 Hi everyone we'll just give it a couple of minutes as participants join to let everyone get here before we get started. Got a number of people on here now we'll get started. So hi everyone thank you so much for coming to our last talk of 2020 for our criminal justice coalition speaker series. I'm Maggie McCann. I'm a 3L student at Dalhousie. I'll be joining the talk tonight in a conversation with our speaker Patrick McCann. I just want to let everyone know beforehand that it's going to be recorded throughout but none of your your faces are visible or anything like that. So please ask questions throughout as well. You can see the questions if you hit the question box just at the bottom and so if you see someone has asked a question that you would like to know more about you can vote on it to make sure that it gets asked right at the top there. So tonight we have Patrick McCann here speaking with us and you may have gathered already from the last name that he does happen to be my dad but he is a criminal lawyer who's been practicing at the forefront of criminal law for over 40 years. In 1989 he was among the first group of lawyers in Ontario to be certified by the Law Society of Ontario as a specialist in criminal law. He has been and currently is listed in the best lawyers in the category of criminal defense. He's represented clients in all trial and appellate courts in Ontario and the Supreme Court of Canada and has also appeared before military tribunals. He has been lead counsel in numerous major criminal trials and has handled over 60 homicide cases. Other cases involve drug trafficking armed robberies and commercial fraud. Patrick has been appointed to the list of top secret cleared special advocates appearing in closed national security proceedings. He is a founding member and past president of the defense council association of Ottawa and has lectured extensively at the Ontario bar admission course on criminal procedure and related criminal topics. He has also been a guest lecturer at the University of Ottawa at Carlton University and at the Canadian police college. It's quite a bio and our talk today is about the anatomy of a criminal case. So we're going to be talking through a particular case which my dad will outline but it involves a battered spouse defense. So I will be in and out but I will let that take over. Okay thank you Maggie. Hello everybody this is a little strange sort of talking to some people that I can't see however let's go. As Maggie said I'm going to talk to you about a case that involves a battered spouse syndrome. I picked this case because it's I think one of the most significant cases, murder cases I've had. The case involved a woman by the name of Lillian Getkate and she at the time this happened back in 1995. She at the time was a 35 year old housewife and brownie leader which was married to a fellow by the name of Maury Getkate who was a PhD psychologist employed by the ICMP. They had two children. Dara was nine and Kevin was five. I should mention that Lillian was basically half the size of Maury. She was about five foot and if that and about 100 pounds whereas Maury was about six foot two or three and I believe he was 215 pounds. They lived on a small two-story house off Prince of Wales Drive in Ottawa and in the early morning hours of December 10th 1995 sometime between four and five a.m. Lillian went down to the basement of their house picked up a 223 mini Ruger sniper rifle with a flash eliminator and this is significant I'll mention that later loaded it went back up to the second story of their house to the bedroom where Maury was sleeping and shot him twice in the back. She was charged with first degree murder and I acted for her from about 10 days after the shooting until the end of the process. By the time I became involved she was already already being released on bail but I'm going to tell you basically almost a narrative here of what happened in my involvement but before I get to that I should tell you what happened during this first 10 days. So after the shooting Lillian called 9-1-1 the police arrived they found her and described her as being distraught. She claimed not to know what happened. She was taken to the Central Police Station and when she was there she was interviewed by detectives. The interview went on for about two hours and eventually Lillian admitted that she had in fact shot Maury and she described what I've just said that going to the basement loading the gun going to the bedroom although she didn't recall pulling the trigger and that statement that she gave would become the basis that the ground relied on primarily to support a charge of first degree murder by planning a deliberation. Now the problem here that became a problem obviously for the crown was at that point after the conclusion of that interview the police finally let her call a lawyer. She didn't know any lawyers other than one who was the husband of a friend of her brownies. He practiced almost exclusively in family law and had little or no criminal experience and he continued to represent her for the next 10 days and he was able to get her out on bail but before that he agreed to let Lillian be interviewed by a crown appointed psychiatrist. The interview took place in the jail it lasted for three hours. The psychiatrist who interviewed her was Dr. John Bradford who is probably the most prominent if not one of the most prominent forensic psychiatrists in the Canada. I've done a number of cases with him and he probably would have been the psychiatrist I would have gone to if he hadn't already been retained by the