Lawyer claims judge erred in YVR case
A lawyer for the RCMP officer who Tasered Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport was in court Wednesday seeking to overturn the Mountie’s perjury conviction.
Const. Kwesi Millington was one of four Mounties dispatched to the airport in October 2007 when police received reports of a disturbance involving Dziekanski, 40, a Polish man who had travelled to Canada to be with his mother.
During an altercation between the officers and Dziekanski, Millington deployed his Taser twice. Dziekanski died during the arrest.
None of the cops was initially criminally charged and the incident became the subject of an inquiry by a retired judge two years later. Following the Braidwood inquiry, at which the officers testified under oath about their involvement in the case, the Crown charged all four with perjury.
In February 2015, B.C. Supreme Court Justice William Ehrcke found Millington guilty of one count of perjury and sentenced him to 30 months in prison.
The judge concluded Millington had lied under oath at the inquiry in connection with six out of 10 particular Crown allegations.
Ehrcke found he lied when he testified Dziekanski was still standing when he deployed the Taser for the second time and when he said he did not see Dziekanski falling to the ground after the first Taser deployment.
The judge also concluded that, given striking similarities in the accounts of events by the four policemen, Millington had colluded with the other officers.
Wednesday, Ravi Hira, a lawyer for Millington, told a three-judge panel of the B.C. Court of Appeal there had been a tragic loss of life, but argued that was not the issue before the court.
Hira said the trial judge had made a number of serious legal errors, including a failure to take into account the unique nature of the “fast-moving” interaction he viewed on a civilian video of the incident and how that impacted Millington’s perceptions.
Hira, who is seeking to have the conviction quashed and a new trial ordered, said the evidence about collusion was weak and argued that the judge had wrongfully excluded expert evidence critical to Millington’s ability to raise a reasonable doubt.
“In my respectful submission, there’s been a gross miscarriage of justice here.”
Eric Gottardi, a lawyer for the Crown, told the panel the issues raised by the defence boiled down to a complaint about an unreasonable verdict or an inconsistent verdict, neither of which was justified based on the evidence before Ehrcke.
Tony Paisana, another lawyer representing the Crown, said there was nothing improper about the trial judge’s analysis of the video.
Hira pointed out in his submissions that two of the officers — Const. Bill Bentley and Const. Gerry Rundel — had been acquitted of perjury, but Paisana said that each case involved different allegations of perjury.
Cpl. Monty Robinson, the fourth officer, was also convicted of perjury and sentenced to two years in prison. He is also appealing his conviction.
Bentley, who last week filed a lawsuit against the RCMP alleging negligence and harassment, and Rundel were in the public gallery Wednesday.