 Welcome and my name is Greg Marquis. I'll tell you about myself. I'm a history professor at UNB St. John. It's a branch of University of New Brunswick in St. John and although I think someone told me lately that the strike-bound Chronicle Herald called me a law professor, so I'm not sure that's a good or bad thing. But anyway, I'm not a law professor. I'll talk more about that later. Thanks for, I want to thank the dean's office for arranging this and also the publisher, my publisher, Nimbus, particularly Jeff Arbo who's the publicist. I think Jeff set another event tonight. As you may know, there's a lot of books being released and launched just before Santa. And I think, I don't know, I was talking with my friend John McKinnon who's here earlier. I don't know if people remember April Wine back in the day, but I think Miles Goodwin, the lead singer from April Wine is launching a book tonight and he's playing guitar too. So I wish I was at that one, but anyway, I can't be. So anyway, but I can go home and listen to my April Wine records when I go back to New Brunswick. So I like to thank you folks for coming tonight as well to historic night with what's happening south of the border. And I know we won't find out the details until the wee hours, but I'm sure whatever happens, we'll go down on history either way. And hopefully it won't be overly dramatic. Now, I've attended events at this law school over the years. When I was here, I lived in Halifax when I used to teach part-time at St. Mary's in Dal history. And many hours I spent in the law library here because I do legal history, right? So I attended a conference or two here. I remember people like Phil Gerard and other people. And I also spent a lot of time in the general area at the Nova Scotia archives and the Tequillum Library. So I used to live in Halifax, so it's great to be back. Also in a way, it's a little bit liberating in a way to get out of New Brunswick to talk about this case. Because in some ways it is, in some ways it isn't. Because I find myself with often people with very strong feelings who have connections to the case. But even here, people have a lot of connections to the case. I found when I was here doing some media three weeks ago, every second person I met had a connection to the families or to the case in some way. So I'm a little afraid to ask why I won't. And I'm assuming some of your legal people and some of you are from the public. I'll talk about my legal training or lack thereof. So what I'm going to do tonight is talk about a dozen reasons why the Olin case matters. And my comments are based on my coverage of the trial in 2015 as well as the post trial matters. Specifically the bail hearings, the two unsuccessful bail hearings at the Court of Appeal in New Brunswick in 2016. As well as the recent successful appearance before the New Brunswick Court of Appeal for the actual appeal in October 2016. As well as the October 31 sitting of the Supreme Court of Canada, I was privileged to be able to attend that. And again, when I sat down in the law courts in St. John back in 2014 to start sitting in on the preliminary inquiry about three years after the murder, I never dreamt that I'd be going to Ottawa to actually watch the Supreme Court of Canada. I didn't watch the proceedings online live stream, but it's really a beautiful building. And I was sort of struck as an historian with what historians often refer to as the majesty of the law when you go into that building. And just to see Chief Justice McLaughlin and Rosie Abela and the other Chief Justices just speaking in that courtroom. It's kind of neat. Anyway, so my plan for tonight is to give you a somewhat truncated presentation. I was told I could speak for 60 minutes or 75 minutes. You never tell him a story in that. You never, you never, you never tell. So I'm going to try to keep it shorter because people often have a lot of questions and comments. And even if you don't want to do it in front of the group, often people want to talk after for a little bit. There's also books for sale out in the lobby. And I'm told they're very, very popular with Santa this season. So, okay, so why a little shorter? I don't know, I'll overwhelm you with the detail. I want to leave some time for questions. And also if I give you too much information, you won't buy the book, right? So I'm going to tell you everything that's in the book. So by way of a disclaimer, I need to remind you I am a historian. I'm not a law professor or a lawyer. I have been involved with Canadian legal history for probably 30 years or more. But that's my perspective, right? So I can't do instant legal analysis and as my lawyer friends keep reminding me. So if you have questions, legal questions after, I might not be able to answer them to what you want. And I might not always use the right terms and things like that, right? So anyway, that situation about having a historian speaking in a law school kind of reminds me of a story from Canadian history. Back in the days, John M. MacDonald used to have to go to a lot of political meetings. And back in the Confederation era, they were very rowdy. They could end with a riot or a fist fight. So John M. MacDonald, the other thing too, they weren't always speaking in front of the party faithful. These mixed party meetings, right? So John M. MacDonald always made sure he knew where the back door was. And I see that there's a side door there and one there. And had the horse and buggy waiting outside, right? So anyway, so first, before I talk about the significance of this, I want to talk about two reasons why the case is not significant, right? And the first thing I'm going to say might sound a bit harsh, because after all, a man was brutally murdered in his office in the quiet street in St. John 2011. This is just another murder, right? So that seems kind of anticlimactic for me to come all this way, having written this book. And you've come out tonight and I'm telling you, this is just another murder. So we can go home now. That's not what I mean. But it's just another murder. And I think it's important to think about other victims, other victims of violence in St. John and other cities. And whose court cases are not the subject of books or TV documentaries. And so I was struck by this because I do talk about some other cases in the book and the different community reaction. I'll come back to this on a number of other points later in the talk. But there are many, in 2011 there were other cases of murder, homicide in New Brunswick. There were almost 600 in Canada, right? And so I think we need to acknowledge these other, often they're less wealthy, less well-known victims of homicide. They don't have books written about them. And even the accused, you know, I think it's often easy to say, well, the accused, it's, you know, someone murdered someone that's pretty bad. It's not the worst thing you can do, right? And that's true. But if you often look at these people, we don't control their violence, but it's possible to see many perpetrators, maybe not as victims, as people who are in a bad way. You know, they've been brought up with physical and sexual abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, mental health challenges, personality disorders, fetal alcohol. And if you have any, you know, the thing that I've learned, not just studying academic literature, but if you have, you know, this issue of damaged people in the justice system, if you have any doubt about this, because it seems to fly in the face of the common-sense attitude of the public, just go to any provincial court in Canada and spend a day there, right? And you'll soon see that common-sense explanations of why people are in trouble for law don't make any sense, right? So that's a little bit editorializing. But anyway, in terms of victimization, what was odd about the case, Richard Olem, was wealthy and older. And you know, so that usually people in that sort of situation are not victims of violence. A 2014 STATS CAN report on violent victimization indicates that risk increases with poverty, with drug and alcohol abuse by the victims, with mental health issues for victims. The age, if you're 20 to 24, you're more likely to be murdered, right, than any other age bracket. Nighttime activities, if you're out at night, right? If you're living or hanging out in a low-income neighborhood. The incident, you know, have you been mistreated as a child, right? And also, your sexuality, homosexual and bisexual people are more likely statistically to be assaulted and murdered than 69-year-old millionaires who are receiving the order of Canada, right? So again, and these are some of the reasons why the case is not typical. We'll get into this a bit more. And again, now, so that's the, you know, the other reason why the case is, quote, just another homicide. Legally, it was not a complex case, right? And I'm not making this up because this is what the judge said, the trial judge. This is what the crown said and this is what the defense said. Legally, it was not a complex case. It turned on one issue, the identity of the person who murdered Richard Olin, right? That's it. That's it. It's not a complex case. Now, it's, but it's tricky case because of circumstantial evidence. Come back to that. Now, the question is, okay, why second-degree murder? And in my book, I look at that in the final chapter. If you see the book, you'll see that the final chapter is like the so what chapter, which talks about the issues back and forth. And, you know, was there some planning? Well, maybe, but they couldn't really come up with any evidence of planning. So if there's no planning, it's second-degree murder. Why not manslaughter? Well, all parties agreed that the violence inflicted on the victim's head, the head injuries is what killed the gentleman, 39 to 40 blows with some sort of weapon was carried out with such extreme force that there was intention to kill. So the interesting thing for me as well as a non-legally trained person is that there didn't have to be a motive legally, right? Well, motive is irrelevant legally. Intent. Was there intent to kill? That's the question. Motive is part of the crown's theory of constructing a story for the jury, but that was something I learned as well that motive is not really, it doesn't matter why it was killed, legally, right? But in terms of evidence that's circumstantial that can help maybe the crown portray a certain story for the jury, then, you know, motive can be useful. Okay, so the first reason why it's significant, I've already touched upon, the prominence of the victim and of the accused. Not to mention the father-son relationship, right? But so, you know, there were other manslaughter and murder cases in St. John in 2011 onwards, and only one other case was a victim or a perpetrator arguably of the middle class. And that was a case of intimate partner violence where there was strong evidence of planning where a husband