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First Person Exploits into the Unknown Special Report: The Stanley trial

Today’s “exploit into the unknown” is about the Gerald Stanley second-degree murder trial. And the word “unknown” is right.
John Cairns
A tired reporter.

Today’s “exploit into the unknown” is about the Gerald Stanley second-degree murder trial.   

And the word “unknown” is right. After what I saw play out in that courtroom in Battleford over the course of two weeks, the question really does become “where do we go from here?”

It seems like the entire nation is struggling to understand why a jury of 12 decided Stanley was not guilty in connection to the shooting death of Colten Boushie on his property on Aug. 9, 2016.

On a personal level, I have really struggled to come to terms with the not guilty verdict.

My first reaction, to be honest, was just plain shock that Stanley was found not guilty. Then, my immediate emotions turned to a feeling that justice somehow wasn’t accomplished. Why wasn’t this manslaughter, at the very least? I had thought this was clearly the direction this case was going.

After I calmed down, I started to think hard about the decisions the jury had to make about this case in the jury room, before coming to their final decision.

That has led me to my final mood, which is trying to figure out “what the hell happened?”

Here is what I have concluded: the reality is that the Crown really didn’t have much to work with, right from the start, apart from the obvious fact that someone was shot and killed. They had unreliable witnesses, conflicting testimony, as well as an accused who was willing to take the stand and claim he never intended to kill anyone.

On top of that, you had Boushie’s entire family turned against the Crown, calling for an independent investigation and an out-of-province prosecutor. Quite honestly, though, I don’t see how an out-of-province prosecutor could have fared any better.       

Let us go back to the start of this trial and re-live this as it all unfolded:

First, the jury selection at Alex Dillabough Centre. This was the first sign of trouble. Not a single visibly Indigenous person made it onto the jury, because the defence team had used their “peremptory challenges” to keep them off. It was a real bone of contention for Boushie supporters. 

Then came the Crown witnesses:

Cpl. Terry Heroux, RCMP. He was the investigator at the scene gathering the evidence. All things considered, a credible witness. But defence lawyer Scott Spencer hammered him on the issue of how the grey Ford Escape wound up in an SGI yard before the defence was able to gather evidence from it about the blood spatter.

Sgt. Jennifer Barnes: The “blood expert.” Again, a credible witness, all things considered, but Spencer went after her heavily for not being at the scene to investigate and for basically coming to her conclusions by looking at photos.

Cst. Andrew Park: Credible, but problematic: he had also been at the Fouhy farm that night to investigate what happened there. Hmm.

Sheldon Stanley: Remember, folks, Gerald’s son Sheldon was a Crown witness.

Sheldon looked credible on the stand in describing hearing the three shots and in hearing Gerald say to him that the gun “just went off.”  But his testimony was problematic for the Crown, because it (a) possibly opened the door to self-defence, (b) possibly opened the door to the provocation defense, and (c) opened the door wide open to the notion that this shooting had been an accident.

Now we get to the witnesses from the grey Ford Escape that had entered the Stanley property. The Crown needed their testimony to identify Gerald Stanley as the shooter, but after listening to them, you have to wonder why the Crown called them up at all.

Eric Meechance: Spencer destroyed him. He didn’t just destroy him credibility-wise; he also destroyed him emotionally. He could not go on after Spencer showed him pictures from the crime scene.

Cassidy Cross and Belinda Jackson. It was more of the same. Spencer brought up the drinking, the checking of cars, all of that. You really got the feeling it was these young people – Boushie’s friends – who were on trial at this point. They had to explain themselves for all sorts of contradictions and all sorts of illegal activities from that Aug. 9 day.

There is a saying in soccer: “own goal.” That is where someone from your own team puts the ball into your own net. That’s what the testimony from these individuals amounted to: one “own goal” after another into the Crown’s own net. So much so, in fact, that I wondered if the Crown would do a plea deal right then and there, just to end the agony. It did not happen. And so, the trial continued.

Greg Williams: The Crown’s firearms expert. All things considered, the best witness the Crown had during the entire trial.

As a result, his testimony was far more of a challenge for Spencer to get around. It was during Williams’ testimony that Spencer really pushed the whole notion that Stanley’s Tokarev gun had gone off because of a hang fire. He grilled Williams at length on this topic.

Then came the most audacious moment of the whole trial, when Spencer attempted to enter a Reddit message board into evidence, with comments from people about hang fires they had experienced.

This was the kind of stunt you would expect someone like Donald Trump to pull. It didn’t make it into evidence, obviously. 

Then Bill Burge stood up and said that was the case for the Crown.

At this point, I turned around and disgustedly thought: “that’s it?”

I have followed so many major cases over the years, and I can tell you, this test has never failed me yet. Whenever this is my reaction after I’ve seen a prosecution team wrap up its case, that’s usually a sure sign the prosecution is doomed. “Is that really the best the prosecution can do?!”     

The defence started calling witnesses:

Sandy Ervin: the defence’s own firearms expert. He provided lots of technical information, but his testimony went on and on, and he was the final witness on a Friday afternoon when everyone wanted to go home, and it was pretty dull stuff.