crown. The problem though was that Lillian at the time was in no shape to be given the complete account of the history of the relationship with Maury. She did tell Dr. Bradford to some extent that they had a difficult relationship and she also gave a few examples which I'll get to later. The problem was that this basically gave the crown psychiatric evidence that they would use to try to undermine the eventual defense. The lawyer that was representing her as I said had little or no criminal experience and by letting her be interviewed by the crown psychiatrist that was something that no competent criminal lawyer would do. It gives the crown far too much of an advantage early on. Most criminal lawyers and virtually any criminal lawyer I know would say no you can't be you know do not talk to any psychiatrist unless they are retained by us. So as I said Lillian was released on bail and the main condition was that she lived with her mother June Fuller. Now June Fuller was living at the time in Maple Bridge British Columbia. She came to Ottawa and rented an apartment that she and Lillian lived in for several months. June I think quickly realized that Lillian needed representation by a criminal lawyer. So she contacted me and I arranged to meet with the two of them with her and Lillian. When I first met Lillian I think the first thought I had was yeah how could this little woman who was five foot necessary about 100 pounds be a cold-blooded killer. She just didn't look like it. She looked like she'd been through to hell. She looked like 10 years older than her actual age. She appeared timid, afraid of her shadow almost. She had this brave complexion that was really mousey looking. Didn't look like she'd been taking care of herself in any way be civil for some time not just because she just got out of jail recently or anything like that. But well we first met when we first met them June told me that she had suspected for some time that Maury was abusing Lillian although Lillian had denied it. Since the shooting Lillian had disclosed to June some very disturbing a very disturbing pattern basically of abuse. And so for the next month myself and my two partners and our investigator spent much of the time well not the investigator so much not at this point but myself and my partner spent time interviewing Lillian and going through great detail the history of their relationship. Lillian spoke mainly to one of my partners who was a female woman and she seemed to be much more comfortable talking to her certainly particularly when it came to talking about or describing sexual abuse. So basically in the course of these interviews Lillian described what I think can only be described as a horribly abusive relationship with with Maury and I'm going to get into that now and I'm told that I should perhaps warn people that I'm going to be talking about sexual abuse very significant sexual abuse and which is unavoidable because it's an intricate part of what happened here. Lillian described during our interviews that she and Maury had been together for 16 years. The relationship began normally but at least she was his first girlfriend or he excuse me put that the other way around. Maury was her first boyfriend as she had not had a relationship with anybody else prior to that. They lived together for about three or four years and eventually got married and it was after they got married she said that he became increasingly controlling. Maury began exhibiting angry outbursts when Lillian was pregnant with Dara and these increased afterwards. Maury was studying at the time for his psychology PhD and was she was sorry distracted there because an email stopped popping up on my screen. She claimed he claimed that she was disrupting his studies having the child having a child in the in the house and the abuse escalated and Maury started constantly insulting her as being lazy a dumb bitch and much worse. Maury began demanding that Lillian submit to his sexual demands whenever he felt like it. He engaged in various forms of forced sexual activity. She described one occasion where they were on top of a top level of a four to five story arcade or parking garage. Maury took her to the railing pushed her half over the railing and then raped her from behind and then told her how easy it would be to throw her over. Another occasion he held her at the top of the stairs in their home threatened to throw her down. Other times he would drag her upstairs by the hair. So I was just going to ask do you remember did did she start to tell us to her mom or to you and your partner? Sorry I shouldn't quote I should clarify I did that because my mom was his legal partner that's she she is the the lawyer that he's referring to. Okay she didn't want me to mention that but anyway. But is that was he was she telling this to her mom or? Yeah she told well no this what I just described now is the is what she told what she told Tracy during the course of the interviews. She had already spoken to June about the abuse and much more detail than she had before and that's what partly why June I think realized she got to get herself a real criminal lawyer here and contacted me. Anyway we yeah so I don't know if I mentioned this but among the other things that Maury would do would he would drag her upstairs by the hair, drag her into the bathroom and force sex on her. The other thing that we did or another thing that we did very early in the process was that Lillian had talked about Maury's obsession with paramilitary things including gun collection and various other weapons and ninja outfits. She said he