Top prosecutors stuck together to defend their bosses’ decision not to charge two Vancouver police officers who dumped a wet Frank Paul in an icy alley.
Yet an internal B.C. Criminal Justice Branch memo released at the Frank Paul Inquiry Thursday reveals severe misgivings by at least two staff lawyers, partly expressed in skeptical, scathing notes in the margin of a 2001 memo.
Paul, a 47-year-old Mi’kmaq, was dragged like a wet sack down the Vancouver police jail hallway and later dumped, still sodden, by a police wagon driver into a lane where he was found dead the next morning, on Dec. 6, 1998.
Five prosecutors – two of them now judges – have been forced by Canada’s top court to testify at the Frank Paul Inquiry before Commissioner William Davies. Davies has scheduled four days of testimony this week and next week.
Even though the internal memo reveals many misgivings that Paul could move or survive a cold night in his hypothermic condition, all the prosecutors ended up agreeing with their bosses’ decision not to criminally charge any officers.
Crown counsel Joyce DeWitt-Van Oosten wrote the Feb. 8, 2001 memo at the request of her boss Gregory Fitch, who has been on the stand for two days.
Fitch said he made the final call not to prosecute two VPD officers, who did get internally disciplined, but admitted he “vacillated” for months and kept asking other staff lawyers.
One lawyer, identified by Fitch as Carla Taylor, called “dubious” in her notes the police assertion that Paul could even walk or survive on his own.
Taylor wrote: “Regardless of the REASON, (Frank Paul) could not care for self.” Both Taylor and DeWitt-Van Oosten appear to agree in the memo that VPD then-Sgt. Russell Sanderson and other officers owed Paul “a duty of care.”
DeWitt-Van Oosten, who will testify next week, noted that pathologist Dr. John Ferris “opines that had the medical condition of Mr. Paul been assessed by police, including the recording of his body temperature, death could have been prevented.
“It would have been obvious that he could not be left alone in an alley exposed to rain and cold. Placing him in an alley exacerbated an already problematic and risky condition.”
But all the branch lawyers sang from the same song sheet eventually, backing the decision of their boss Austin Cullen, now a Supreme Court judge, not to charge anyone in connection with Paul’s death.
Fitch said that three charges were considered: manslaughter, criminal negligence causing death and failing to provide the necessities of life.
All of them were ruled out.
Ironically, Davies has already written in his interim report that the “various explanations” of the VPD “must be rejected in their entirety.”
“From any perspective Frank Paul was in need of care that evening and the decision (to leave him in a lane) was “made in a moment and without any responsible level of attention or care.”
Cullen will testify next week, along with DeWitt-Van Oosten, provincial court Judge Michael Hicks and prosecutor Robert Gillen.
Comments
Want to discuss? Please read our Commenting Policy first.