Kim Worthington: The guy from the bible camp. Testified about how he and the students at the paintball range saw the grey Ford Escape barreling down the road at 80-90 KM an hour on a flat tire.

Wayne Popowich: It seemed like Spencer had lifted this witness literally right off the street. Popowich told the court he was reading a news story about the expert’s opinion on hang fires. So he called up Spencer to say he disagreed with the expert, and Spencer put him on the stand. Popowich got his 15 minutes of Stanley trial fame on Monday recounting his own hang fire incident shooting at gophers years earlier.

Nathan Voinorosky: This witness read out of a safety manual about firearms and then he also talked about his own hang fire incident. Along with Popowich, this was more “reasonable doubt” to counter the experts’ claims that hang fires were a rarity. 

Murray Fouhy and Glennis Fouhy: they testified back-to-back about the damage inflicted by the folks in the grey Escape SUV at their place. Mrs. Fouhy looked like she was scared out of her wits by what happened.

The final witness: Gerald Stanley. “The main event.”

Compared to some others who’d been on the stand, “Gerry” Stanley came across like an ordinary guy. This was critical for the defence team. Stanley had no choice but to go on the stand and explain what happened, so the jury could get to know him and so the Crown wouldn’t be able to get away with painting him as a hardened criminal.

Besides, if he didn’t take the stand, everyone would have been asking why he didn’t take the stand. Stanley took the stand.

We all know what Stanley’s testimony was. He described the mayhem of that Aug. 9 day. He described firing warning shots into the air to scare off two of the guys from the SUV. He described the terror he felt when he thought the SUV had run over his wife. He reached into the vehicle to try and shut it off, and claimed the gun just went off. It wasn’t intentional on his part, so he claimed.

This testimony was a huge problem for the Crown because they needed to show this shooting was an intentional act. Yet here was Stanley insisting the complete opposite.

The Crown’s case for murder was off the rails. That was obvious now.

The only viable case the Crown had left by this point was to prove manslaughter, and you could tell in the closing statements that was the main issue counsel focused on. To be frank with you, on manslaughter I thought the Crown still had a good case. Bill Burge did his best in cross-examination to paint Stanley as a liar and as an irresponsible gun owner.

The problem was that so many of the Crown’s own witnesses had looked even more unbelievable than Stanley did by this point.

Still, Burge’s cross-examination seemed effective in catching Stanley in contradictions. He pointed out that Stanley didn’t even know how his own gun worked. Stanley didn’t know that taking out the magazine from the Tokarev didn’t disarm the gun.

By the time his closing argument was done Thursday, I thought Burge had pulled his case out of the fire and had rescued a manslaughter conviction on the grounds that Stanley carelessly used a firearm that went off and killed Colten Boushie.

They hadn’t.

When the stunning verdict came down on that frigid, depressing Friday night in Battleford, the courtroom erupted into chaos. The Boushie family members could not be consoled. There were screams, there was crying, there were shouts of “you’re a murderer!”

In the many years I have been attending courtroom proceedings, I have never witnessed a scene like that.

What then played out in the dark of night outside the courthouse afterwards seemed more akin to a political campaign. There were cries about injustice to Indigenous people, and calls for a federal inquiry and for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to do something.

The FSIN later held their news conference in North Battleford to denounce the verdict and call for action. Nationwide rallies, including one in North Battleford, were held the following day.

Now here we are, at the “unknown.”

The question now is where we go from here. The bottom line is that there is a lot that went on in this trial that will give a lot of people a lot to think about, from the way the jury selection was handled, to how the trial testimony played out, right on down the line.

As I’ve said, I’ve struggled with the final outcome. Even if you accept that this was an unintentional freak accident, the fact of the matter is that a life was lost. Colten Boushie was shot and killed.

Spencer made the point in his closing that what happened was a tragedy, but it wasn’t criminal. Well, if it’s not “criminal,” then what is it?

The answer I’ve come up with: it’s “civil.”

Surely, this is where this is going next, with a wrongful death lawsuit filing by Boushie’s family against Stanley. The burden of proof in civil actions isn’t the criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Instead, it’s by “preponderance of the evidence.”

I’m afraid that claiming the shooting was a “freak accident” may open up a new can of worms for the Stanleys. If Stanley is found liable in a civil action, it’s going to mean even more financial hardship after the crush of legal fees they have had to endure.

Of course, the Crown will be looking hard at the charge to the jury made by Chief Justice Martel Popescul to see if there are any grounds for an appeal, or any recourse at all that they can pursue now.

Chief Bobby Cameron is right when he says Gerald Stanley “hasn’t gotten away with this yet.” This is far from over.

So the Stanley trial, which dominated my life over two full weeks of coverage, is concluded, but the story isn’t. 

I’m taking a few days off this week to regroup after the rollercoaster of evidence and emotions from this case. There will be lots of time to cover what happens next in the wake of the verdict in Battleford.