Justice Vigilantes

In the sense of manipulating the law to suit one's purpose that is. Why not just permit Pembroke dentist Christy Natsis and her defence lawyer Michael Edelson to simply conduct the trial proceedings themselves. The presence of a presiding judge seems rather immaterial given the manner in which the trial has been allowed to progress. This dynamic duo of denial and attestations of innocence of the charge the Crown has brought against a woman who clearly is more than alleged to have driven while under the influence of alcohol and by that means took the life of another driver, has simply turned the tables, as it were.

Portraying a 27-year veteran of policing as a rank amateur, but worse, one who instantly on viewing the scene of a crime and with malice aforethought invents evidence by which the Crown may prosecute an innocent bystander who just happens to have been involved in a deadly head-on crash through no fault of her own. This represents supreme chutzpa, the criminal criminalizing the police officer who dared exhibit the effrontery of charging the accused with a criminal offence; in his mind altering 'alleged' to guilty as charged.

Which is all very well and good, since police, who are exposed, like their para-medic partners in first-response to dreadful roadside events, do after a sufficient number of such calamitous occasions become capable of swiftly assessing such situations to determine in their minds the details and the actions as they occurred to create the disaster. Being mindful all the while, that their intuition and understanding alone is not enough; they must succeed in retrieving data and evidence which the Crown uses during a trial to ensure that the proceedings are manifest to those sitting in judgement, be it judge or jury and both.

Const. Shawn Kelly, the expert investigator in this sad and sordid courtroom drama of truly offensive proportions, testified about what he found when he examined data taken from an airbag control module on the tragically deceased Bryan Casey's truck when he was struck head-on by Christy Natsis. Mr. Casey's pickup truck had been straddling the fog line on the outside of his eastbound lane. He had reacted to the danger that so suddenly confronted him by slowing from 80 kilometres on Highway 17, near Anrprior to 34 km/h in the two seconds it took before Ms. Natsis hit him head on, swerving directly into his lane from her west-bound position.

Ms. Natsis, on the other hand, failed to brake in the five seconds leading up to the crash, according to a similar restraint control module recorder in her SUV. Her speed was maintained at a steady 85 to 87 km/h. Moreover, based on time and distance calculations, Const. Kelly in his capacity as an accident-scene and highway driving expert, estimated that Ms. Natsis's average speed from the time she drove away from the Crazy Horse restaurant in Kanata -- in the process of which witnesses had watched her backing into another vehicle -- to the crash scene to have been 112 km/h.

These details, put forward as evidence are quite inconvenient, and not one whit appreciated by the defence.  And Ms. Natsis, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of impaired driving causing death has asked the presiding judge to stay the criminal charges brought against her. On the basis of accusing the OPP collision investigator of having destroyed evidence. That evidence was a draft copy of Const. Kelly's report which had comments on it by a senior OPP officer. That same senior officer indicated it was OPP policy to destroy draft reports.

Whereas earlier in the trial Ontario Court Justice Neil Kozloff was convinced by the defence to set aside breathalizer evidence that clearly indicated Ms. Natsis's blood alcohol level was 2-1/2 times the legal limit following the accident; that it should be discounted because, they claimed, Const. Kelly had abridged Ms. Natsis's Constitutional rights by questioning her before she had spoken with a lawyer, and by interrupting her 40-minute telephone consultation with her lawyer, while in hospital, in a washroom, lying on her back, feet up on the toilet.

That clearly incriminating evidence was tossed, in accordance with Justice Kozloff's findings in agreement with the defence. Now, not only has the defence succeeded in having the blood-alcohol levels of the accused withdrawn from evidence, it is their enterprisingly lawful opinion that all other evidence obtained through the auspices of this experienced OPP police constable's discharging of his professional duties, should also be discounted.

And having done so, leaving the Crown a much more slender set of evidence to draw upon, including the testimony of other witnesses whose narratives echoes that of Const. Kelly's, the defence feels justified in asking the judge to dismiss all charges against Ms. Natsis. A more detailed inspection of her wrecked Ford SUV several weeks following the March 2011 crash revealed an unopened 740 mL bottle of Absolut vodka, and two empty paper LCBO bags under the back seat, a BlackBerry tucked "way up under" the gas pedal.

Under questioning from Ms. Natsis' defence attorney, Const. Kelly admitted not having taken pictures of what he had seen, nor had he retrieved the telephone to determine through the cell records if Ms. Natsis had been using the cellphone prior to the crash. One might think, had he felt he really needed additional evidence of wrong-doing on Ms. Natsis's part he would have pursued that avenue. Obviously he felt, under the circumstances, that there was more than enough evidence to ensure that this woman would be found guilty as charged and would then pay the lawful penalty accruing to her hubristic flaunting of the law that ended in the death of an innocent person.