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Lorne Gunter: Legal system's failures no excuse for Chief Driechel's attempt to change prosecution's actions

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I get why police across Canada (including here in Edmonton), are frustrated with a justice system that puts violent criminals back on the streets almost as soon as police arrest them, then gives out minimal sentences once a perpetrator is convicted.

Since the Liberals made radical changes to the bail and parole systems in 2019, violent crime in Canada has risen by more than 40 per cent. Police have to live with the consequences. They jobs have become more difficult and dangerous. Every time they go out on patrol they could face the same threatening criminals they locked up yesterday, last week or last month.

They see the toll in stolen property, destroyed lives, and battered and dead bodies.

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But that frustration is no excuse for Police Chief Warren Driechel and EPS legal and regulatory services director Megan Hankewich to attempt to influence or even intimidate a judge and Crown prosecutors in the middle of a trial.

Participants in the justice system do not feel they should be criticized, let alone the subject of attempts to alter their professional actions.

Recently Canadian Bar Association (CBA) president, Bianca Kratt, asserted that uncomplimentary media commentary on the state of Canadian justice risks “undermining public confidence in the judiciary” and warned the media “on the dangers of delegitimizing judges.” Criticizing judges and criminal court rulings, Kratt added, put at risk the “rule of law” and “judicial independence.”

What rubbish. Nothing undermines public confidence in the judiciary faster than judicial rulings and sentences that fly in the face of common sense. Shutting up Canadians and reporters when it comes to the workings of the justice system doesn’t put the rule of law or judicial independence at risk, but it can weaken a cornerstone of democracy — freedom of expression.

Too many people involved in the justice system — judges, lawyers, prosecutors, academics and prison administrators — have come to see the system as a self-contained biosphere the workings of which mustn’t be questioned by outsiders.

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The justice system is supposed to serve the public, but its practitioners increasingly resent the very people they are meant to serve.

But none of this justifies Chief Driechel writing to the head of the Crown prosecution service last fall to complain about a plea deal prosecutors had worked out with defence lawyers in a particularly heinous murder case, especially as Driechel’s intent seemed to be to change prosecutors’ actions.

Driechel and police lawyer Hankewich threatened to release evidence to the public to let them decide on the appropriateness of the reduced charges contained in the plea bargain.

The threat came in the case of eight-year-old Nina Napope, who had apparently been abused by her guardian Ashley Rattlesnake and who died from blunt force trauma to the head while Rattlesnake drank and consumed meth. Napope’s bloodied body was stuffed in a hockey bag and found days later in the box of a pickup at the Samson Cree Nation.

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I understand the upset police and Napope’s family felt at the Crown agreeing to downgrade the charges against Rattlesnake to manslaughter.

But there are lines drawn between police, prosecutors and judges for important reasons, largely to protect the integrity and impartiality of the system and protect the rights of the innocent.

The system has put too much emphasis on the rights of the accused (and worse, of the convicted), but that does not make threatening the Crown or pressuring a judge acceptable. Police have their own, vital role in the system. And I believe they often have a better sense of what would improve criminal justice than lawyers and academics.

The Criminal Trial Lawyers Association (CTLA), who I typically trust far less than police, are right to ask for an independent review of Driechel’s actions.

The CTLA is wrong to believe the chief should be charged with “extortion, obstruction of justice and intimidation of a justice system participant.”

A reprimand should suffice. But he was wrong.

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