`ALL I CAN DO IS TO REFUSE TO ACTUALLY NAME THE ACCUSED'

Ontario Justice Anne Molloy, who found Alek Minassian guilty on all 26 counts of murder and attempted murder, refused to use his name in her verdict delivered live over YouTube on Wednesday. Here is why:

“This case has, in many ways, and on many days, been a struggle. One of the issues with which I have struggled is that this accused committed a horrific crime, one of the most devastating tragedies this city has ever endured, for the purpose of achieving fame. And he has achieved that purpose. He has told forensic psychiatrists who assessed him that the attention he has received and the information available when you Google his name, makes him “happy.” One doctor asked him how he would feel if his name had never been reported by the media, and he said he would have been very disappointed.

Throughout this trial, I have understood the need for these proceedings to be public and transparent. I have also recognized the crucial role of the media to keep the public informed, particularly during the pandemic when it was not easy for members of the public to attend the trial in person. That said, I am acutely aware that all of this attention and media coverage is exactly what this man sought from the start.

In an earlier decision dealing with the sealing of exhibits in this trial, I commented, “I, for one, would welcome a consensus amongst responsible journalists to refuse to publish the names or images of individuals seeking fame by inflicting carnage upon innocent people.”

I realize that journalists also have conflicting ethical principles to be weighed in the balance. I also know that in this case, long before I started this trial, the name of this accused was all over the media and the internet. His name is also published in several previous decisions I have written in this case. There is nothing I can do to rewind all of that. However, if any case like this should arise in the future, it is my fervent wish that, at the very outset, careful consideration be given to withholding publication of the name of the perpetrator. It would, in my view, be a rare situation in which the public's right to be informed would require revealing the actual name of the perpetrator, or where that limited right would outweigh giving the perpetrator the fame, or infamy, he or she seeks.

In this case, and at this juncture, all I can do is to refuse to actually name the accused in my Reasons for Judgment. It is my hope that his name would no longer be published by anyone else either. That is not an order I will make, it is merely a wish, perhaps a naïve one. However, for the purposes of this decision, I will refer to the accused as John Doe.”