killed as a strange wife and the charge of first degree murder was laid. The gentleman confessed to pleading guilty as a second degree murder, it was sentenced to 20 years before parole eligibility. The atypical background of the confessed murderer, whose name was Jason Getzen, was commented on by the judge as being not typical at the sentencing hearing, right? He pointed out, you know, you have a job, you drive a BMW, you own a house. We don't get people like you in court on murder charges, right? So again, that's a middle class person. The Owens, here's Richard on your left and Dennis' son on the right, were from a different class, right? Above the middle class. So back to Richard Owens, the victim was a member of a family associated with the maritime brewing sector since 1867, whose brewing activities in New Brunswick stretch back to World War I. He was not directly involved with Mooseb breweries since about the early 1980s, but he benefited from his family connection. He inherited shares in the company from his father, P.W. Phil Owen, and later his shares were bought out by his brother, Derek Owen, whose uncle of the accused, Dennis. He enjoyed life, he was an avid, there was a Moosehead plan on the west side of St. John, the biggest independent brewery in Canada still. So Richard enjoyed life. He was an avid skier, fisherman, a sailor in recent years. He had taken up the competitive sport of blue water sailing, winning international competitions with his high tech and expensive yacht, Vela Voloche, which is there on the right. And that yacht was up for sale at the time of his death, and he was having a new yacht built in Spain, right at the time of his death. He was worth about $35 or $36 million when he died. He was a recipient of the Order of Canada, recognized as a high-profile, high-level fundraiser and community leader activist. He had been successful with the Canada Games in St. John in 1985. He had been chair of the Board of New Brunswick Museum. He was involved with Roman Catholic Church and other activities in the community, the reputation. He was kind of a gruff, bluff character, but if you needed to raise a lot of money for a project, Richard Olin was the guy that you went to, and he usually got it done. Now, the Olins are not the Irvings or the McCains. That's the victim's house in Almond Lane, and yes, there is a connection with the Halifax Almonds. The Olins are not the Irvings or the McCains, but they're not the average St. John or Rasse family. Rasse is the town outside of St. John, where the Olins and a lot of their friends lived. Where are we going here? Rasse is a separate town. He's the St. John. The social prominence of the family was evident at the victim's funeral, which I discussed in the book. Again, like the funeral of his father, P.W., before him, it was kind of a gathering of the elite. The Rasse, it's a little bit unfair, but it has kind of a reputation for wealth, social privilege, and exclusivity. Maybe like kind of a South End Halifax. It's kind of a bit of a stereotype, but there's some truth to it, but it's also changed a lot. It's not the Rasse of the 1950s or 60s. So the Olins are well-connected in business, political, non-profit, and charity worlds. This class dimension helps explain, I think, the unwillingness of well-known citizens to speak to the media once the crime takes place. It's an issue I explore in the book. The accused, Dennis, personally, was not as well off as his father. In fact, his uncertain financial situation in 2011, the day after the murder, the day the body is discovered, right? His financial situation attracts the police investigators. This feeds the Crown's theory of motive. So he lived in this nice house in Rasse, which was his grandfather's house that his father helped him secure when Dennis was divorced from his first wife. Prior to the crime, he had traveled abroad with his new wife. He would continue to travel prior to being arrested in 2013. He's arrested in November 2013. The murder is July 2011. He acquired a new cabin cruiser used, put a new cabin cruiser to sail on the river after the murder, and he and his wife bought a building in St. John a few months after Richard's death from where his wife, Lisa, launched a high-end used clothing store. Dennis was an investment broker. One of his clients was his father. So he sort of, you know, much like Richard sort of benefited a bit from his father, Dennis benefited a bit, you know, from his human nature, right, and family connections from his father. The main source of support was Richard loaned Dennis in excess of $500,000 in order to settle his divorce from his first wife and secure the ancestral home on Gondola Point Road in Rasse. This is a picture of the home which became another factor. This loan or whatever you want to call it became a factor in the police investigation. Those who had three children plus a stepson from a second wife owed interest payments to his father as well as support payments to his ex-wife. From an academic perspective, I view the Owen case as a rare opportunity to shine a spotlight on a rarely examined sector of New Brunswick's reality, the place of elite families and their networks. Secondly, the second reason why the case is interesting matters unprecedented media coverage. In terms of media coverage, this is probably the biggest case in New Brunswick since the Alan Leger case of the late 1980s, early 90s, and you might remember that unfortunate series of events, the monster of the mirror machine who was a convicted murderer who escaped and when he was out on his, out on the land, he killed four more people, right? So that received huge publicity at the time. It's no secret that crime, especially murder, sells newspapers, although newspapers in New Brunswick don't have to worry about any competition, right? So I guess that's not a really good example, but let's pretend it works though. So I'll give you an example from history. In 1897, William Randolph Hearst exploited the public's fascination with true crime following the murder in Manhattan. William, excuse me, golden soup, a masseur whose body parts were found scattered in three New York neighborhoods. The head was never found. Hearst offered a thousand-dollar reward and formed a team of gun-toting reporters known as the Murder Squad to promote his newly launched New York Evening Journal. The stunt was part of a newspaper war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Reporters from the world sort of won the war because they stole crime scene evidence, a bloody floorboard from the crime scene, and employed divers to search the East River for the victim's head. So this was the launch of so-called yellow journalism which pushed crime, accidents, comics, and celebrity news. Does that sound familiar? So these are the good old days, supposedly when journalism was professional. And there's a famous quote from Hearst, the public likes entertainment better than it likes information. He was conscious of using crime reporting as entertainment, and I think that is a large part of what was happening with the coverage of the Owen case. It's entertainment. And again, if you studied Hearst, you'll know that perhaps his most famous utterance had to do with the project of the Spanish-American War, where he told one of his reporters or photographers who was in Cuba, you furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war. Now, criminologist Robert Reiner has recently written, the picture of crime that most people have is not rooted in their own experience, but in highly slanted images derived from mass media. And it is these that misinform popular and political debate. Again, so looking at the Owen, I don't do this in my book because I try to tell a story, I try to make it more accessible to the non-specialist reader, but you can't avoid all your training. I throw a few academic things in there, but it is this idea that crime stories are basically entertainment. It's something I think we need to keep in mind when we're looking at this. Now, the old investigation, this is a murder scene that's a victim's office. He sat right around there when he was killed. Right, second floor of this late Victorian building on Canterbury Street in St. John. The old investigation and trial was perhaps the most extensively reported criminal case in New Brunswick history. One result was to put the St. John police force under intense pressure to make an arrest and lay a charge. The police assured the public almost immediately that it was not in danger, which suggested that it had a suspect. But in keeping with standard investigatory procedure, they remain tight-lipped about the details of the case, especially when it came to so-called hold-back information. The investigation and arrest trial and subsequent matters were covered in detail by print electronic media. During the 2014 preliminary inquiry, the details which could not be reported on, the media was rarely present in the courtroom, but once the trial began, the media was there big time. The CBC alone had two full-time reporters tweeting every day. And then the other outlets were there as well. And the use of live tweeting in the courts had only been allowed in New Brunswick starting in 2012 when it was permitted by Justice William Grant, who was a former law partner of my late father, Henry Markey, who was a lawyer in St. John. In addition to radio and following radio, Twitter, newspapers, TV news, and online news sites, once the trial began, the public could view court exhibits posted online, such as this. Photographs, videos, and even documents. Dennis Olin's admissible 2011 police interview, which maybe some of you have seen on YouTube. It's two hours and 22 minutes long. That's what the jury saw at the trial. After the trial, then the rest of the five-hour, complete five-hour interrogation was released. And some of it's pretty brutal to watch, right? And you can see it online. So that's a crime scene photo there. That's the keyboard at the victim's desk. He was killed at his desk. That's his main computer with the charge cord for his stolen iPhone that was never found. That's the interior of the car that Dennis Olin was driving the day of the murder and the trunk. So these are sort of exhibits, right? Exhibits that were posted by media. So this was largely a regional story, but it did attract some national attention. Globe and Mail, National Post, Canadian Press. I did one small quick interview with the weekend of the day after the conviction, and it was picked up by 100 newspapers, right? And then it seemed to kind of die down. And every once in a while, something will flare up like the bail here or something like that and it'll get some national attention. But it's heavily covered in New Brunswick. And then, of course, there was the following the verdict in the winter of 2016. There was an episode of the Fifth Estate, CBC, which you can find online as well, Murder and the Family. This episode gave an overview of the trial just prior to the sentencing. And this episode, however, committed, this is more a St. John comment, but you might get a kick out of it, the Fifth Estate episode committed the cardinal sin in the opinion of people from the St. John area of using a Halifax expert to explain the city of St. John to a national audience. I have to thank you. I'm born and raised in St. John. I live in Halifax. Met my wife here, got married here. But I think the only thing worse than that for someone from St. John is if someone from Fredericton... Okay, you've been to New Brunswick then. I take that, you've been to New Brunswick. So once the trial began, there was reporting of sloppy police work at the crime scene, raised the possibility that physical evidence had been lost or compromised. This is a sketch of the crime scene. It was a victim laying in a pool of blood. There's his desk, right? So that's a sketch of the crime scene. Raised the possibility that physical evidence had been lost or compromised. Although this turned out to have little or no impact on the trial outcome, obviously the jury thought that the St. John police force had committed so many errors that they totally so screwed up the crime scene, right? That would have raised sufficient reasonable doubt in their minds that they would have acquitted to defend it. They didn't, right? Maybe when it comes to a new trial, right? Maybe that evidence will be more compelling. But I think one of the reasons we were so focused on these details at the time was that it's good stuff to report. You know, it's really good stuff to report. They didn't touch the back door, right? They didn't check the back door for fingerprints and DNA or whatever. So, you know, that gets in the newspaper, it gets on, you know, and it's like the sound bite of the day on CBC. So I think a lot of it got sucked into that. It turned out to be not really that important, you know, at least the first trial. The details of the case, especially when we reported during the trial, encouraged people to play detective. I think this is something else, too, this idea of entertainment. People are watching, you know, forensic files and all these shows and true crime books and that type of thing. And I talk about that in the book, you know, making of a murderer, serial, all that, right? And I'm sure there's a few people in this room that have done a little bit of watching of too many episodes of crime shows on Netflix late at night, right? Don't make eye contact with me. So this case was full of that type of stuff that we played detective. The forensic evidence. What happened to the cell phone? What about the cell phone tower evidence? What about the DNA? What about the computer usage data? This was all important technical, kind of like the silent witness type of evidence, right? Circumstantial evidence that was used by the jury we can only infer to find guilt. And circumstantial, you know, direct evidence is eye witness evidence. There wasn't any direct evidence in this case, really. It's all circumstantial. And circumstantial evidence is the type of evidence that on its own does not prove anything. A judge or jury then has to make a determination, you know, link, you know, link, make an inference by linking this circumstantial evidence together. This is a purely evidential case. The role of the media was also related to the third point. The intensity of public interest spec. So it's not just the, you know, the fact that the media is throwing all the stuff at the public. The public is already talking about the case, right? And the media is kind of like adding fuel to the fire, so to speak. I've never seen anything like it in St. John. The truth, according to Oscar Wilde, is rarely pure and never simple. However, juries are tasked with finding the truth or facts based on evidence that is presented and tested in court. We have a system of adversarial justice that we've inherited from the British, where arguments are made, evidence is tested, and then the trier of fact, either the judge or the jury, has to make an determination. Juries are constantly told by trial judges to assess all the evidence, not just a single isolated piece of evidence. Yet many people in St. John, when they had their pet fury about the case, would look at one little, you know, like the back door or, you know, one little piece of evidence, like a text message or a cell phone call or whatever. And many people in St. John, even before the trial started in 2015, had strong opinions on the guilt or the innocence of Dennis Olin, on the quality of the police investigation and on the conduct of the trial. And again, I was fascinated by this. People knew I was trying to work on a book. I was attending court. I would be approached all the time when I went into St. John, and people would come up to me and tell me their theories of the case. They would tell me what they think, what happened. And I noticed that none of them had ever been in the courtroom. It was a really compelling, interesting piece of, you know, kind of human nature at work. I should mention that courtroom point too. I was also surprised by how many people didn't realize, getting back to our kind of British justice traditions, I didn't realize how many people were unaware that you can go into any courtroom you want. Right? Are you allowed to go there? They would ask me these questions. They thought that you had to be almost part of the case or something. So a lot of people, again, it's a slice of life, much like most people will never be in a police station. Most people will never be in a court of law. And they had no idea that the courts are open. So anyway, now in terms of the level of gossip John has only 65,000 people. Rasse, 12,000. Chris Pam says, where I live, 18,000. So there's not a lot of people in the area. People tend to know the Owens, the people in the police force. I mean, whatever. The sheriff's deputies, the lawyers. People who work for Moosehead, people who work for some of Richard Owens various business enterprises, people who belong to one of the two yacht clubs that the Owens belong to and all the boating people and all those people. The conservative party. You start checking off the list. You don't have much separation anymore, right? So I think that leads to the intensity as well. Now to be fair, some of the speculation was a product of what a defense lawyer recently called the exceptional circumstances of the case, which I review in the final chapter of the book. There are a lot of problematic issues to the case in terms of circumstantial evidence. It's the sort of thing that could drive you crazy, right? So, for example, the somewhat speculative theory of evidence by the crown. The fact that no murder weapon was ever discovered, and this was the most commonly cited type of murder weapon, a drywall hammer, but the judge instructed the jury we can't say that a drywall hammer was used because there was no evidence positively entered to suggest that, right? The pathologists couldn't or wouldn't say, right? No evidence of a cleanup at the scene. No trace evidence on the suspect's clothing with one major exception, the evidence on the brown jacket. No evidence of trace blood or DNA in the suspect's vehicle. No explanation is why the victim's iPhone was missing or what happened to it, right? So all those unknowns in this case. And there's another thing, you know, and again, here's the back door of the inside, back door of the exterior, all sorts of controversies around this. Here's another sort of common sense view, right? You know, A, was Dennis capable of murder, right? B, was he capable of carrying out a murder and covering almost all traces of it? I mean, at the court of appeal, Mr. Gould, the defense lawyer brought this up again. He said that Dennis Olin must have been an incredibly resourceful and clever criminal to carry out this murder and leave no evidence at all except for three little drops of DNA on his father's DNA on the jacket which could be explained by, well, innocent transfer. C, was he capable of bashing in his father's head and then going home to his wife in Rasse, changing his clothes and appearing calmly shopping on video camera in suburbia supposedly an hour after the attack. So these are some of the compelling common sense questions at Rasse. The crown's theory was that appearances can be deceiving. And just taking a quotation from their quotation from their opening statement, we submit that anyone is capable of doing bad things. I thought, wait a minute, that sounds very familiar. That sounds very familiar. Remember how I alluded to Netflix earlier? Well, after I started watching the book, I started watching the series Bloodline. What's the tagline for Bloodline? Good people do bad things. So, again, who came over that line first? So, anyway, the publicized details of the adequate police investigation, some of which the trial judge acknowledged, because he had you by law in his instructions to the jury, were very compelling for citizens predisposed or preconditioned to have negative views of the St. John police force. And again, we have a situation in New Brunswick where the influential media outlets, they have very strong editorials, right? And as someone who studies policing, I was always intrigued by these ongoing editorials in the Irving newspapers slamming the police force. What they're really doing is slamming the police union, right? Because they seem to have this war on against the public sector, against unions, and the Irving papers are is this being filmed? I hope it is. Are obsessed. Obsessed over details of the municipal administration. You would think it was a bloody United Nations they're reporting on. Not a little city in the Maritimes. Anyway, so public where, you know, if you're conditioned to all this negativity about the St. John police, suddenly along comes a case where they're not wearing gloves at the scene. They're using the upstairs bathroom outside of the the murder scene. They're not testing the back door. They're not taking notes, you know, this type of thing. And again, this is like heroin for people who are preconditioned to have a negative view of local cops. Anyway, so because of opinion, differences of opinion within the community describing the book. The strong feelings and intense interest as well as the many unknowns about the case. I was inspired to write a true crime book. Maybe inspiration is the wrong word. Desperation is probably better without a conclusion. So it's a little bit different than what we're trained to do as academics or true crime writers. It kind of breaks a fundamental rule. There's no conclusion, right? And so I leave it to the reader. And I've already had some interesting feedback from people. I've had a couple of people who typed up little commentaries on what they think happened and emailed them to me. And I think that's really neat. If anyone wants to do that to me, for them, I would love