A TRIAL ON TRIAL

THE prosecution aimed at stamping out the Manitoba Warriors gang is
turning out to be slow, cumbersome and inefficient. The Crown
attorneys and the judge should consider carefully what public interest
is served by continuing the operation.

Provisions written into the Criminal Code in 1997 because of a biker
gang war in Quebec provide exceptionally heavy penalties for crimes
that are committed as part of gang activity. Thirty-five people who
were rounded up by Winnipeg police in November 1998 were charged with
trafficking cocaine and with working as a gang. Some pleaded guilty.
Fifteen remain on trial in the extra-large, extra-secure courthouse
that was fitted out for the purpose.

The public interest in the suppression of cocaine trafficking is
easily determined: where the Crown has evidence that cocaine was
bought and sold or that someone conspired with others to buy or sell
cocaine, then the public should accept the costs to seek conviction
and punishment of the offender.

Where someone is accused of belonging to an organization, it is less
obvious what public interest is served by proving their membership.
The Manitoba Warriors gang should be stamped out if it is a cause of
crime but if it is merely an association criminals belong to, it is
their private affair and no great concern of the public. The cost that
should be accepted to convict someone of belonging to the Warriors
should be related to the public benefit that is achieved by doing so.

The cost is growing a little heavier each day. There is a financial
cost in holding the accused in jail and applying legal talent and
court time to the prosecution and the defence. There is a cost to
civil liberty in holding people in detention for months on end when
they have not been convicted of a crime. These costs can be accepted
if a greater good, such as the suppression of crime, is likely to be
achieved, but the greater good at the end of the Warriors trial is
slipping out of focus while the cost rises.

Judge Ruth Krindle faces the difficult task of conducting the trial
using novel provisions of the Criminal Code and facing a thicket of
challenges from the defence lawyers. The public must count on her and
the prosecutors to recognize when the procedure has continued so long
and the prospects of punishing real crimes have grown so dim that the
matter is no longer worth pursuing.