Hall’s spouse delays murder trial again
Carol Anne Eaton refuses to answer questions without her own lawyer in the courtroom
Carol Anne Eaton appears timid, vulnerable and soft-spoken on the witness stand, yet blurts loudly into a microphone for emphasis, and taunts an assistant-Crown attorney:
“You are wasting my time buddy.”
“It feels like you are trying to entrap me.”
“I am so very tired of you ... you have no empathy.” In court she looks unspeakably bored, and seems to wince in pain or choke with emotion.
Eaton has shown many faces in two days of testimony at her husband Jeremy Hall’s first-degree murder trial in John Sopinka Courthouse, which is just up the road from where Eaton once attended Cathedral high school.
But in one respect she has been consistent: she refuses to co-operate in the process as a witness in the prosecution of Hall for allegedly shooting Billy Mason to death in a field south of Hamilton 14 years ago this month.
Eaton initially ran from police to avoid testifying. And then on Friday, when assistant-Crown attorney Mark Dean opened the morning with questions for her — on the heels of the 39-year old being declared an “adverse witness” — she put a halt to the trial.
“I should let you know, I’m not answering any more questions,” said Eaton. “I deserve a lawyer based on the questions you are asking me ... I’ve lost everything I’ve ever loved, and now I’m in jail. I just want a lawyer.”
She was speaking like an accused person, and although she is in custody in order to compel her to show for court, she is not on trial.
But in court she has been refuting videotaped statements she made under oath to an OPP detective in 2010 that implicated Hall. With Eaton out of the courtroom, Judge Andrew Goodman suggested she is in danger of being charged with perjury or contempt of court.
A Crown witness requesting that a lawyer be present during testimony is uncommon, but the judge said he would allow it: “It’s a special case.”
During a break, two lawyers from legal aid were paged in the courthouse, and they met with Eaton in a cell.
But Eaton said she preferred her Kitchener-based lawyer to be present, and the judge ruled she has until Monday to speak with that lawyer and be prepared to continue answering questions from the Crown.
During a pause in confrontational testimony on Thursday, the judge said of Eaton: “I appreciate this is a difficult witness.”
Based on exchanges between the judge and prosecutors, one scenario that seems likely is the Crown will rely exclusively on the videotaped statements she made to the OPP.
The Crown can file a “KGB” application with the judge, and if he approves it, the video statements will be accepted as truthful even if Eaton continues to recant them.
Eaton testified this week that detectives from Hamilton police and the OPP intimidated her to give “scripted” answers to their questions.
She said police told Hall was planning to kill her, and they threatened to take her children away. Eaton has three grown children with Hall.
The eldest, 19, a daughter, was in court Thursday on a bench behind the glasswalled prisoner’s box where her father sat.
The daughter was about five years old in 2005, when the house where she lived with her parents on Martha Street in the east end was riddled with six bullets — an event police believe Hall blamed on Mason, and which led him to allegedly abduct Mason and kill him with a sawed-off shotgun.