had literature and the subjects such as stealth and concealment and assassination techniques, explosives and so forth. She said he would go out at night and his ninja outfits and and he claimed he was training and a couple of occasions he he would be cleaning his guns and would point a gun at her and pull the trigger and then tell her that it would be so easy to kill her. In any event we before I get now before I get to working with her visit to the scene I'm going to tell you what she told us about the night of the shooting because I think it's probably appropriate we tell you that now and on the night of shooting Maury had dragged her upstairs he had violently raped her with a vibrator afterwards she laid awake for several hours and then went downstairs to Darra's bedroom. She lay down with Darra and within an hour or so Maury appeared in the bedroom dragged her out of bed and raped her again in front of the open doorway to Darra's bedroom and after he finished he made the comment to her that maybe soon she wouldn't need he wouldn't need Lillian because Darra was growing up. This was pretty frightening I mean to Lillian. She was sure that Maury was soon going to be started using Darra. She went back into bed with Darra and some time later got up got the gun as I said went downstairs and went upstairs where Maury was sleeping and shot him. She only had spotty recollection of those actions so like I said during the interviews Lillian told us a lot about the literature and the weapons that Maury had collected. So after the police cured the house I went there with our private investigator a fellow by the name of Russ Taylor. I wanted to view the scene anyway is that something that I always try to do as early as possible. There are many of these types of cases and while we were there Russ continued to search through the basement and found a multitude of things that had not been seized by the police. This included there was books and manuals and I'll give you a list here of things that included martial arts, militia tactics, ninja fighting, hand-to-hand combat, hypnotism, phone tapping, assassination, art of invisibility, camouflage, stealth and concealment, computer hacking. He also recovered handcuffs, locks and machete and the vibrator. This what was beginning to take shape here I think as you can see is that Maury obviously had a double life during the day he went to work as a psychologist at the RCMP and beyond that he had this obsession with this paramilitary stuff and ninja outfits and weaponry. That in itself tended to terrorize Lillian. I know you mentioned that she was aware of it but was he kind of engaging in that practice at home or was he mostly going out to do that stuff? My understanding he would be go out in his ninja outfits and run around doing stuff but as you'll get to when we get to the trial the police had actually found a and this was something actually Lillian had told us that he was experimenting with the explosives but the police had found an improvised explosive device in the basement that was highly ready to go off basically, let's forget the term and it could have been actually could have been could have exploded anytime although as it turned out eventually Lillian wasn't aware of the existence of that but it just sort of showed the type of person this guy was this obsession he had with all of this paramilitary stuff. Now the other thing we had to do was very quickly retain a psychiatrist now that we couldn't retain John Bradford. We contacted Graham Glancy who was a psychologist practicing out of Toronto who specialized in assessing bad women's syndrome. He testified in several other bad women syndrome trials and Lillian met with him over the course of two or three days and he did an extensive work up on her and within five months he was able to complete a detailed assessment of Lillian as showing all of the characteristics of the bad women syndrome. This assessment would form the basis for the defenses we would present the trial. Part of the assessment as part of the assessment Dr. Glancy had diagnosed Lillian is suffering from what he described as complex post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD which he said is a severe form of the disorder and dysthymia which is a chronic form of depression. Next what we did was we interviewed three of Lillian's brownie volunteer friends. She had mentioned that she had been out for coffee and socialized to some limited extent with these people and we decided we needed to interview them as they were possibly the only independent witnesses who could testify to Lillian's state of mind leading up to the shooting. With the interviews ultimately we were able to flip the effect of their evidence that when they were called a trial by the crown they had all described various observations that fit Dr. Glancy's description of the bad advice syndrome such as Lillian having to call Maury every 10 minutes when they were Tim Horton's having coffee only being allowed to be out for an hour at a time and whenever she was in Maury's presence she would appear submissive and he was totally dominating if her as well they described how he was abusive of the kids slapping them and inflicting physical punishment to them. Also during this first six months we managed to team up very quickly Lillian with another psychiatrist by the name of Wendy Cole who was a treating psychiatrist at the Royal Auto Hospital. The point of this was for Lillian to actually get some psychiatric help for herself but Dr. Cole ultimately became an important witness as we explain when we get to the trial. So just