to hear back from you on that. Another aspect of another thing about this was that the I'll get to these lawyers here in a sec. The combination number one and two led factors one and two led to much discussion pro and con of the findings of the jury. Again, I've never seen a case like this. Usually when there's a finding of acquittal or guilt, the chat in the community is on the convicted person or the acquitted person or the victim. The jury is a neutral factor. The jury is a neutral factor. In this case, there's a lot of talk about the jury. And we have no way of knowing but this must have created tremendous stress for the jury. Criticism by a good chunk of the community and they had the grueling schedule of the trial. They had 30 hours of deliberation. They had the legal requirement for non-disclosure. They couldn't tell anyone, even their husbands or wives or girlfriends or boyfriends why? They were exposed to graphic testimony. And again, I'll come back to this but in my experience, I've lived in I was born and raised in St. John and obviously when you're a kid you don't pay much attention to this stuff I moved back there in 99 and there's really any water cooler or coffee shop or bar room staff lounge type conversation about the jury. So again, I'll come back to that. Now, again we've had other murder cases, manslaughter cases, Justin Bennett case, young man only 18 years old his uncle crack cocaine addict came into the house where Justin was living tried to take a computer modem that Justin and his two younger friends were using to play computer games there was a fight Justin claimed that he stabbed the uncle in self defense. The uncle died on the way to hospital Justin was charged with the same crime as Dennis Olin and he got the same sentence 10 years with no parole eligibility. He was only 18 years old right? The problem for the defense there and I heard the final arguments by the two sides the problem for the defense there is that the uncle was stabbed six times in the back right? So it kind of goes against the self defense thing a bit and again I didn't hear anyone say hey gee that jury that jury was too harsh or the jury was not harsh enough or what in the hell was that jury doing so again every case is different I realize but getting back to the Olin case this appears to be the first time where media reported that the provincial government was providing support for jury members in the wake of the trial and again I tend to I think that this was not because of the graphic photos and believe me they are very graphic I would never show you the photos that we have from this crime scene but there are other graphic cases of child murder child molestation right? And so I believe that the largest part of that stress was the stress that they got through the community reaction from part of the community that again just as a little bit of an aside recently it's reported that a female juror in the 2012 trial of Michael Rafferty has gone to court to seek support from the Ontario criminal injuries compensation board this was Rafferty and his girlfriend were convicted of killing a young girl so the woman claims as a juror she suffered post-traumatic stress syndrome after the trial quote symptoms have been debilitating she says including memory loss, boats of extreme anger and a shopping addiction that has drained her retirement savings and children's educational plans so she applied for the victims of crime fund as a victim of crime as a juror who sat through a graphic trial and she was denied so she's taken the government of Ontario to court so I think there's some interesting things in the future about jurors counseling all that type of stuff right anyway the fourth we got to pick up the pace here the fourth reason there's only eight to go oh my gosh the legal quest for media outlets to publish search warrant related information prior to the actual trial I'm just going to mention this briefly but I haven't done the research on this publication bans are not my thing as a non-lawyer legal prof but the media is constitutionally entitled to publish information about court cases but there are exceptions you know judges can impose bans usually preliminary inquiries of bans for example cases involving youth and that type of thing and the band refers to publication so anyone you know a lot of people go to the court and get the documents you can copy them that type of thing you just can't write a story about them put them on the internet and that type of thing so what was interesting about this case is that the CBC and the telegraph journal fought in court for the right to publish certain details from search warrants and related documents prior to an arrest being made and this came out in stages as a detail in the book was well covered in the media it's kind of like a form of legal strip tease if you will so well before Dennis Olin's arrest in November 2013 a lot of the key elements I mean they weren't always right about their assumptions but a lot of the key elements of the case for the St. John police force were revealed through the media and so for example in stages it was revealed that it was it was a murder not you know not a manslaughter that the accused that they had one accused that the accused owed a lot of money to the victim that there was a mistress right that the accused was the victim's son you know okay there's how many sons are there oh there's only one okay so so again the unsealing of that warrant information challenged a basic orthodoxy in policing circles and of course it was opposed not only by the police but by the crown attorneys and by the own family right in court the basic orthodoxy is you try to release only what will not harm the investigation right and that was an argument that the St. John police force tried to make okay prominence of the defense team here we get to the I call this the kind of the reservoir dog shot but very prominent the two main defense lawyers on the left and the junior council third from left and this is the defense team walking back and forth from court in the fall 2015 Gary Miller on the left very experienced senior Gary Miller QC lawyer in Frederickton he was in the past he's been involved with the Hatfield drug case the Romero murder case which I think was an extradition case and the Noah Augustine murder case amongst many others Alan Gold is second from the left and he's one of the better known defense lawyers in Canada he is author of his own annotated criminal code author of a book dealing with what he calls junk science how to defend against junk science forensic experts in court and that type of thing very highly sought after speaker for legal audiences and according to press accounts Mr. Gold has won three cases before the Supreme Court of Canada one year Jamie McConnell a junior lawyer from Cox Palmer Bill TQC the old family lawyer and a friend of the defendant again this is an interesting thing this was a very expensive case so one of the questions there's two questions we'd love to have answered how much did it cost the defense and who paid so now that led to a lot of fatalism in the community that high paid lawyers were going to here's the common sense thing again high paid law he will never be convicted right we know he did it whatever but high paid lawyers are going to get him off right well you go to law school it's not just a technicality it's called the law right so anyway but obviously that theory didn't work did it but what's interesting legal aid lawyer mentioned to me one day that in defense of duty counsel legal aid yes they too can win big cases because there's I know of at least one fairly recent case where a duty counsel won over had a murder case in 2015 the New Brunswick Court of Appeal overturned a murder case of Mr. McKenna from Gary New Brunswick on the basis of the trial judge had failed to instruct the jury properly on the difference between murder and manslaughter and that was Margaret Gallagher who's not Alan Gold and not Gary Mailer she's duty counsel in St. John right so now they lost at the Supreme Court of Canada but they you know they did win at the appeal court so it's not always the case that you know the what Napoleon would call the big battalions win so okay what else makes the case different or interesting the length of the preliminary inquiry and pre-trial proceedings in 2014-15 the preliminary inquiry ran from May 12th to August 7th October 7th 2014 heard most of the crown witnesses who would testify at the trial the transcript was 5,000 pages long the transcript of the preliminary inquiry was 5,000 pages long I was lucky enough to be able to sit through most of that because it was in the summer the decision by Judge Ronald LeBlanc of the provincial court to send the case to trial for second degree murder took 75 minutes to read in court right I don't know if that's unusual I think it is excuse me so then there were the voir deers and the pre-trial matters and it's interesting that despite all that part to the decision to send to the court the defense purported to be shocked that Judge LeBlanc was sending this to trial right at the time Gary Miller said I've never seen anything like this in my life and I've been practicing law for 37 or whatever 37 years and even recently either at the Supreme Court of Canada or the Brunswick Court of Appeal Mr. Gold said we always took the position that there was no case meaning for the prosecution in 2015 prior to the trial there was a series of voir deers series of voir deers or hearings and rulings and evidence by trial Judge Justice Walsh including the issue of the Crown by the way P.J. Venio who was brought back out of retirement to be the lead Crown when the initial lead Crown had a dropout because of ill health and Mr. Weber and Mr. Wilbur and I'll leave that that's where the brown jacket was dry cleaned so there was so the series of rulings on the contentious issues the most contentious was whether or not the accused Hugo Bross Brown sports coat which was dry cleaned here the day after he was interrogated should have been sent to Halifax for testing by the RCMP crime lab right the defense wanted this evidence excluded and the grounds that sending it to Halifax under the terms of the warrant as they understood it violated Mr. Olin's Charter rights right and they tried their hardest to get that jacket excluded from the trial why because it was the only forensic evidence that connected the victim to the accused in terms of a method bludgeoning right it's contentious you know but anyway so the judge is a gatekeeper then made a series of rulings and he argued that the jacket could go in so it's and again we'll have to see what happens to that jacket when there's a second trial the size of the jury pool I'm going to skip ahead to some of these that's just a cell phone propagation map that was a piece of evidence at court showing where the missing cell phone might have been located the night of the murder that's a