Former Mountie pleads not guilty to perjury

A former B.C. Mountie pleaded not guilty on Monday to a charge he perjured himself during testimony at his criminal trial.

In submissions made in B.C. Supreme Court, the Crown said that in January 2006, while then-Const. Khomphet Khamphoune was employed as an RCMP officer, a fellow officer reported that he had downloaded what was believed to be child pornography on a personal computer.

The child porn allegation against Khamphoune triggered an investigation which led to a search warrant. Police seized several gas masks believed to be RCMP property at his home.

He was charged with theft under $5,000 and went to trial in Provincial Court in Richmond in July 2008. During his trial, he admitted that several of the gas masks were RCMP property but that he intended to return them. He also testified that he purchased one of the masks, which had his name on the netting, at a Canadian Forces base in 2002, Crown counsel Jeremy Hermanson told Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon on Monday.

Hermanson said that the mask in question was never sold by the military.

He said the gas mask was not assembled until 2004, meaning that it was impossible for it to have been purchased in 2002 as Khamphoune claimed.

Khamphoune was acquitted of the theft charge. He has not been charged with possession of child pornography.

The trial opened with a voir dire, or a trial-within-a-trial, in which the accused’s lawyer challenged the admissibility of evidence that was seized.

Jay Straith told the judge that his client’s rights had been violated because the information-to-obtain (ITO) the search warrant, a document that outlines the police rationale for the search, was designed for one purpose, namely to be leaked to the news media and damage the reputation of Khamphoune.

Hermanson is expected to argue that there was sufficient grounds in the ITO to warrant the judge approving the search and that the evidence seized should therefore be ruled admissible in court.

Khamphoune was fired after a disciplinary board found he’d shoplifted from a grocery store and then lied about it to his commanding officer, according to a story published in the Vancouver Sun.