concluding this part of the process the first six months when we basically laid the groundwork for the defense the trial would not take place for another year and two and a half years but it's something that is so crucial in defending these kind of cases is to get as much information and do as much investigation and preparation as you can at the early stages so you know where you're going and you can start planning the defense. Sometimes in other cases it's not possible to do that at an early stage and you have to wait until you get the crown disclosure to be able to do any meaningful investigation. Just thought I'd mention that is sort of a round up the practice to do if you're ever going to do trials like these. Between that point and when we got sort of trial preparation like they say almost two and a half years later there were a couple of things that occurred that played into the narrative. First of all June was anxious to get back home to British Columbia so we managed to get the bail conditions changed so that Lillian could go to BC with June and continue to live with her. The other thing that happened of course was the preliminary hearing. The preliminary inquiries back then were pretty well automatic although they still are I think for homicides. During the preliminary inquiry we were able to build up the evidence to create a charter challenge for the admissibility of the interview that Cranbers were lying on for first degree murder. Ultimately in the pre-trial motion the trial judge would rule that that statement was inadmissible as a violation of the information component section 10B of the charter. Before going on any further I should mention going back to when Lillian went and went back to the Vancouver area to make a rich with her mother. By the time like I say two and a half years later we came back for trial. She had gained weight and that was in a good way. She started looking her age. She looked healthy and she smiled a lot and she was basically a bright and all healthy looking woman and it would be difficult and then a bit of a dilemma for us as to how then when we got to trial preparation to if you like bring a rack down the ground and go back to reliving the events of December 1995 and the lead up to that. I'll get to that in more detail when we get to the trial but that was significant. What had happened was she was there. She joined some self-help groups, became involved in a support group for battered women and had gained an enormous amount of self-confidence in the process. The other thing that happened right after the preliminary inquiry was that the crown then offered Lillian to plead guilty to manslaughter if we would agree to a joint submission of 15 years and there was no way I was going to recommend that to Lillian and Lillian was not interested in it anyway. So the next step in the narrative is where we get to the trial preparation getting ready for trial and in a case like this we started it I think about six weeks before the trial date. The preparation involved basically three things. First, preparing the motions to exclude evidence which was the only one we did was the motion to exclude the statement which I've already mentioned. The other two things are prepared cross-examinations of crown witnesses and prepare defense witnesses to testify. Now the crown witnesses were basically the police that responded to the scene, the forensic identification team that searched the house afterwards, Dr. Bradford and Brownie friends. The police evidence was very important. From our perspective in introducing all of the material that they found in the house when they did their search, this is before our investigator got in and found the other things that I was telling you about. I'll get into what that was when we get into the trial, but it was significant that it was important that we be prepared to properly produce all of those items. We already of course had the interviews with the Brownie witnesses and all we had to do really was ready those to cross-examine the Brownie witnesses when they were presented by the crown. The preparation on the other hand, preparation of our own witnesses was another story. The preparation of Dr. Glancy took some time but only to ensure that I had the right questions to ask to bring out the evidence in a way that the jury could understand. Dr. Glancy testified many times before and was quite comfortable in relating his evidence without a lot of prompting, but we still needed to make sure we went and covered all the bases if I can put it that way. The main job was preparing William to testify and getting her to revisit the hours that she spent the last two years trying to bury. Most of that work, as I said, was done by my partner who had done the initial interviewing and let's say she did a great job. Ultimately, Lillian was an excellent witness. She managed to get her to recall and detail all of the abuse that she'd suffered and was able to do it in a reasonably strong voice that and as well was able to handle cross-examination by the crown better than we would ever ever have expected. I found that part of this case really interesting so I just wanted to stop for a second there. Do you find that that is a really big challenge in a lot of cases or is it in particular I guess with spousal abuse related crimes but is that forward and backward where they're in the time that they're waiting for their trial where they're trying to move forward with their lives and then trying to deal with jury perceptions and stuff. I just wanted you to talk a little more on that. Yeah, it happens. This was I