couple of the RCMP in music DNA people who testified during the trial I pointed out in the book the irony of the and this camera is still running right that the tough on crime Harper government closed 306 RCMP crime labs that's how they fought crime right including the one in Halifax right so but these were Joy Cursey and Mr. Zansky anyway they were DNA experts the largest jury pool in Canadian history to that date I think it still holds the record 5000 notices were issued most people sought exemptions but still 1100 people showed up at the hockey rink here which is also where you go to see you know Drake or whatever and I had to see Drake with my son once there and 1100 showed up for preliminary jury selection and this is where the accused also entered his plea of not guilty right and September 2015 more than four years after the discovery of the body the again really interesting is only 140,000 people in St. John and King's counties from where the jury is is drawn and so again the 1100 were sorted in the groups they were taken one group at a time to nearby law courts for final selection in front of the accused and the questions started people started asking can Dennis only get a fair trial in St. John given all the publicity and the fact there's only so many people I think they can get a jury because it only took them two days last time to get a jury if they had to they could probably move to Moncton which is only an hour and a half away right now the question is the super jury pool a new trend I know there's some other cases like the Luca Magnata case and some of those other high profile cases that would be large pools but just to bring things back into perspective the ongoing criminal negligence trial the two young boys who were killed by the python snake in northern New Brunswick very tragic the Campbellton I think four or is it Bathurst and northern 400 potential jurors the murder trial Bailey White I think it's Bailey anyway the murder trial involving young people in Moncton 600 so that's not 5,000 right so anyway the length of the trial the trial ran from December to December 2015 it sat for a total of 65 days this was not the longest criminal trial in New Brunswick a veteran lawyer told me that there was a land fraud trial back in the 70s it was longer also recently we had the J tornado drug trial in St. John which ran for 65 days and resulted in the conviction of two local men for drug trafficking possession and conspiracy you may have heard about this one this is where the RCMP gave St. John drug squad or whatever these blackberry blackberries and then they had a paid informant within the drug network in St. John and they said hey we got these blackberries and they're encrypted the police can never crack you know this is a nice thing about blackberries they can't be hacked the police will never be able to hack our messages of course the phones are directly feeding into the RCMP servers and they downloaded 30,000 emails to use to convict these guys it was an easy conviction anyway so this was a long trial though the Oman trial and Justice Walsh on the left again they had to do these impressionistic sketches of the jury this is my friend artist Carol Taylor from Rase these images are in the book so as Chief Justice Draupo said during the Olin appeal this was an expensive trial but the trial cost to St. John police force and provincial government is not known I've been asked the question will they go ahead with the second prosecution I think they have to I think there would be a huge human cry if they didn't go with the second prosecution they did win the first time after all and there's a guy who's been murdered so we'll have to see what happens the length of the judge is charged to the jury you can find this online Justice Walsh following the appearance of the last two witnesses Walsh witness who was the accused gave the jury a break and gave the two parties his draft charge this was totally new to me because as an historian I usually study systems I don't study like one case and I didn't know the judge does his or her charge they give the two sides in the trial the draft I want your feedback and it's kind of like a bargaining what goes over a few days and they met for three different periods three days in between before the trial was actually over and so in a sense the defense and the crown help write that charge in a way you know he has final sign off and anything so I was fascinated by that and of course the other thing I didn't know boy that's a brilliant judge of course he's a smart man but they have manuals they have manuals it's like a template different jury charges this is how you do it anyway what they're trying to do is summarize the evidence the arguments of the two sides and also to give any cautions to the jury about evidence and things like that and the judge does not have to review all the evidence in the case but what they're trying to do is avoid an appeal as well right this is a 200 page document it took 1.5 days to read and I was furiously taking notes and at the very end the judge said oh by the way this document will be made available to the media and people so the document is a very useful summary of the case and it can be found online I think in one of the CBC sites you can find out more about the nuts and bolts of the case here is the trial judge's summation the 10th the show of support at Dennis Olin sentencing hearing in February 2016 so let's just back it up he's found guilty on December 19th in St. John been over Christmas they come back in the new year there's a pre-sentence report just like any criminal pre-sentence report recommendations for sentencing I haven't tracked this but I think it was someone unprecedented the number of letters of support from friends and family in the community 70 character reference letters were filed in court prior to sentencing someone had to be thrown out because they were inappropriate because they criticized the verdict to the great umbrage of the trial judge who said a jury trial is not a popularity contest I don't care if he's a nice guy basically the jury is the judge here and the jury found him guilty so anyway a pre-sentence report to two victim impact statements were interesting were kind of collateral damaged victims they were the guys who were working down below in the building when the murder took place they didn't hear anything but they had the shock of realizing that their associate Mr. Olin was possibly murdered in the second floor when they were working down below and one of them did none of them saw the body sorry one of them did see the body the next morning he was the second person to see it so they entered very compelling heartfelt statements but more about what they experienced they weren't saying that they agreed with the verdict or disagreed the recommendation of the jury which is for the most liberal sentence a minimum of 10 years before parole eligibility this reflected the view of the trial judge some do suggest that because of the family support the fact that Mr. Olin had no criminal record he was not otherwise known for being violent he was not a flight risk and that type of thing so he agreed with that minimum of 10 years what was unprecedented in my knowledge is several dozen supporters presumably recruited by social media gathered at a breakfast in the downtown hotel and marched on the snowy day to the courthouse not all of them to the law courts not all of them entered the corridor but again I found this really intriguing I don't know if you get this in Nova Scotia but New Brunswick we would get it obviously it hasn't been confirmed or denied but I'm 90% sure that that person right there is the conservative member of the legislative assembly for West St. John a serving politician not into the court building but in the crowd and former employer of Lisa Olin right and so again I'll talk about that a bit and again I haven't been sued by her yet but it hasn't been denied either so I detail and the other thing too is not just the numbers but the names on these letters some very well connected business people and political people around St. John Derek Olin wrote on the letter head of Mousseb Breweries right so the uncle so many of them are complaining to be involved because the personal connection with the family and remember also this was a family of the victim so it just adds that extra complicated layer so again I just I just put this out there and I could maybe I could say this will run out of the room but imagine the media and public reaction of young Gomeshi had been convicted of his charges and a sitting senator of Canada spoke to the media outside of the courthouse in support of the Gomeshi family that's what happened in this case similarly what if using on Ontario or the local MPP that's what they call on Ontario marched to the courthouse in the crowd of supporters in the snow outside similarly what would be the reaction if two local churches in Nighton Junction Alberta encouraged the congregation to keep the family of Travis Travis Vader in their prayers the day after he was convicted of murdering Lyle and Marie McCann that's what happened two churches of Rossi Common the Sunday after Mr. Olman is convicted asked the parishioners to keep the family the Olan family in their prayers where are we going with this now and finally what would the public think if a character referenced letter for convicted murderer Dylan Millard so what would the public think that if a character referenced letter was written for sentencing on behalf of convicted murderer Dylan Millard by a recently retired justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal there was a Court of Appeal judge from Rossi who'd only retired 2013 two years after the again I mean this is all fair and love and war right people can write letters for people but again just the optic so I put welcome to the Olan case welcome to New Brunswick the bail hearing issue this is a bit out of reverse last two things the bail hearing and the appeal now the appeal comes before the bail the final bail thing I'm going to mention the bail hearing first in 2016 the defense filed a notice of appeal it also signaled that it would request that be released on bail pending the appeal in some cases convicted murderer spent two or three years in prison before they get their appeal argued in some cases they win the appeal they get a new trial rarely they're acquitted in some cases they get a new trial and they lose right now this had never been done before in New Brunswick there was no record of a convicted murderer ever being released on bail pending an appeal so they were trying to break new ground here of the Court of Appeal and they tried twice and they lost and it's happened in other provinces so in the first bail hearing before justice Richard was not successful under section 679.3 of the criminal code Richard made his decision based on what an informed member of the public would think of the post