- Kenora police framed murder
charge:
- Ignored evidence against detective's
nephew, judge says
By KIRK MAKIN, JUSTICE
REPORTER, Globe and Mail, Mar. 22, 2004
A group of police officers
in a Northern Ontario town purposely suppressed evidence capable
of showing they had charged an innocent man in a racially charged
murder, an Ontario Superior Court judge has ruled.
After halting Justin Carambetsos's
murder trial, Mr. Justice Peter Hambly harshly condemned Kenora
Police Service investigators for misleading the Crown and defence
about the existence of a far better suspect -- a nephew of the
lead investigator in the case.
"These officers were a
force unto themselves," Judge Hambly said. "The court
can sometimes tolerate police inexperience, blunders, mistakes
and inefficiency," the judge noted.
"The court will sometimes
make allowances for poor police work done in good faith. What
the court cannot tolerate is police dishonesty."
The judge accused three officers,
Sergeant Thomas Favreau, Sergeant Lloyd White and, to a lesser
extent, Constable Chris Ratchford, of "egregious acts of
misconduct," which include suppressing critical evidence,
perjury and failing to investigate Danny Favreau, a local tough
seen near the body of homicide victim Max Kakegamic on Oct. 4,
2000.
Judge Hambly added that it
is "highly likely" that Danny Favreau's alibi was false.
He said the police were derelict
in not investigating Mr. Favreau's involvement and in fabricating
evidence afterward to cover up their true actions.
The explosive ruling, issued
last month but placed under a tight publication ban until this
weekend, has fuelled an already tense situation in the town of
15,000.
Mr. Carambetsos's lawyer, David
Gibbons, said in an interview that his client "has always
maintained his innocence, and we now know that he was charged
as a result of a biased rush to judgment by police officers who
were prepared to suppress exculpatory evidence, testify falsely
under oath . . . and fail to investigate leads that pointed away
from him."
Mr. Gibbons said aboriginal
leaders are doing their best to keep a lid on the situation.
Mr. Carambetsos expects to see "a thorough, independent
review of the culture and practices of the Kenora Police Service,"
he added.
According to a report in the
Kenora Miner, Police Chief George Curtis has reassigned Sgt.
White and Sgt. Favreau to administrative duties pending an OPP
investigation of their conduct.
Still, Judge Hambly noted in
his ruling that the rogue officers not only deprived a racially
divided community of a fair trial, they likely permitted the
real killer to get away.
Shortly before the slaying,
a local woman had returned home and discovered Mr. Kakegamic
passed out on her couch. She asked Mr. Carambetsos, a bartender
and friend, to get him out of her apartment. Mr. Carambetsos,
described by Judge Hambly as a law-abiding citizen with no criminal
record, carried Mr. Kakegamic outside and left him in a heap
on the sidewalk.
Notwithstanding an utter lack
of reasonable or probable grounds for suspicion, Judge Hambly
said, the police arrested Mr. Carambetsos within hours. He said
they also suppressed a spontaneous statement in which Mr. Carambetsos
described Mr. Kakegamic calling him an "asshole" as
he walked away.
(The officers testified that
they viewed the statement as being "off the record.")
Judge Hambly said the police
also withheld repeated statements by an eyewitness that she saw
Danny Favreau, a man with a history of beating up "helpless
men," sidle up to Mr. Kakegamic's prone body and appear
to move him.
Shortly afterward, Mr. Kakegamic
was found kicked to death.
Another Kenora Police officer,
Constable Dan Jorgenson, eventually stumbled upon the suppressed
evidence, braving the anger of his fellow officers by tipping
off the Crown. In a letter to Chief Curtis in 2001, prosecutor
Daniel Mitchell warned that events "raised the spectre"
of a biased investigation aimed at favouring Sgt. Favreau's nephew.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004, Page A2
CORRECTION
Criminal lawyer David Gibson
represented a Kenora, Ont., man -- Justin Carambetsos -- whose
murder charge was stayed by Mr. Justice Peter Hambly of Ontario
Superior Court. Mr. Gibson was misidentified in a story yesterday.
© 2004 Bell Globemedia
Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
OPP to investigate Kenora police
Mar. 23, 2004
Toronto -- The Ontario Provincial
Police have been asked to investigate police in the Northern
Ontario community of Kenora after a judge ruled local officers
suppressed evidence capable of showing they charged an innocent
man in a killing, Community Safety Minister Monte Kwinter said
yesterday.