think the most obvious one that I encountered in my practice where Lillian was like two different people and when we first met her she was like I say there's this timid little mouse and when she came back to get ready for the trial she was full of bringing with self-confidence looking so much better and so you know well confident and the dilemma of course was how to get the jury to understand that what she was like back at the time and so say that was the the job that Tracy did and and pulled her back into it. It was difficult but she understood that this is what she had to do and was able to be quite dramatic about describing it all. And do you find I don't know if you did this in this case specifically but do you use like photos of her at the time and stuff like that? Like are there or is it really just about trying to work with the witness and they're the way that they deliver themselves on the stand? Okay, well the the other thing is that the main help we got in explaining this was through the evidence of Dr. Wendy Cole, the treating psychiatrist. When Lillian came back for the begin the trial perhaps you saw Wendy Cole a couple of times as well again and so Dr. Cole was able to able to explain to the jury that the incredible difference between the before and after situation with Lillian. So the trial was in the fall of 1998 and lasted for three weeks and interestingly after the crown opening I was permitted to give an opening address. Now that's normally not done in fact the criminal code says that the defense may open prior to calling the defense. Around that time and subsequently many judges have been permitting defense counsel to give an opening address if they wish after the crown in order to particularly if there's a complex defense or and if the the defense undertakes it they will be they will be calling evidence. And it was I think pretty crucial because we've docked into the jury right off the bat what we were going to be doing and what they should be paying attention to and tied in the the evidence that they were going to hear from the police witnesses about what they had seized at the house and what and what we would present through our investigator and what Lillian would testify to and what Dr. Clancy would say. There was normally there's some debate about whether it's a good idea to do a crown defense opening a crown or a defense opening early in the proceedings like that is he could be tipping off the crown to things the defense that he they're not aware of but in this case that we really really no secrets the crown was well aware of what the defense was going to be working with. So after the opening addresses the crown began by calling the police witnesses first of all the witnesses that recounted the scene when they arrived and then the difference of identification witnesses who searched the house and I'm going to again give you another list of the things they found because again I think this is this was key to this case this material that we found that they found the and this was their beginning the beginning of our establishing this sort of bizarre double life that Maury was leaving was living they found various firearms I'm going to the details of those and ammunition and of course I mentioned the explosive device but they also found books and manuals about booby traps stiking infiltration lockpicking fake identification principles of quick kill surveillance surreptitious entry disguise how to commit crimes would be no evidence they also found machetes various partial arts weapons and explosives as I mentioned earlier they also introduced the the mini-ruger that Lillian had used the night of the shooting with a flash eliminator and I was able to get the police officer introduced them to confirm that the only there is no non-military use for a flash eliminator a flash eliminator is used by military snipers to hide their location when they're doing their jobs again it was another example of Maury's obsession with paramilitary matters I should mention that I'll get to that when I get to Lillian's evidence I think but he had Lillian convinced that he could basically disappear at any time he wanted and he could kill her and leave no traces and he would be gone and she believed that it was just another aspect of the abuse and terror that she lived through and after the police witnesses were called Dr Bradford testified he best testified basically in line with his report but in cross examination he acknowledged that Lillian had described being dragged upstairs by the air which wasn't in his report the the brownies friends and then were called by the crown and as I've already mentioned they were more helpful to the defense than they were to the crown the crown hoped to get from them established with them that Lillian had the opportunity to complain about the abuse to these women but didn't and but as I said they were also very helpful in giving their observations of Lillian at the time which fit perfectly with Dr Glancy's evidence of the characteristics of the battered spouse that the conclusion of the crown's case I then brought a successful motion for a direct verdict on first degree of course the the main evidence the crown had been relying on was the the statement which had been excluded so they were left with some notes that they found that were found in the house written by Lillian which referred to the death benefits that Maury would have through the insurance that he had at the RCMP trial judge agreed that that there was no evidence as to when that was done and what circumstances was it was done and couldn't reasonably support the finding of planning and deliberation at the time of the murder okay so we then began the defense evidence the first witness I called was Russ Taylor the investigator and he introduced the items he had seized from the home when he and I went there shortly after the shooting and of course this first further added to the picture for the jury of Maury's secret life that of course coupled with everything that the police had seized as well we then called Lillian to the stand and she testified to all of the abuse that she described in her earlier interviews and I won't repeat it all and as I said before that she was an excellent witness and was certainly held her own on cross-examination the next witness we called was Dr Glancy he began by describing the characteristics of better women syndrome and why some women and men cannot disclose the abuse as it escalates the reasons include self-blame he said fear of retaliation fear of losing custody of their children he explained that psychological and sexual abuse is more debilitating than physical abuse as it's aimed at destroying the self-worth of the woman the defense would eventually advance three defenses self-defense which would result in a full acquittal lack of intent to kill which would result in a conviction for manslaughter and provocation that would result in a conviction for manslaughter and dr glancy's evidence was key to all three of them self-defense as you may know required that Lillian reasonably believed that death or serious harm was imminent and that she couldn't otherwise defend herself although Lillian told dr glancy that she feared mori would eventually kill her that didn't help the imminent's requirement but she also had the fear of ongoing sexual abuse which I felt and dr glancy agreed would consist of fear of imminent fear of serious harm dr glancy's evidence as to why Lillian believed she could not leave supported the absence of the alternative requirements those are the the items I mentioned earlier in describing the the syndrome dr glancy's diagnosis of dysthenia and complex PTSD he said would certainly interfere with Lillian's ability to form the necessary intent so that addressed the second line of defense the lack of intent to kill it also supported the provocation requirement that Lillian was deprived of self-control by nori's actions and that she acted before there was time to cool off that's very very summary form of what the defense of provocation is the final defense witness we had was dr colin as I mentioned earlier she was important in being able to speak to the drastic change between Lillian and their first reading and Lillian the trial she also was able to give her own opinion as a psychiatrist supporting dr glancy's diagnosis um I don't know if I'm running out of time here I was going to throw in something about the reply evidence us very quickly because it's kind of interesting yeah yeah the the crown then in reply called um three or four of morris colleagues from work to say what a great guy he was at work and what a good psychologist he was and how everybody respected him etc and the the simple thing in cross examination was then to show them all of the array of of weaponry and outfits and literature that have been found in the house and asking them that this was this consistent with their view of mori at work and they all shook their heads and disbelief and says no that's totally inconsistent with mori and that just just cemented in my view the uh the idea of mori living to sort of basically a double life one of the you know upstanding members society is a psychologist the other is a terror terror basically a I'd say a domestic terrorist if you use domestic in the sense of a marriage or relationship so that that was the end of the evidence the next step with the jury addresses and I won't go into that in details the main focus of my jury address was basically asking the question of the jury like how could this timid torment of a person with no history of violence or aggression shoot her sleeping husband unless you know basically she could not see any other way out of the nightmare that she was in and the judge then charged the jury and they retired to consider their verdict now they were out four days and I got to tell you I was having more than my usual anxiety waiting for the verdict I primarily because of who Lillian was I mean what if they found her guilty of murder and the thought of forgetting an automatic life sentence was very frightening uh and and on top of that I've had a long-standing distrust of juries although they're not supposed to jurors do occasionally speak to us after the trial and tell us things that impressed them and didn't impress them and some of the things that I've heard from jurors have a very disturbing and and lead you to believe that they never really understood the issues or the illegal issues anyway and then or the the effect of the evidence so all of that added to my anxiety of course but eventually after four four days the jury came back much to my relief found Lillian not guilty of murder but did find her guilty of manslaughter now as I say I was relieved for that because I wasn't really hanging my head on a not guilty verdict based on self-defense as that is a bit of a stretch in these circumstances when uh it happened over a period of time but um once we had the verdict the manslaughter verdict and we weren't tied into as some joints crazy joint submission for 15 years I was pretty confident that with all of the the psychiatric evidence and all the character evidence that June forward managed to put together for