trial release of the convicted murderer he agreed that the appeal was not frivolous which is language I think from that section of the criminal code it was clearly arguable that there was a good chance that the appeal could be argued but and there was also he also agreed there was no evidence that Mr. Olin was a danger to the public or a flight risk but he ruled that Olin had failed to meet the public confidence required in other words the public would lose confidence in the justice system of a convicted murderer was released on bail prior to his appeal that decision was appealed to the Brunswick Court of Appeal under section 680 in April 2016 the chief justice and two colleagues ruled that justice Richard had not made legal errors and the decision would stand the Olin team then appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada which is the surprise of many observers in late June 2016 agreed to hear the matter why well there's no uniformity and provincial appeal courts on this issue varies from province to province and also a large percentage of second degree murderers who have appealed their convictions have won new trials or have been acquitted in the words of the criminal lawyers association of Ontario which was one of the intervenors at the Supreme Court trial courts commit errors Supreme Court hearing took place on October 31 and they responded as well as four intervenors made submissions in the space of two hours again as I mentioned earlier I was quite impressed by it being in that building they grappled with the issue of public perception on the one hand it was argued a court system that does not allow reasonable access to bail for people seeking an appeal of their conviction could jeopardize public confidence on the other hand there was a danger that a ruling however legally correct that released someone on bail prior to the appeal could be interpreted by the public this is what the defense said quote as just a murderer being released they were troubled by that public perception that the public would lose sight of the larger legal principles here right now this court talk about public confidence in the justice system was interesting to me as an academic who studies public system you probably already know that it's again it's not necessary an accurate thing it's this common sense view the public has about certain institutions the public has very low opinions of the courts very low Supreme Court of Canada however does better right and so for example in 2014 only 40% of Canadians in one pole had confidence in the criminal courts and this was up from only 20% confidence in 2012 on the other hand the Supreme Court of Canada has an overall positive rating much higher for example 60% 2015 so we're waiting that decision so Dennis was convicted and spent I was surprised at this I no one's been able to explain why I speculated in the book that when he's convicted as a second-degree murder of no criminal record he would have been in Rochester medium security apparently he was in renews maximum security and I don't know why but it's still in New Brunswick but it's a more hardcore place and so the Court of Appeal the pros and cons there's the Supreme Court there's the interior of the Supreme Court this is from the actual case of October 31 and and then here's the Court of Appeal building the justice law courts in Frederick where the appeal argued the appeal of the conviction right not of the bail so the pros and cons of live coverage of criminal trials interesting and again I think this was the first live streaming of any sort of criminal type court that I know of in New Brunswick I could stand corrected and but again this was not a criminal trial it was reviewing not the guilt or innocence of Dennis Olin but trial fairness did he get a fair trial and the but in the meantime they made a decision that they would televised or live cast the Court of Appeal proceedings and the reason seems to be one of public access is a very small courtroom and they only had so many seats and there's a law school on Frederick too and my colleague Nicola Byrne was trying to get some of her law students in there and there's very few seats in this room so I think it's partly because of that public access the controversy about the crowded courtroom that they agreed to do live cast of the of the of those proceedings and I'm not sure if that's going to catch on but I kind of applaud I know there's a debate about you know ever since the day of court TV and OJ Simpson and and the taught mom in all those cases that there's this argument that lawyers are going to be performing you know they're not going to be being real lawyers on the other hand you hear that they might be better behaved right because I've heard some lawyers say some pretty well things in court right because there's no one around so anyway but better for worse that was that was live streamed and again that as people probably know Dennis was acquitted not acquitted sorry the conviction was quashed on one of the eight grounds an aspect of post offense conduct post offense conduct and there's an actual picture that's Mr. Gold you can see that you know how the room was not very big and so the the appeal on eight grounds they the the one ground that the the only ground really that the court of appeal spoke to and have an issue to written decision yet was this issue of post offense conduct again there's any lawyers or law students here please forgive my lay persons understanding of this but Dennis Olin when he was interviewed by the police the night the night the body was found told him that he had worn a blue blazer the day of the crime now in the book I explained it's possible that he was mistaken and not lying because the day the day the body was found you see it eight o'clock in the morning that's a blue blazer it's eight o'clock in the morning he's in the Kent's building supplies in Rasse and this is about an hour before his father's body's found six thirty seven o'clock that night he's in the box with the police and they ask him what were you wearing and he says a blue blazer khaki pants whatever the police find out later through video and I witnessed that he's wearing a brown blazer and then later they find the DNA on the blazer so it all sort of becomes part of their circumstances in this case now the appeal court against a very subtle argument the appeal court using case law agree with the defense that the judges final a final jury should have cautioned the jury that if they interpreted Dennis Olin's statement as a lie that is not good enough to be probative evidence right the lie in this case law backs this up apparently the lie has to be corroborated with other evidence that goes to the police investigation in order for it to be used as probative evidence just the fact that it's a lie you know a possible lie is not good enough again it's a very subtle argument I'm still struggling with it myself but a lawyer explained it to me this way on a break from court I could be wearing I could tell the police I was wearing a blue blazer right but the reason I told the police I'm wearing I wore the blue blazer is not because I murdered my father in the brown blazer it could because because I have other reasons to lie about wearing that blazer it could have been given to be by my mistress I could have stolen it from Frenchies whatever right so again it's kind of an abstract thing you know the average member of the public is going to say well he was acquitted no he wasn't acquitted but the trial was needing to be unfair because of you know a sentence that could have been added to the judge's 200 page charge right so again I'll leave it to you you know the future law students and other people to determine whether how val that is but right now it stands right he was acquitted he goes back the clock has not acquitted the conviction was quashed he goes back to where he was in November 2013 he didn't have to be released on bail because he be gained the presumption of innocence so it's interesting they still went ahead with the bail fight in Ottawa though for two reasons one was the broader constitutional not constitutional issue but the broader national issue and then the defense did raise what they called the what if something unpleasant happens in the future meaning if he's convicted again it would be nice to have a bail ruling for people like this and so again this post-conduct evidence has been regarded as a very ambiguous type of evidence for the courts and the case law seems to support this need for independent evidence other than the accused's statement before a possible lie can be seen as a concocted lie so this got a little bit longer than I wanted to but this concludes my review of why the Olin case is significant for legal history in New Brunswick or perhaps in Canada and I try to give you a little bit about the case some of the details on December 5th, 2016 Dennis Olin will appear in the St. John law courts to be charged once again with a second degree murder of his father and so I am with the question where will we all be three years from now thank you and before I take questions I just want to say one thing don't forget the nice young guy from the bookmark hauled all those books up here you wouldn't want to carry all those books back would you so if you have any grandmothers and people like that they love this stuff buy it I'm just going to get for people who are not familiar with St. John this shot was done by my friend Jim Turnbull who has a drone business so we did this in the summer and he took some shots so here is the so here is Canterbury street a little bit of a shade here that's Tandy's restaurant with video evidence from there that is the building where the murder took place that's the back door area and the little alleyways that connect up to Jermaine that's Jermaine that's the Union Club and Gorman Mason law firm I think that is the building that Lisa Sullen ended up buying in the fall of 2013 and that's the murder building so it's just a weird coincidence maybe but it just shows how small St. John is this is where the victim parked his car spot number 12 or whatever and that's where his car was parked the morning of the murder and that's Princess Street and the waterfront is just down here if you know the bar area that's O'Leary's Irish fire in St. John different restaurants around here so this is the area and so what happened in this whole area between 5.45 and 8 o'clock on the night of the murder is hugely significant for either the defense or the crown in terms of the timeline and that type of thing and that timeline is very intriguing and I talk about that in the last chapter and I'll give you that little explanation I'm going to open it up now for any questions or comments people might have yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I don't know I heard the defense a friend of mine just phoned me last night when I was coming down that something appeared in the Chronicle