Mr. Justice Peter Hambly of
Ontario Superior Court stopped the murder trial of Justin Carambetsos
and harshly condemned Kenora police for misleading the Crown
and defence about the existence of another suspect -- a nephew
of the lead investigator in the case.
The judge accused Sergeant
Thomas Favreau, Sergeant Lloyd White and, to a lesser extent,
Constable Chris Ratchford of "egregious acts of misconduct,"
which include suppressing critical evidence, perjury and failing
to investigate Danny Favreau. CP
© 2004 Bell Globemedia
Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Judge blasts Kenora officers
Police found to have lied under oath in court
Manslaughter charge against man stayed
KATE HARRIES, ONTARIO REPORTER,
Toronto Star, Mar. 22, 2004
The Kenora police force is
at the centre of a storm of controversy after a damning ruling
from a judge who found that officers lied under oath, withheld
evidence, and failed to investigate a possible suspect who was
related to one of them.
"These officers were a
force unto themselves," wrote Mr. Justice Peter Hambly in
a Feb. 18 decision that was released Friday.
"The courts can sometimes
tolerate police inexperience, blunders, mistakes and inefficiency
... What the courts cannot tolerate is police dishonesty."
Hambly last month stayed charges
against bar owner Justin Carambetsos, 28, on trial for manslaughter
in the Oct. 4, 2000, death of Max Kakegamic, also 28, of North
Spirit Lake First Nation.
In his 55-page ruling, the
judge found that the existence of a detailed statement Carambetsos
made after his arrest - in which he protested his innocence -
was concealed from both the crown and the defence.
Hambly imposed a 30-day publication
ban on his reasons to avoid tainting a jury should the crown
decide to appeal. No appeal was filed.
Northern aboriginal leaders
are calling for a public inquiry into the botched probe, in a
community where aboriginals have long complained about their
treatment by police. There are 33 officers on the Kenora force.
"I'm quite bitter that
they abused their power the way they did," Carambetsos said
in a telephone interview from the Whistling Monkey, his pub in
Kenora, a city of 15,000.
He recalled his fear that he
would be convicted and sent to jail for a crime he didn't commit
as he listened to the officers lying on the witness stand. "I
don't think they should be in policing."
The officers ignored evidence
pointing to another suspect, the nephew of one of the officers,
Hambly wrote.
"The conduct of (Sergeant
Lloyd) White and (Sergeant Tom) Favreau constitutes deliberate
state action aimed at the exclusion of relevant evidence from
the judicial process," wrote Hambly, a Kitchener judge who
was brought in to preside over the trial.
A third officer, Constable
Chris Ratchford, also "likely" fabricated evidence,
Hambly wrote, stating: "I find with regret that I cannot
accept anything that these three officers say unless it is corroborated
by reliable, independent evidence."
Kenora Police Chief George
Curtis called in the OPP on Feb. 20 to investigate, and has re-assigned
White and Favreau to administrative duties.
Hambly noted that the case
exacerbated racial tension in Kenora. Aboriginals staged protests
when Carambetsos was released on bail in October, 2000, after
being held in custody for eight days, charging that a native
accused in the killing of a non-native would not have been released.
But it wasn't widely known
then that Carambetsos is Metis.
Stan Beardy, Grand Chief of
the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, has called on the province to hold
a public inquiry into the actions of Kenora police.
The case against Carambetsos
fell apart two days after the trial started in January, when
defence lawyer David Gibson was cross-examining Dan Jorgensen,
the identification officer in the case.
In his notes, Jorgensen detailed
the account Carambetsos had given to White: that a female neighbour
had asked for his assistance when she found Kakegamic collapsed
in her apartment, and that the man was drunk, but alive, when
he escorted him to the street.
Kakegamic was found at that
spot some time later, dead from an apparent beating.
Doubts about the case were
first raised in 2001 when, unknown to the public, crown attorney
Dan Mitchell wrote a letter to Chief Curtis complaining that
another suspect had not been investigated.
The other possible suspect,
Favreau's nephew, has a criminal record for theft and is known
to prey on helpless drunks, Hambly wrote.
Hambly noted that Mitchell
complained that Jorgensen was "reproached" and described
as a "mole" for communicating with the prosecutor.
"It is a measure of the
extent to which senior police officers in the Kenora Police Service
misunderstood their proper role that a police officer who made
proper disclosure to the crown attorney could be described by
his fellow officers as a `mole,'" Hambly wrote.
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