The Justice of Civic Duty

A homeless man who was roughed up by police was encouraged to lay charges. He had been seen one night at the corner of Henderson and Osgoode streets in August 2011 by a mother and daughter, prone on the sidewalk where they were walking past. Concerned for his welfare, they called 911. A patrol car came around, and they witnessed the arrival of two police officers. And what they saw impressed them quite negatively.

One of the responding officers tripped Hugh Styres who had been sleeping off a drunk. The second officer pushed down on him from behind, causing the clearly inebriated man to crash into the pavement, face first. The Crown claims that Styres suffered a broken jaw as a result of that little altercation. The two officers, constables Thanh Tran and Colin Bowie, claim in their defence that Styres was resisting arrest.

He was, in fact, seen to be flailing his arms about, as the mother and daughter observed. It seemed to them that because he was drunk perhaps he was simply attempting to attain his balance. The two constables claim he was attempting to assault them and this caused them to take evasion action, to put him out of commission. And this they certainly did.

The defence attorney for the two police officers is one who is accustomed to defending people accused of social crimes, some quite serious. The trial of Pembroke dentist Christy Natsis who has denied having killed another motorist when her vehicle crossed the median into his lane and hit him head on, because she was under the influence of alcohol is one where Michael Edelson grilled the motor vehicle accident specialist, an OPP officer, claiming him to be wrong in all his findings.

That trial, given the skilled professional machinations of lawyer Edelson and his law partners, will have gone on for about a year, with all the pauses that have been called, where it was expected that the trial would last no more than six weeks. Ms. Natsis is able to hire a law firm that exacts sky-high rates for their expertise. Her legal defence seems to take delight in charging prosecution witnesses with ineptitude and failing memories.

In questioning the duo who witnessed the event for which the two officers have been placed on trial, their lawyer has once again demonstrated his technique of undermining the self-confidence of witnesses, charging them with false memory recalls -- both the mother and the daughter, as it happens -- and quite demoralizing and rattling them.

More than that, he has, by his relentless charges against them, caused them to experience feelings of physical illness, nausea, queasiness, uncertainty and misery. "I'm not a machine, I'm a human being", protested Tasha Doucette, during her second day of interrogation at trial. The cross-examination has been a gruelling, truly trying episode in both her life and that of her daughter.

Both insist that the homeless drunk did not hit the officers, nor attempt to, which event is being claimed as the impetus for the attack. That the attack took place seems not to be the issue; rather it was that something the homeless man who was drunk did that precipitated it; an effort on the part of the two constables to render the man incapable of resistance. Blunt force trauma will render people incapable of resistance.

But why use such methods on someone who is clearly not in possession of all their mental faculties, let alone their physical ones due to inebriation?  The mother's father, who is also grandfather of her daughter, the two witnesses being questioned, is incensed by what he is witnessing. He describes the courtroom questioning as being akin to a "Guantanamo Bay interrogation". And as a result insists police are intimidating his family.

"The cards are stacked against her, and all she is [is] a witness, serving her moral and civic duty", he has objected. As a result he has filed a complaint with the Law Society of Upper Canada, bringing to their attention the brutally interrogative manner of lawyer Edelson. Norman Doucette, Tasha's father, sent his letter to the society hoping that the lawyer would be ordered to "temper his treatment" of his daughter.

The lawyer characterizes this as interference, even worse, a "blatant attempt to intimidate counsel in a court case before you got in the witness box to testify". The Crown, in fact, has on several occasions objected to Edelson's handling of the witnesses, while Ontario Court Justice Charles Vaillancourt has ruled that the questioning was "proper and appropriate".

Norman Doucette's allegations of improperly vicious grilling of his daughter and granddaughter has not impressed the lawyer. On the basis of what Norm Doucette has thus far witnessed he is prepared to discourage anyone who might witness what they believe to be inappropriate police behaviour from coming forward to testify.

As for Mr. Edelson: "You may see some aggressiveness before it is over, though".