and again I don't know if you're here earlier but that same piece described me as a law prof so I wouldn't but yeah I didn't use her name because I didn't want to put the pressure on her but I know her name and I know the law firm she worked with her daughter walking down Princess and now in the book it's kind of a typo I said that they were at the corner of Princess and Jermaine but they're actually closer to Princess and Canterbury there's a murder building and they claim to have heard two men having a lot of argument about 720 725-ish as they were walking to the restaurant the reason they knew of the timeline is they had a 745 dinner reservation down there's Gran and Alley down here down on Prince William which is the Water Street anyway there's a Prince William there's a nice feast to a restaurant and they had reservations there they were the defense and the police knew about them her name came up in the preliminary inquiry and I would have been totally justified to use it but I just thought I'm not going to I'll just put it in as a something that's left over that the jury didn't hear about and I think now if I want to understand the defense and different people of the defense there seem to be talking a lot to the media I don't know why I don't know if they're trying to seed the ground for the next trial I don't know but this could have been their witness to call so if it's compelling it's kind of a boo-boo in their part I think we'll find out maybe she wasn't incredible because between that and the calls of work that the Prince got I mean that seems to be healing and they didn't hear anything they didn't hear anything any yelling she heard yelling and yelling is like I think she would be a hugely credible witness because she's a middle aged lawyer with a university aged daughter right so I think they would be hugely credible but again I don't know and they didn't give a full statement to the police so I had a chance to check out that the story but a friend of mine did tell me that apparently my book did not have anything about that anecdote that you just mentioned which you read in my book so there's another reason that strike found newspapers aren't always a good source of accurate reporting anyway but yeah that's certainly a thing and who knows what else I mean one thing the crown has the crown has a witness this is an apartment building right here in many of these buildings these buildings were built after the big fire in 1877 many of these buildings share a common wall you know it's just a weird thing they did back in the day right so there's a guy who's lived in this building and I know it looks like there's a gap there but it's more of a common wall and there's a guy who lives in this building and he was interviewed by the police he was in his apartment all night he claims to hear a lot of noises through the day and stuff like that coming from 52 Annabar so it's you know what I mean but you know how many witnesses you need on this side versus how many on the other side but yeah it's one of those intriguing things that the jury never heard and I know half the lawyers in St. John and they were coming up to me and telling me about this and I said I already know right I'm just not using her name so thanks yes I mentioned in the book that there was no testimony there was no testimony from the pathologist he couldn't say it's not like you see in the TV shows you know or Sherlock Holmes this pathologist could not say what type of weapon it was on the other hand he wasn't asked in court and he also couldn't say anything about the handedness of the attacker now one thing my friend mentioned this last night as well told me that this comes up in the in the Chronicle Herald piece and I said well you know I wanted to find out this is going to sound a little weird but I wanted to find out without getting myself into a lather or getting my adrenaline worked up how long would it take to hit an object 40 times so I went out in the backyard a couple of times with my hatchet and I have an old stump and I'm left handed again this is totally non-scientific because I'm just one guy out of billions when I use a hammer or a hatchet I use my right hand so just because you're right with your left hand doesn't mean but again getting back to that that never came up it never came up because there was no forensic evidence entered about anything about the nature of the attack the evidence was more about how much blood may have been there thinking about where they're going with the defense if people are talking about this in media it's very interesting because part of the trial none of this stuff was out there right? there will be now one of these things beyond a reasonable doubt I just can't imagine what he's going to get through I don't know when I find disturbing the whole case last year when he was found guilty I was in a line just down here in Halifax and the people in front of me were saying oh well it was the jury people in St. John they don't like the urn names and the Keynes and the Owens they're rich and here's this guy a spoiled little rich kid and he's got this cute little boss and the jury they don't like the establishment of New Brunswick that found him guilty and I understand you're listening to this and I'm just thinking my gosh you know a good personal bias of a jury but that's just, that haunts me yeah we don't know that's the time too I was part of the I was in the media I'm shocked but I was more reasonable doubt the burden of the crown but you know if you get a chance to read the book you'll see I go back and I revisit I try to infer why the jury may have come to his determination ultimately would never know and what I centered on and again this is totally inference what I centered on was if you have a case where the circumstantial evidence can go either way it had to be something about his testimony and Mr. Olin as a witness that had to be key and that's hard to quantify and again I just infer and again so that could mean another jury with that intermixure of people and personalities could look at the same evidence it's human nature to kind of the Monday morning quarterback thing to try to what did the defense do wrong what did the crown do wrong or right so but the jury can't give its reasons and deliberated for 30 hours and they sat there for 65 days and their experience counsel as a judge said at the appeal experience counsel on both sides right but yeah I do throw in this possibility of reverse class discrimination and I use the Menendez that's a way over the top example right but we don't have research in juries in Canada because we can't do it the only thing you'll see is mock juries right but we'll never know but on the one hand the other hand there are many average people in St. John who sympathize with Dennis Olin and his family who are not wealthy people I meet them all the time and when I came home I went out one night to my theory of the book I developed a theory of where I was going with the book I went out one night to go to the drugstore to get something and I ran into this really nice sweet old lady who came up to me and said they can't convict that nice young man of this crime he's just a nice young man so I went back and told my wife I can't I don't think I could do it anyway because the evidence is so fuzzy but I told my wife I can't come down to be people with such strong feelings and they're in about three different camps right I take your point about the conviction but I also feel that if I was a defense I'd still be very worried as a young reporter said to me within hours of the conviction being quashed it's kind of weird that the Olin family is really happy that he's going to be facing another murder trial that's their happiness and that's totally unpredictable totally unpredictable and I think they're going to have a really tough maybe there'll be some other evidence and who knows what the crown can come up with but I think my gut feeling is they're going to have a tough job because I think that brown jacket with the DNA is now protected basically by the court of appeal I haven't had a chance to talk to lawyers about that because that was one of the grounds of the appeal and the court of appeal said no it doesn't matter to us so if it's not protected there's going to be a strong argument it's going to be needed to try to get that brown jacket excluded as I point out in the book and the media wasn't there to hear it because they weren't covering the preliminary inquiry unless they were able to buy a transcript during the preliminary inquiry or during the war years when the discussing whether the brown jacket would be admitted or thrown out as a violation of section 24 whatever the charter or section 8 whatever it is the crown said there's no jacket there's no case so the case would collapse with that jacket so I feel that's going to be the battleground in the next trial before the go trial I'm not a law student I'm learning but when they do look at the evidence could they look at that differently and realize that it wasn't that the warrant was invalid well the trial judge issued a 75 page decision but yeah and the defendant probably won't waive his right to a preliminary inquiry and they can start all over again but if it's not I have my common sense view again there's that term which we all hate but it has been kind of not challenged at the court of appeal level it has been ignored as a grounds at the appeal that having that jacket in the trial was not creating an unfair trial so I really think that it's going to be really hard to get it excluded the second time but you're right they go back to zero it's over well wait a minute now the jury found the man guilty so you're reading the newspaper headlines and what you find in court there's evidence and the jury it's for the jury to decide what happened the other interesting thing I'm going to get the gentleman here in a sec any lawyers in the room or future lawyers you might be amused to hear this I love this one when the trial started the jury the Justice Walsh explaining to the the jurors nothing a lawyer says in court is a fact I thought jeez it doesn't stop him talking all day sorry that gentleman was it yours did the police do any serious investigation on all alternative suspects there was only one and I talk about it in a book a bit it's weird because one of the things that came out in the revelations was that the victim was a very difficult man and had a lot of quarrels with people despite having that brutal personality they couldn't come up with viable leads the one person that they looked at a little bit and this would fit the movie of the week plotline he had a mistress the husband of the mistress the gentleman was 83 at the time he was 87 we don't want to be agist but he was 87 when he testified in court and he again I would love to get into the evidence that the two sides had that was not presented in court one of the things that came out not in court