Bombing suspect’s blood sample will stand in court

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This article was published 22/09/2017 (2720 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An accused bomber’s attempt to throw out DNA evidence against him has been dismissed by a judge.

Provincial court Judge Tracey Lord ruled on Friday that she would not allow a motion from Guido Amsel’s defence team to quash a blood sample taken from the accused.

Amsel, 51, is charged with five counts of attempted murder and several explosives-related offences, after three bombs were mailed to his ex-wife and two Winnipeg law offices in the summer of 2015. One bomb detonated, resulting in an explosion that seriously injured Maria Mitousis, who had been the divorce lawyer for Amsel’s ex-wife.

Amsel’s defence lawyers had argued the sample was illegally seized because the police had been “misleading” about the evidence when they applied for a warrant to bolster the attempted murder case.

Lord found that wasn’t the case.

She allowed Amsel’s defence team earlier this week to cross-examine the Winnipeg Police Service officer who prepared the warrant request. The judge decided the officer couldn’t have known about a report from the RCMP lab that concluded there weren’t any explosive substances found on swabs taken from Amsel’s hands and face.

The search warrant included information from a previous, “presumptive” analysis that did find traces of explosive substances on the swabs taken from Amsel, but did not mention those results still needed to be confirmed and that there was a likelihood of a false-positive result. The updated report from the RCMP lab was entered into the WPS database on Aug. 28, 2015 — two days after the warrant request was submitted in court. The report had been submitted to the WPS the day before the search-warrant request went out, but the officer who applied for the warrant didn’t know about it because it hadn’t been scanned into the database yet. 

Defence lawyers Saheel Zaman and Jeremy Kostiuk argued references to explosive substances found should be removed from the warrant request and that without such information, the warrant could not stand, amounting to an illegal seizure of DNA from Amsel.

If Lord had agreed with that argument, it could have quashed the DNA evidence in the case. Instead, the judge said she believed the police were acting on the best information they had when they prepared the search-warrant request. 

“I do not accept that he (the officer tasked with applying for the warrant) acted in bad faith by deliberately failing to make inquiries about the outstanding report in order to create a situation of plausible deniability,” Lord said on Friday. 

The warrant application’s reference to hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD) being found on the swabs was “factually correct and not misleading based on the information known to the officer at the time,” she said.

Zaman emphasized that the dismissal of the pre-trial motion means the evidence will be tested during the trial, “which we anticipate to fight vigorously on behalf of our client.”

Witnesses are scheduled to begin testifying during Amsel’s trial next month. 

Amsel has maintained he is not guilty of the charges against him. He has been in custody since his arrest on July 4, 2015 — the day after an explosion at a River Avenue law office injured Mitousis. She lost her right hand in the blast.

Two other explosive packages mailed through Canada Post that July were safely detonated by police. They had been sent to Amsel’s ex-wife and his former lawyer. Amsel is also charged in relation to a 2013 explosion at his ex-wife’s home.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca