ONTARIO LOOKS AT WHY BIG COURT CASES FAIL

Expert Will Review Complex Prosecutions But Probe Won't Cover
Police Corruption Trial

Two prominent legal experts will lead a review of how Ontario
prosecutes complex criminal cases - but the attorney general says the
recent collapse of a massive corruption trial involving Toronto police
drug squad officers won't be part of their investigation.

"I'm looking forward, not backwards," Chris Bentley said yesterday in
announcing that Patrick LeSage, former chief justice of the Superior
Court of Justice, and Michael Code, a University of Toronto law
professor, will lead a "focused" six-month investigation.

Critics have alleged the corruption case and the failure of other
high-profile prosecutions, including the tainted blood trial, point to
mismanagement and poor judgment within the criminal law division of
the attorney general's ministry, which handles all big prosecutions in
Ontario.

While lauding the appointment of two men with extensive experience in
Crown operations to review systemic problems, critics accused Bentley
of shirking his duty to give the public an explanation of what went
wrong in the corruption case.

"Mr. Bentley has ducked and weaved and bobbed and raised barrier after
barrier" to avoid accountability about the failure of the prosecution,
said NDP justice critic Peter Kormos.

Bentley said the review wasn't triggered by any particular case.

"I think it would be fair to say there have been concerns by many that
large, complex criminal cases for some time have posed problems," he
said.

LeSage and Code "will be free to take a look at cases that are no
longer in the system," said Bentley. That would rule out the police
case, which is under appeal.

"Now, the attorney general has shifted the question to: 'Why are we so
inept in prosecuting large cases?'" said Edward Sapiano, one of
several defence lawyers whose clients allege they were beaten and
robbed by Central Field Command drug officers. "That's a fine question
and a question deserving of an answer, but it's not the question
that's current.

"The attorney general is simply shifting the issue away from something
that is probably embarrassing and into an area that is more manageable."

Charges against six drug squad officers were thrown out of court last
month by Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer, who ruled a 10-year
delay in bringing the case to trial violated their constitutional
right to a trial within a reasonable time.

Five years ago, the senior investigator in the case wrote to the
director of the ministry's justice prosecutions unit, complaining
about a lack of strategy for bringing the case to trial and for
ensuring vast amounts of evidence were disclosed to the defence.

In the aftermath of Nordheimer's ruling, several defence lawyers and
former prosecutors expressed the view that the collapse of the case
was a symptom of larger problems within the ministry.

The tainted blood case, for example, ended in humiliation for the
Crown last fall when the judge ruled the prosecution's own evidence
exonerated four accused doctors and a drug company.

LeSage, who served as chief justice from 1996-2002, is probably best
known to the public as the judge who presided at Paul Bernardo's
murder trial. He was a trial judge for nearly 30 years and, before
that, served as director of Crown attorneys for the province.

Although he's spent much of his career as a defence lawyer, Code
served as an assistant deputy minister, in charge of the attorney
general's criminal law division, from 1991-96. He's also served as
counsel to the Special Investigations Unit, set up to investigate
allegations of wrongdoing by police officers.

More recently, Code was a defence lawyer representing Ajaib Singh
Bagri, one of the men acquitted in the Air India case, one of the
longest and most complex trials in Canadian history.

It's not the first time LeSage and Code have teamed up to unravel a
high-profile problem. In 2005, LeSage was appointed to head the public
inquiry into James Driskell's wrongful murder conviction in Manitoba
in 1991. Code was commission counsel at the inquiry, where Crown
counsel came under scrutiny for failing to disclose key evidence to
the defence.

Offering some preliminary thoughts yesterday, LeSage said he and Code
plan to include as part of their review a look at how complex cases
are handled in other jurisdictions, certainly within Canada. Case
management and disclosure practices are "all ripe" for consideration,
Code said.

Greg Goulin, president of the Ontario bar association, commended
Bentley for tackling wider systemic problems associated with so-called
mega cases. "The challenges currently facing the justice system in
Ontario require more than reallocations and Band-Aid solutions," he
said in a statement.

But NDP leader Howard Hampton maintains the government is "desperately
trying to find a way to hide or somehow present the perception that
they're dealing with the failure to successfully prosecute the biggest
case of police corruption ever in the province of Ontario."

The LeSage-Code report should be finished by the end of August, said
an official with Bentley's office.

With files from Rob Ferguson