the jury never heard this is that the mistress dana said Lecek took a lie detector test because I think the crown did not see her as a totally witness sort of thing she was interviewed twice her husband was interviewed once and it does come up in some of the maneuverings towards the very end when the two sides were trying to influence the judge instructions to the jury very frustrated defense said it's an inadequate police investigation that didn't probe Mr. Sedgill check more deeply and the judge said once the investigators discretion I'm going to give them that I'm not going to put that in my charge they admitted that it would be very difficult to get a warrant it would be very little probable cause it would be very difficult to get a warrant to go off to Mr. Sedgill check's phone records and banking records because the whole idea the background theory wasn't that this nice retired gentleman from Czechoslovakia who was gardening in his retirement was killing someone in theory movie of the week but he was ruled out as a credible suspect although as you read in the book and if you follow the media Mr. Gold did grill him a bit when he was in court he didn't understand one when he said did the police ever ask you does your car have a GPS unit right and the 87 year old gentleman said what and I think what he was suggesting there is that they could have got in the movie of the week and the investigators might have got his GPS and found out where he was driving on certain occasions and again I don't know has anyone ever been to Darling's Island New Brunswick how many hit men do you think are hanging out in Darling's Island New Brunswick anyway anyway I guess obviously we'd like to know more is he notwithstanding the age I mean is a man robust and capable of handling an axe yeah but he and his wife were both alibi witnesses they both were for each other that night they were both home right and he claimed not to know of the affair now what's interesting in the in the in the book I point out there's a bit of discrepancy that they're both on the stand the same day and she said that her husband knew about the affair earlier like after still after the murder he claimed he only found out about it months later when he came back from a trip to Europe right and his lawyer they subsequently divorced so again there's a little discrepancy there but you're right no we don't want to be agist I'm sure there's been some extreme some pretty bad crimes carried out by elderly people but again he wasn't spotted uptown alibi we know she was home because there were you know so much of the evidence from this trial is electronic right we know from her text messages and stuff where she was with her phone right and so but he's the only one and except for the I talk about the the defense argument too about the backdoor and the other guy and that type of thing but there might be legal scholars here but you know you can't just say there's another guy you have to come up with another guy right and often the other guy where you have a successful other guy did it defense is that you have a bunch of criminals commit a crime and two of them are testifying for the crown but they're dodgy characters if you can kind of deflect some of the court's suspicion on these dodgy characters they become the other guy you know you but you need another guy you know who's like actually involved at that level right so so but yeah there's so many it's interesting because the one of the daughters when she I mentioned this a couple times when she was asked the question could your father did your father have any enemies and she responded he could have anyone for an enemy well you know that's that's that's very expansive but you know and there's stories I didn't put them in the book people come up and tell you things you don't know they're true you know that you know yelling matches and fistfights and stuff of the gentleman over the years right but but there are no credible witnesses whose names came up you know whether there's anything in the police files that we didn't see you know I don't know pardon me she was several years younger she was several years younger than Richard she was maybe 60 when he was 69 when he was killed and so it's interesting too she's as I put it in the book she's from a blue collar background right and and so and the reason they came back to New Brunswick in part because their son went to the private school which is like King's Edge Hill sort of deal and then he retired there and she was from there right so and they so and it kind of like the soap opera version of reality they socialize with the Owens and she was his interior decorator and they went to the same Catholic church but he helped raise the money to build and they talk about that funeral very intriguing you know there was a pattern in New Brunswick when wealthy people die this sound totally cynical politicians go out of the way to tell how much the common people love them right so these things that are said at funerals right so very interesting a bunch of things happening at that funeral which you can read about yes I think they can start over and maybe some of those little nuggets that the gentleman who the gentleman who didn't hear anything right that was in the preliminary but not in the trial right who knows what they have I mean to me I put some stuff in the book about Dennis's post post crime behavior that I'm sure that the fans was glad the jury never saw all those trips and they bought a boat and the property transactions and things like that for a guy who was broke and it's not illegal but it's just the optics and again according to the defense the defense thinks that it was just a series of unlucky coincidences right that come together to conspire to convince the jury but if I was the defense I wouldn't necessarily want a jury you know to see all this stuff in the movie of the week version it could be compelling but maybe in the Canadian court of law it doesn't matter as much I don't know on the drapes I don't remember that one it was several different spots but he was working there I don't know if he got paper cuts but he was the only identified male in the place in terms of the DNA and he gave a voluntary sample and he was ruled out as a suspect he was just a university aged kid living with his parents by the way Mr. McFadden who's the father of the Galen who refused to give a voluntary sample for DNA for whatever reason maybe because his DNA was all over the whole office he's now parking in the victim's parking spot and running his company right so just it's weird you know so but I don't know about the drapes but he was ruled out to be a suspect because he was with his father that night they had a couple together they lived in Rosset and he was just there doing a summer job there was a hand over here can you clarify that in your research and was it common knowledge? no not outside not outside the bubble that was court that came out for the if you watched Dennis's interrogation online and by that time they had already talked to the mother Dennis's two sisters and his wife and they were just pouring out right and so Dennis and I think that could be kind of the possible tunnel vision of the case but that was not known in the the media and in the communities very protective of the elite right so you wouldn't know this stuff right and so even it's interesting that when it first was revealed that by the point of being in the book I'm just thinking the average man at 69 years old doesn't come home just imagine if your father or grandfather was 69 years old and he doesn't come home one night what would happen in most houses right what would happen in most houses did someone make a phone call apparently it was no big deal right so but what's interesting it's a former mayor of St. John in a protective media statement oh he's a workaholic he would have worked there all night right which is complete BS right so anyway so that's just what a little example of how there's a protective comb right over over things and even it's interesting you're still on camera too I better not say the next one then so I'm just hearing things in the community that a lot of people on Ross say are really on edge about things right and but no I mean it sounds like it was a very stressful situation for the family to have and Dennis to be fair in his interview with the police he says that you know my father you know if he was a younger person he might have been diagnosed with something like a personality disorder or something he had one of those you know one of those charismatic very hard driven guys who would be very fun to be with when you're riding on snowmobiles and he's the guy who wants to go the fastest downhill skiing he's 69 years old and he will be the biggest dare double and he'll do all this stuff he's a really hard guy to deal with I mean one of the things that came out in court is that he made his wife of 40 years he paid some of the bills but basically anything she had to get through the house this guy's worth $35 million now so anything she needed to get through the house she had to pay for out of her own money give him the receipts and then he would enter enter this into his quicken program and then he'd cut her a check maybe that's why he has $35 million but you know imagine living you know it's a pressure very high pressure situation right so it's a dysfunctional family and I think I think that this function was just things we glean through court testimony right we don't know all the ins and outs of it I think one of the things that damages Mr. Olin's testimony going back to the reason why he was convicted is that his first statements to the police he stresses a very negative father son relationship and then when he's in court it's more positive the father is described as an eccentric interesting mentor as opposed to a hard guy to deal with right so the jury probably saw those two different stories and think thought what's going on here right yeah excuse me sorry more over time okay just one quick question then another question then I found a strange little line out the jacket was the most important piece of evidence but like you say he was said to have been like pleasant to that so why not get over there for an act or something like that for them it should be a lot more positive than a very little talk yeah I mean and that's one of those issues I talked about last chapter and the RCMP blood expert did testify that it's not always a case that the blood is going to come back at you with the type of weapon it might grow to the size but certainly you would think there'd be more blood out there right but there's ways of dealing with blood maybe and again that's all speculative but you can maybe look at that last chapter of the book where I try to go back and forth on an issue anyway I want to thank everyone for coming sorry for going a bit beyond our hour and a half and good luck with the election by the way and thanks again