MANDEL: Judge in Umar Zameer trial won't comment on controversial collusion accusation
· Toronto Sun
No wonder Umar Zameer’s lawyer came out guns blazing to demand a public inquiry.
Two years after a jury of his peers acquitted Zameer of murdering Det.-Const. Jeffrey Northrup, his innocence has been challenged once again by Toronto Police and the Ontario Premier.
Visit iwanktv.club for more information.
“The Chief of Police has had the audacity to call into question the verdict at Mr. Zameer’s trial,” lawyer Nader Hassan told reporters Thursday. “My client and his family were dragged back into an unimaginably traumatizing experience.”
It came with Chief Myron Demkiw’s “eureka” unveiling of an OPP report earlier this week that he said “exonerated” the three undercover officers who testified Zameer intentionally hit Northrup head-on as he stood in front of his BMW in the City Hall underground parking garage.
Commissioned by the Chief , the new OPP accident reconstructionist report came to a very different conclusion than the one agreed upon by both the defence and even the prosecution experts at Zameer’s trial: that in reversing to get away from an unmarked van blocking his space on July 2, 2021, with his eight-months pregnant wife beside him and his crying toddler in the back, Zameer’s front driver’s side bumper had “glancing contact” with Northrup, knocking the undercover officer down and into the path of the accelerating BMW as it moved forward
Zameer testified Northrup and his partner, both in plainsclothes, didn’t identify themselves as police and he feared his family was under attack.
Despite the testimony by Det.-Consts. Lisa Forbes, Scharnil Pais and Antonio Correa, neither expert who testified at the trial found any evidence Northrup was standing in front of the vehicle . That led to Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy to conclude the three had colluded and lied on the stand.
TPS President demanded judge apoligize
Following the release of the OPP report that cleared his members, Toronto Police Association president Clayton Campbell demanded an apology from the judge – not only for questioning the honesty of the officers, but for having the nerve after his acquittal to apologize to Zameer, who, he said, “killed” Northrup, while his widow sat nearby.
The union’s unprecedented demand for the judge’s apology was echoed by Doug Ford , which Hasan called a “chilling moment in the Canadian justice system” by the same premier who had criticized Zameer’s release on bail five years earlier .
“The only apology that is due is from the Premier and the Chief for attempting to undermine the administration of justice,” the lawyer said.
The Premier’s intemperate wading into judicial waters has been roundly condemned by others in the legal community. The Federation of Ontario Law Associations called it an “unconcealed attempt to subvert the justice system.”
‘Inappropriate’ for judge to apologize
And the Chief Justice of the Superior Court released a statement late Thursday confirming – to the surprise of no one – that Molloy would not be issuing an apology or statement, calling it “inappropriate and unethical for judges to succumb to outside pressure” to defend or modify their decisions.
“Our justice system is founded on the public’s confidence that decisions, whether popular or not, are fully heard and fairly made based on the evidence properly placed before the court. In this matter, the jury, having considered the evidence and submissions presented at trial, acquitted Mr. Zameer,” Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz wrote.
“If a party is of the view that a judge or a jury’s decision is wrong, there is legal recourse: the decision may be appealed. In Mr. Zameer’s matter the verdict was not appealed.”
Hasan dismissed the OPP report, saying the “new” evidence – including fingerprints on the car – was examined “in painstaking detail” at trial.
As for the officers’ testimony about Northrup being run down, the lawyer said that would have been captured on the security video and there would have been signs of impact.
“Anyone with an ounce of common sense would agree, if a car smacks head-on into a 6’4″, 300-pound person, there would be physical evidence to the car. There would be damage. There would be physical evidence of the impact. Both experts at the trial agreed there was no such evidence. Yet, the OPP report ignores all of this in favour of the one theory that we know the jury actually rejected.”
Zameer’s lawyer calls for full report to be released
Zameer’s lawyer called for the release of the full OPP reconstruction report, all communication between the OPP and TPS about it and a public inquiry over the “secretive” report.
With the mounting controversy, Chief Demkiw insisted he was dedicated to “complete transparency” and the purpose of the OPP investigation wasn’t to retry Zameer but to see if his three officers should be charged with perjury.
The full OPP reconstruction report, though, has still not been released nor were representatives available for questioning at the press conference.
So exactly where is the transparency?