Judge Albert Lavoie | Clayton Ruby's comments on Stinchcombe and jailhouse informants | James Lockyer | Alan Young | Saskatchewan Appeal Court's attempts to shut down disclosure in the province | The roadblock's we have encountered in helping Tracey Marcotte | Our new office! | Get your information | Publication bans | Judge Mona Duvall's fiat disallowing motion to throw Richard Klassen out of his eight year old claim | Travesty of Justice: Robert Borden blew the whistle in 1994 |

Clayton Ruby

Practicing justice for more than three decades

Clayton Ruby has practiced justice by putting the law to work.

He was interviewed regarding Stinchcombe earlier this year.

He came to Saskatchewan in 1994 to present a winning argument to our appeal court overturning Judge Albert Lavoie's conviction of T.S. Some Saskatchewan lawyers were grousing, "We could have done that." But they didn't.

Perhaps Clayton Ruby is such a good lawyer because he's intelligent, thoughtful, and he reads and studies.

One man's criminal . . .

By CLAYTON RUBY       Saturday, March 9, 2002 ­ Globe and Mail

Organized Crime and American Power: A History

By Michael Woodiwiss

University of Toronto Press,

468 pages, $29.95

This book is so good that you will never think about organized crime in the same way again. Michael Woodiwiss begins with a broad practical definition: "Organized crime is systematic criminal activity for money or power." It is not new. And its essential features can be seen as clearly in early Roman civilization as in today's war on drugs.

The U.S. approach, which dominates all public discussion, is both narrower and simplistic. It understands organized crime only in a very restricted sense, as virtually synonymous with supercriminal Mafia-type organizations. An entire history -- shades of Eliot Ness and the FBI -- has emerged to justify this model of organized crime, which essentially pits good against evil, decent society against a foreign invading organism. "Organized crime in this sense is a threat to rather than a part of society," Woodiwiss writes. "The issue has become a simple good versus evil equation that permits only one solution -- give governments more power to get gangsters or those associated with gangsters."

Thus, the American ideology of organized crime provides both an explanation, with a dramatic though mythical past, and a justification for an anti-crime strategy that does not and cannot work.

This narrowed vision of what constitutes organized crime has resulted in a convenient blindness. By the 1980s, the myth of one organization dominating organized crime "had become too absurd to sustain. Mafia mythology was adapted to a new age by repeated claims that, though the Mafia had once been a dominant force in U.S. organized crime, it was now being challenged by several crime 'cartels' emerging around Asian, Latin American and other groups." Thus our thinking kept to the same formula: Evil forces outside mainstream American culture threaten otherwise morally sound American institutions.

But the evidence marshalled by Woodiwiss, who teaches history at the University of the West of England in Bristol, shows facts quite opposite from this ideology: Respectable politicians and domestic corporate elites have gained more from organized criminal activity than any other group. Corporate crime -- Enron and Arthur Anderson come to mind -- causes losses more severe and more pervasive.

What Woodiwiss shows convincingly is that organized criminal activity -- broadly understood -- is not an alien element, but rather a complement to the political and corporate structures that sustain ordinary society. It is the collaboration between government and criminals, and the criminal behaviour within business and political systems, that make the United States what it is. The dominant form of organized crime is not regarded as a political priority because it does not fit the organized crime "alien conspiracy" model. Thus it goes largely undetected and unprosecuted.

As Woodiwiss points out, particularly in the context of drug-control strategies, the imposition of this U.S. model internationally has constituted a U.S.-led "dumbing down of global discourse about organized crime." Fact: Illegal drug profits are so great that they have nullified the impact of law enforcement, while the fight against drugs has "been institutionalized as a never-ending project that seems to benefit few outside the public and private professionals who administer it."

The U.S. model leads to giving more and more power to officials, ostensibly to combat organized crime. Extended powers of wiretapping, asset seizure, indictment and sentence have been sustained by the image of the Mafia, but those laws extend to much criminal activity because most criminal activity is organized. Political leaders have trained us to think of the Mafia or the Columbian drug cartel or "outlaw" biker groups when we pass these measures, not three neighbourhood teenagers out regularly looking for your stereo.

Obviously, there are gangster groups all over the world. But these groups participate in illegal markets; they rarely, if ever, control them as the myth suggests. If they did, the price of cocaine would not have dropped steadily since the 1970s.

This conceptualization of a fight against Mafia-type organizations headed by mythic figures in top-down structures ensures occasional spectacular arrests. But it provides no explanation for why there is always a new struggle against a new enemy. We focus on personalities rather than on structural elements; we focus on a few crimes rather than on those like corporate criminality or environmental degradation.

