A gang evidence minefield
Constraints tight as rap lyrics, tattoos and graffiti presented at murder trial
Seventeen-year-old Mitchell Celise was fatally shot in the back on a busy residential street in Toronto on a bright spring afternoon, just as students were leaving school.
A Superior Court jury began deliberating Thursday to consider whether Lavare Williams, 21, and Chael Mills, 23, were responsible for the brazen May 3, 2010, killing on Winona Dr., near Vaughan Rd. and Oakwood Ave.
The three-month trial included more gang evidence than ever before admitted in a Toronto courtroom, including six YouTube videos, scores of text messages, rap lyrics, jailhouse letters, photos of graffiti and tattoos, and testimony from gang and handwriting experts.
The case is part of a growing trend of judges sanctioning broader uses of gang evidence. In this case, the prosecution is trying to prove Celise was killed in association with, or for the benefit of, a criminal organization.
The prosecution alleges Williams and Mills were members of M.O.B. Klick, a subset of a street gang called the Vaughan Road Bloods
Mills, the alleged shooter charged with first-degree murder, and Williams, who is charged with second-degree murder, have pleaded not guilty.
The Crown alleges they were members of M.O.B. Klick, a subset of the Vaughan Road Bloods gang. The Bloods is a notorious gang originating in California, though there are no direct ties to groups in Canada claiming to be Bloods.
Celise was a member of the Eglinton West Crips, the hated rivals of the Vaughan Road Bloods, the prosecution said.
He was shot to avenge the death of another M.O.B. Klick member a few weeks earlier, the jury was told. Moreover, Celise had dared to wear the Crips’ signature blue — his shoes and ballcap were blue — in Bloods’ core red territory.
The prosecution’s challenge was how to explain its theory to a jury.
Weeks before jurors were picked, prosecutors Mary Misener and Patrick Clement sought to call Toronto police Det. Doug Backus as an expert witness on the subject of street gangs. His expertise was necessary, they argued, so jurors could understand that the motives behind gang crime can include territorial control and rivalries.
They also wanted him to help the jury understand the particular habits, customs, attitudes and argot of street gangs.
Over the defence’s strenuous objections, Justice Robert Clark qualified Backus, but imposed certain constraints on what he could say depending on the evidence.
For instance, Clark said Backus was allowed to say something was characteristic or indicative of being agang member. But during the trial, Clark stopped Misener when she asked Backus what the two accused did that was indicative of them being in a gang.
Because the judge excluded the “criminal antecedents” of all the alleged gang members, as well as of the accused, the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the murder was a gang murder, without the benefit of criminal convictions.
There were minefields for both sides.
The challenge for the defence was to not open the door so that “bad character” evidence came in.
Defence lawyers Talman Rodocker and Roots Gadhia already faced the daunting task of countering the negative impression created by images of Williams and Mills and their cohorts, wearing gangster rap attire and exalting drug trafficking and violence. “Mr. Rodocker asks you to separate the man from his music,” Clark told the jury Thursday while giving his final legal instructions. Gadhia had argued M.O.B. is a rap group, not a street gang, and implored jurors to resist the temptation to convict based on some of the rap videos played in court. The prosecution argued that the videos were both rap and evidence of gang involvement. Backus testified how gangs use videos to communicate to other gangs, stake territory, and threaten their rivals. Throughout the trial, both defendants sat in the prisoner’s box staring fixedly ahead, wearing dark suits, tight braids and blank expressions — in contrast to the images flashing on courtroom monitors. The judge also faced his own challenge: the law. While courts are building precedents, there is still a “paucity” of Canadian jurisprudence in the area of street gangs, he noted in a 44page pre-trial ruling. Because of that, Clark wrote that he had to consult other jurisdictions, mainly the United States, when deciding what evidence was admissible.