of Garland, who had been under surveillance by Calgary Police as he drove around and around the acreage in nearby Airdrie, where he then lived with his elderly parents.

The farm was then still in the control of police.

They had decided to “Tstop” him, or traffic- stop him, and sent in a marked car to conduct it; once Garl and spotted the car, he began to run, jumping into the fields and trees on the property just north of his acreage.

One of the two officers in the car was rookie Const. Jamie Parhar, a delightful young woman who then had all of 18 months on the job, but composure beyond her then-24 years.

Over grass that sometimes reached her hip, in the black dark of rural Alberta and with a surveillance team radio turned down low, she jogged over rutted farmland and clambered over barbed wire fences, not particularly concerned about being out there on her own until the tactical officer on HAWCS, the force helicopter, asked her where her partner was.

With the chopper and its “night sun” lights on, Garland soon came out of the trees and went to his stomach; Parhar was the one who put the cuffs on him.

He was, she said, calm and collected. He had what she called “the 1,000- yard stare.”

He’s had it throughout the trial, that same startling lack of expression.

Come to t hink of it, maybe that’s the distance between indifference and kindness, somewhere between 1,000 yards and six feet.

THERE’S A NEWFOUND CONCERN FOR JURORS’ WELL-BEING.