As Woodiwiss points out, governments, acting locally or internationally, would have relatively little difficulty combating organized crime if it really were dominated by a relatively small number of supercriminal organizations. But this model camouflages the involvement of powerful and accepted institutions in mammoth criminal activity. And it focuses our efforts, to dramatic effect, away from environmental crimes, corporate criminality, large frauds and the like. As drama, this is first-rate stuff. As social policy, it is dangerously inadequate.

The picture is not a pretty one. Despite, and in many ways because of, increased powers and huge dollars spent on the war on drugs, for example, we have produced a world of institutionalized greed, corruption, betrayal and terror greater than that during Prohibition.

The pop-culture version of organized crime that has dominated our thinking led to the establishment of institutes for study. It is a sexy subject. In Toronto, Osgoode Hall Law School hosts the Nathanson Centre for the Study of Organized Crime, whose Margaret Beare echoes Woodiwiss: "I fear that we are doing to the concept of 'transnational crime' what we did for 'organized crime' and 'corruption.' That is, basically, to turn the concepts into a misdirected (or undirected) vehicle for additional resources, increasing powers and a justification for over-riding privacy considerations, sovereignty rights and due process."

Clayton Ruby is a Toronto lawyer who specializes in constitutional and criminal law.

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell

Truth suppress'd, whether by courts or crooks, will find an avenue to be told. Sheila Steele, injusticebusters.com

If you hold the mouth of Truth, It will burst out its rib-cage. Somali proverb

---

Publisher : Sheila Steele

Got something to say about this or any other stories on this site? Go to injusticebustersblog Participate!

injusticebusters court advice :

How to walk yourself through the justice system

 

Why you should dump your preliminary hearing (written July 1998 and still valid)

 

Sermonette: The Naked Truth -- (You will find links to many more sermonettes in the sidebar on this page

Another target of Dueck's malice: : Wilf Hathway

Our activism contributed greatly to the good vibes which happened around the civil trial.

Index to the stories on this website

This is not regularly updated so if you are looking for a particular story and you have a name or keyword, please use the site search engine(at the bottom of the page) which IS regularly updated

Index to Saskatoon Police stories

This is a pretty good scrapbook for the 1998-2002 period.

Inquiry into the malicious prosecution of David Milgaard untanling 36 years of Saskatchewan police and Crown misconduct: : Opening day 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

Stephen Williams: Canadian writer subject to Stasi-like treatment by Canadian police

Terry Arnold: : Snitch a suicide?

RCMP scenario stings: Brian Hutchinson starts digging

Gary wells: Faulty eye-witness testimony

Tulia, Texas

Gilmer, Texas

Willie Upshaw

Wrongfully convicted in Canada

Foster Parent false accusations

Martensville

Don Smith obscenity trial: an obscene conviction

James Lockyer

Hurricane Carter

Johnny Cochran speaks up for Bill Sampson

Vopnis

Abdulai Mohamed

Nfld Defamation story:

Wanda Young

Racism in the Federal Civil Service

The Terrible Story behind the Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns convictions

Trial set for June 15

We know part of this disclosure is a forged statement and perjured affidavit from a Winnipeg cop

The Crown is still fighting Fred Poirier -- and they are losing. Secret Commissions Case from Northern B.C.

 

 

2005: In the United States the proven wrongful convictions just keep coming at us!

 

---

Brandon Morin:

Convicted in Oregon

of rapes which did not happen

This website has good information about Measure 11 -- Oregon's Mandatory Sentencing requirements which have been in place since 1994. In this case we see how the combination of a flawed grand jury system and prosecutors who seek not justice but convictions is a recipe for wrongful convictions.

 

---

Canadians who have been wrongfully convicted because of improper investigations combined with zealous Crown

A round-up of wrongful convictions in Canada

Robert Baltovich

Michael Burns

Sebastian Burns

Rodney Cain

Wilbert Coffin (hanged, 1953)

Jason Dix

Jim Driskell

Jody Druken

Randy Druken

Hugues Duguay

Michel Dumont

Peter Frumusa

Walter Gillespie and Robert Mailman

Clayton Johnson

Yvonne Johnson

Herman Kaglik

Darren Koehn

Kulaveeringsam "Kulam" Karthiresu

Stephen Leadbeater

Donald Marshall

Chris McCullough

Michael McTaggart

Felix Michaud

David Milgaard

Guy Paul Morin

Shannon Murrin

Jamie Nelson

Greg Parsons

Benoit Proulx

Atif Rafay

Louise Reynolds

Thomas Sophonow

Gary Staples

Billy Taillefer

Steven Truscott

Joe Warren

Leon Walchuk

 

AIDWYC

Innocence Project (Canada)

Innocence Project (U.S.)

Northwest Law Center on Wrongful Convictions

 

Kirstin Lobato

Jeffrey Scott Hornoff

Willie Upshaw

Hurricane Carter

Guildford 4

Birmingham 6

Amirault

Houston

U.S. wrongful convictions: Exonerateed

Kirk Bloodsworth

Laurence Adams

Ludrate Burton

Stephen Cowans

Wilton Dedge

Albert Johnson

Kenneth Marsh

Dwayne McKinney

James Bernard Parker

Peter Reilly

Peter Rose

Sylvester Smith

Clifford St. Joseph

John Stoll

Marty Tankleff

Wilton Dedge

Ray Krone

 

Still working on it:

Dennis Deschaine

Dennis Perry

Tim Sandfort

 

 

Revitalizing the archives From 1998 until 2002, injusticebusters was in the throes of identity crisis. What was it? What were we doing? We grappled with editorial policy at the same time we were learning the nuts and bolts of building and posting a website. Once we had a secure, paid site I had full editorial control, although I talked regularly to Richard Klassen who was forced to move his family several times and did not always have access to the internet. Rick's pages: one | two We posted our earliest and later actions. Early versions of the site can be found on the Wayback Machine. I began following other threads to stories of police and prosecutorial misconduct and the site's character took on another facet: a newsclipping scrapbook where stories could live longer than they would in print form. I also began picking up other stories of wrongfully convicted people. It was an explosion. By 2003 there were over 700 pages. I also had contact with several other people (Don Smith, Leon Walchuk, Monique Turenne, the Vopnis) and kept these stories going. It was the story of the Ross children's treatment at the hands of the Saskatchewan government which grabbed the attention of The Fifth Estate. The civil claim (The $10M Lawsuit as we called it) was only mentioned briefly at the end of their show which aired in November, 2000. When Richard Klassen began to make progress in bringing his civil claim to court, the government and police defendants alleged he was breaking the rules of court by publishing discovery material on the internet. MacNeil clinic (the document which started it all) The Thompson Papers Carol Bunko-Ruys reports This claim was absolutely false. However, rather than risk being thrown out of his civil claim, Klassen undertook before Judge Mona Dovall to sever all ties with the website. The court fights: Les Perreaux report QB271 These pages have links which lead to other pages from that era. Now that some of the dust has settled, I have been going back through the material we had posted in the early days. In the spirit of keeping the scrapbook alive, I have been reformatting and placing links. The original material remains intact. I hope the information, which chronicles our struggle is useful to you. The identity crisis is over. We know who we are --Sheila Steele, March 28, 2005

 

Blogging

Blogging has been in the news. It is the new, trendy thing with 40,000 new blogs being created each day. I established a blog for this website last September and it is now "taking off." These are a few of the pages with ongoing discussions.

Tasering Mary Lutz

Saskatchewan Centenary

Quint Blog discussion

Rotten apples in the Saskatoon Police

Blogging for choice

Michael Cardamone witch hunt

Implement recommendations of public inquiries

Stealing from the poor

Vancouver's killer cops

Tisdale rapists appeal

Winnipeg police misdeeds

Milgaard Inquiry

Chief Sabo: can he be trusted?

The Old Boys' Club Must Go!

Vancouver activists

John Hudak: Falsely accused mountie

City of intolerance

Constable Larry Lockwood: Exciteable!

Eric Cline

This is a great way for like-minded people to communicate and share our views. It is easier than making a website and marginally more difficult than a forum.

People who want to contribute simply have to punch the "comment" link and they will be taken to a page with a box which allows them to write their comment, preview and post it. It takes a while for the comment to show up and some people get impatient and repost. That's fine, I trash the duplicate posts and no harm done.

Please, please give it a try. The internet is distinguished from other media in that it is really and truly interactive. Blogging makes it possible to express your viewpoint even if you don't have a computer. You can go to the library or a friend's place or an internet cafe. Once you've mastered the basics (and believe me, if I can do it, you can do it) you will be participating in one of the most democratic -- and potentially powerful -- media the world as we know it has ever seen.

Come on. Don't be shy. Join the Weblog World! -- Sheila Steele, March 20, 2005

Toronto Police paid out $30M in secretly resolved claims over last five years