Nothing ‘nefarious’ in Crown’s case against officer who was acquitted: prof

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This article was published 26/09/2018 (2185 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The lack of evidence brought to court against a Winnipeg police officer, who has been acquitted of assaulting a 12-year-old boy, is raising questions about the legal worth of a cellphone video that purported to capture the assault.

Christian Paul Guyot, 44, a 17-year member of the Winnipeg Police Service, was cleared Wednesday, when provincial court Judge Ryan Rolston decided he couldn’t be sure Guyot was the same male, uniformed officer seen in the minute-long video allegedly striking a boy.

Apart from the video, the Crown prosecutor didn’t introduce any other evidence to prove the officer’s identity.

Rolston didn’t hear any testimony that said Guyot was a police officer nor that he was called to the boy’s home that day. There were no police records filed. A female officer who was present during the incident didn’t testify. Neither did the now-13-year-old boy, who can be heard on the video saying the officer “smacked” him across the head. He was subpoenaed to testify, but didn’t show up.

Crown attorney Kaley Tschetter told the judge the boy had a prior out warrant for his arrest and was afraid he’d be arrested if he came to testify.

The only witness to testify during Guyot’s one-day trial was the boy’s older sister. The 21-year-old woman said she started recording video when two police officers, a male and a female, arrived at her Inkster Boulevard home on Aug. 7, 2017. The boy’s sister testified her mother called police because she couldn’t get the boy to calm down.

The video doesn’t show the alleged assault, but Rolston ruled “the only logical conclusion” is the uniformed male officer struck the boy.

The boy’s sister looked briefly around the courtroom Wednesday and said she was “not sure” whether the officer who appeared in the video was in the courtroom. Guyot was seated behind his defence lawyers, Lisa Labossiere and Hymie Weinstein.

University of Manitoba law Prof. David Ireland, a former Crown attorney who worked for the prosecution service for two years, said the handling of the case doesn’t point to anything “nefarious” on the part of the Crown. The video, if it had clearly shown the suspect officer, would have been enough to prove his identity beyond a reasonable doubt, Ireland said. He spoke generally, because he is not privy to what evidence was available to the Crown in this case.

“I don’t know what evidence the Crown had available… Maybe the Crown simply didn’t think they needed it. Maybe they watched the video and went, ‘Yep, that’s the guy’… and they rolled the dice on the judge making the same call,” Ireland said.

“I can imagine myself putting in that case, watching the video and going, ‘Obviously, that’s the guy.’ And if the judge says, ‘No, I can’t be sure,’ then you’re kind of hooped, because you put your case in on the hopes that that was enough evidence. They also may not have had any other evidence.”

Because the officer was on duty at the time, there should have been WPS records to show who responded to the call at the boy’s home, Ireland said, and if the Crown had that evidence, they could have used it along with the video to make their case for what was alleged as a simple assault.

“For a case like that, you’re not going to pull out every stop the state has,” he said. “Of course, there’s a limit to how much money and time the courts and the prosecution service are going to allow you to spend on those cases. Of course, that’s true. But that said, the Crown has to weigh their case.

“They have to decide when they think they have enough evidence to get a conviction. This Crown obviously felt there was a reasonable likelihood of conviction going in.”

Guyot was charged last fall after the Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba looked into the allegations involving the boy.

The now-13-year-old is facing several charges of breaching court conditions and was expected to appear in court on those charges Thursday. He didn’t, and he now has three outstanding warrants for his arrest.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay