Lawyer’s killer given life sentence
Hearing delayed after Anh Chiem refused to attend, forcing judge to issue an ‘extraction order’
Anh Chiem, who ran over and killed Toronto lawyer Scott Rosen in a rented U-Haul pickup truck, received a mandatory life sentence Wednesday two weeks after a jury found her guilty of first-degree murder.
During a six-week trial, jurors heard Chiem grew to hate Rosen while he represented her former son-in-law in antagonist civil proceedings against her, costing her thousands of dollars and potentially her mother’s house.
Chiem testified she didn’t kill Rosen but offered no cogent explanation why she sat for days in the pickup near his office, before striking and driving over him in an indoor parking lot of his office at 234 Eglinton Avenue East. An eyewitness saw her driving the badly damaged truck minutes later on Bathurst Street.
Wednesday’s sentencing hearing was delayed for hours because the 64-year-old refused to leave Milton’s Vanier Centre for Women, leaving the victim’s family, friends and jurors — invited by the judge to return — waiting in the downtown courthouse. After declining a defence request to adjourn the proceedings, Justice Peter Bawden issued an “extraction order” authorizing correctional officers to use whatever “reasonable” force was necessary to bring her to court.
By mid-afternoon, Chiem appeared placid in the prisoner’s box as Rosen’s loved ones shared how their lives were ripped apart Dec. 18, 2020.
His mother, Frima Rosen, described her son as a “brilliant” lawyer who sought “justice for the little guy.” He loved the law, adored his family, and had so much to live for, she said tearfully. “Even though he was 52, he was still my baby.”
Ian Rosen called his brother an excellent athlete who loved to play guitar. “His (two) sons must now move forward with their lives without the guidance and mentorship of their father.” He thanked prosecutors Bev Richards and Corie Langdon for their “unwavering effort during this trial,” and praised homicide Det.-Sgt. Amanda Thornton and her team for “their fantastic work” and professionalism.
Rosen’s wife, Elise Middlestadt, said the couple felt they had “lucked out” meeting mid-life in July 2011. They merged their lives, and confronted serious health challenges, but did so as “a team.” After his death, she was forced to sell their dream house, along with his boat and motorcycle, while struggling to maintain the “will to go on.”
“Not an hour goes by that I don’t miss Scott … he was the person I couldn’t wait to spend the rest of my life with,” she told court.
Cameron Smith, Rosen’s law clerk for a decade, said his mentor exposed him to how the legal system is “a framework of solving intense disagreements and problems without the need for violence.” What happened to Rosen is “inconceivable,” Smith said, because he “didn’t send people to jail … he didn’t free violent, convicted criminals, he didn’t break families apart or incite vicious fights over inheritances. Nothing we did was a matter of life or death, nothing we did was worth killing over.”
On the night Chiem ran Rosen over, Smith and other co-workers still in the office heard “a heavy metallic thud of that first impact, the building literally shook.”
When it came to pass the obligatory life sentence, the judge hailed prosecutors for mounting an “unbending, unassailable wall of evidence,” and credited the eyewitness who saw her driving the pickup. Bawden said whatever a pathological liar is, Chiem fits the bill.
Before being led out of court, Chiem, between sobs, and through a Vietnamese interpreter, repeated what she testified to: that she had no reason to kill Rosen.