us uh and knowing that the judge appeared to be sympathetic to the Lillian situation I was pretty sure that we could keep her out of jail and ultimately that's what happened and we kept her out of jail she was sentenced to two years less a day to be served in the community which is a conditional sentence under section 742.1 and that is the end of the story I could say a little bit about if there is time a little bit about the um the the reaction in the media after that the reaction of the crown's office uh have you got time for that yeah okay the um crown attorney uh handled the case was a a woman by the name of Julian Parfatt who happens to be somebody I've done a number of trials with and I like her very much that uh and generally she's a pretty decent crown but just give me a second I'm just going to pull something up I don't want this to get me there but yeah it does um but she went a little bananas after the verdict after the after the sentencing um and I'm referring to if any any of you want to get into the real uh the weeds on this case um Elizabeth Sheehy is Sheehy who is a uh law professor at Ottawa U has written a book on the um battered women's syndrome and devotes a chapter to the get cake case and she talks about at the end of it about uh the response to or reaction to the sentencing and she she wrote Parfatt contested the sentence she took the unusual step uh of speaking to the news media calling the sentence an appalling message to send to the public and claiming that there was no corroborating evidence that Lillian was abused which was obviously not true um maybe they had lots of corroborating evidence on it yeah and then that led to uh okay I think I may be stuck here yeah yeah I am my computer's corroborating anyway then there were a series of uh of editorials and comments and stuff in the news media uh basically talking about licensed kill and uh the you know that all you have to do is say you're abused and uh you're going to get off of you get away with murder um ultimately and and also crashing the trial judge you know I'm totally unfairly for imposing the sentence even though it was backed up by they ignored the amputee supported by other cases uh I'm not writing a letter to the editor on it which I was going to try to quote from but I can't get it back up quickly on my computer and in which I sort of basically went to the judge's defense because judges can't go to the press and write to the press and defend themselves and occasionally once in a while I think you have to do that anyway that's all I wanted to say about that so I don't know if anybody's got questions but that's it for my presentation yeah we've got a couple of questions so thank you Mr. McCann for for your talk um all right we've got three questions right now so um just trying to think of which one makes the most sense to ask first um okay so actually most relevant to to the end of the talk um were there no ethical implications of the crowns comments to the press um I think there are I think there are um the uh the irony it is that the the actual the the crown attorney for Ottawa um backed up Julian Parfait and said similar things uh you know crowns have done that before I think it's totally unethical to take shots that basically I've had them take shots of the judges in the press uh and nothing happens to you know they all think they're you know to some extent they feel they're above them the answer to why are god you know that type of thing right um the 12 questions so um it seems like you did have a lot of evidence before crown disclosure was this mostly conducted on your part and the doctor instead of the police well yeah I mean the police did very little in the way of investigation other than you know they established that that that that uh Lilian had shot Maury and uh and that was sort of basically where they stopped they did seize all these this stuff from the house which was very helpful to us but yeah um we got on it right away I mean this was you know dealing with this kind of any kind of a psychiatric case like this um you got to get on it you got to get the psychiatrist involved you got to make sure you get start looking for evidence that will support the the psychiatric diagnosis that you're hoping that you will get uh and but the same is true with other cases too I mean the earlier you can get into investigating it the better do you have um when you so you mentioned earlier that you like to go to the crime scene yourself whenever possible and I was kind of curious actually I forgot to ask at the time um are our crime scenes closed off to to um defense counsel or anything like that like is that uh is that dependent on the case or how does that tend to work well it sometimes complicated because the police first of all will cordon off the area where there's a crime if it's outside or will close it you know close the house where the shooting takes place until until they've completed their investigation and you can't get in what let's happening you might be able to if you you know with a in certain circumstance it might be possible but normally you know you wouldn't get in wildly uh until the police have completed their their investigation um sorry there was another part to your question what was it the it was just uh I guess um the at like at what point so you said already that you like you wouldn't be able to get in before the police are done their investigation but is it case dependent on whether you're able to get in afterward like is it yeah I mean you know it's it sometimes you know it happens on somebody's private property and you've got to get permission from the owner of the property to go in and see it um there was uh yeah depending on the situation they may not be anxious for that to happen but you know I don't kind of think if I've ever had ever been refused I don't think so but I've had to you know I've had to ask for permission and make all kinds of undertakings and stuff before we go in sometimes but most yeah most murders I've been told would actually take place outdoors so that's not a problem yeah um okay so um do you think it would be easier to run a case like this today given the changes in the law of self-defense you know I don't know that it would be any different um I think I think what is key in the law quite frankly is the uh is the lavalier decision where Justice Wilson um basically takes issue with the concept of imminence that she notes that that's not really in the code it never was in the code and that um it has it um is really sort of a judge made requirement in the in the jurisprudence and she said basically says it should be you know taken on a case-by-case basis and in situations like this imminent doesn't mean immediate it could be sort of something that you know is coming or you feel is coming and it's not and you can't get away from it yeah I mean in this in this case too there was only so much like what is she gonna wait for you know like for for him to be coming at her with a weapon when he is has been training as a combat artist I guess I don't know how else to call it yeah and the size difference too and I you noted that but but I think in terms of the imagery of um you know the reality of suggesting that someone should be in the moment in a threat to to have a valid self-defense seems a little bit crazy when you consider that type of circumstance yeah um you know I I'm not sure whether the you know the amendments to the self-defense and the criminal code would have any bearing on it I don't think it would I think you know the same principles still apply I mean really what happened when they amended the criminal code was they just simplified the the criminal the the defense basically adopting what the jurisprudence or how the jurisprudence had interpreted the previous provisions okay so we've got one more question um do you think that if the self-defense would have failed that provocation may have been successful with the jury well it had to be the provocation or or lack of intent I'm not sure which one it would have been I would have think more likely lack of intent but then the other thing the other thing of course is it could have simply been a compromise verdict where you got some of the jurors wanted wanted wanted to convict her murder some of the jurors wanted to acquit her and they just sought it off of manslaughter that that sort of thing happens on jury trials I think and that's another reason why I don't like jury trials not not always consistent with the law yes is that a form of jury nullification uh no not really not really because there were defenses there I mean there was you know the evidence supported the verdict I don't think it was right they're just they're just averaging their opinions yeah yeah no I think so I you know I know it happens it's happened in a lot of jury trials I mean and we're I got stories I could tell you we would take way too long but but the old courthouse in Ottawa actually had a if you went to the press room was right beside one of the jury rooms and if you went there and listen to the brother arguing you could actually hear what they were saying who was never never told anybody oh well there was a few of us knew about it but that's certainly not the case anymore that was many years ago and that that's in the press room they can hear it was in the press room the press room was right beside the or adjacent to the to the to the jury the the jury deliberation room and I guess the walls were a bit thin it was an old courthouse and uh soundproofing wasn't great it just it seems like that would be particularly exciting for the for the press well the guy that the reporter from the citizen at the time was the one that told me about it here that they didn't and of course never never disclosed it and nobody ever disclosed it it was just a secret amongst people that knew about it right not much you could do about it but I mean it was you know it was kind of interesting the year that they were yeah some of the things we're talking about you couldn't hear everything but you could certainly hear some of the stuff they were talking about and we had one case where the jury went out to um and uh yeah I won't get into that sorry I could be telling tales on people that I okay well that's perfect timing anyways because we're we're pretty well just at seven um so yeah thank you so much dad for for joining us for this talk and for sharing your your stories this is super interesting and um I would like to encourage everyone to uh follow our social media we're on uh facebook is the um uh the da housey criminal law students association is our facebook page for uh twitter and instagram it's the criminal justice coalition and uh you can find out about uh our speaker series for 2021 on there and you can uh learn about our faculty and our students our alumni and uh other cool events that are happening so definitely check out our social media and uh this talk if you weren't able to catch all of it or if you know someone else who is interested this talk will be uh up on our shulik school of law youtube page uh usually we get them up within two to three days so it should be there pretty soon um yeah and that's it so thanks okay bye bye