The commissioner heading a public inquiry into the death of an aboriginal man dumped in an alley by a Vancouver police officer has ordered the B.C. government to provide information on why two police officers weren't charged with any crime.
Commissioner William Davies said the Criminal Justice Branch is still under a cloud almost a decade after Frank Paul was found dead and that his job requires him to hear testimony from five prosecutors and the procedures they followed in not recommending charges.
There were five separate charge assessments that occurred between May 1999 and April 2004.
The Criminal Justice Branch has said it could provide someone knowledgeable about the case to testify at the inquiry into Paul's death, but not the prosecutors themselves because they can't disclose privileged government information.
In a written ruling against the Crown's position, Davies said that's not good enough.
"If there is suspicion is some quarters that the branch's response to Mr. Paul's death was inadequate, my willingness to rely on second-hand evidence respecting that response, when first-hand evidence is available, would not extinguish that suspicion _ it would likely inflame it,'' he said.
"The Crown's proposed alternative asks me, and the public, to `trust us.' In my view, my mandate will not be properly fulfilled by the procedure proposed by the Criminal Justice Branch.''
Paul was found frozen to death in an alley in the early hours of Dec. 6, 1998, a few hours after he was left there by a police officer who'd been ordered to get him out of the city drunk tank.
Const. David Instant cried on the stand as he testified at the inquiry in January, saying he picked Paul up in a police wagon for being drunk in a public place and took him to the drunk tank but that the sergeant refused to admit him.
Sgt. Russell Sanderson told Instant that Paul, a chronic and homeless alcoholic, wasn't drunk and only looked that way because of a disability. Sanderson said Paul couldn't be intoxicated after leaving the drunk tank a few hours earlier.
In a video recording shown at the inquiry, Paul is seen being dragged by Instant and a corrections officer into an elevator on the way up to the fifth floor lockup because he couldn't walk.
Paul's family in New Brunswick and Maine have testified that police told them Paul was hit by a cab and left in a ditch to die, where he was found a month later.
It wasn't until three years later that Paul's relatives learned he'd been in police custody just hours before he died in the alley.
Vancouver police conducted an internal investigation of the case, after which Instant was suspected for a day and Sanderson for two days.
Stan Lowe, spokesman for the Criminal Justice Branch, said he couldn't comment until Davies' ruling has been reviewed.
"Once we've completed that we'll decide our next course of action,'' Lowe said.
David Dennis, vice-president of the United Native Nations Society, which has intervenor status at the inquiry, said the government has already violated an agreement to be open about all the information it has on the case.
Dennis said his group, along with the First Nations Leadership Council, met with Attorney General Wally Oppal last August and he emerged thinking information would be freely provided.
"We sat across from Mr. Wally Oppal and we said that everybody, every single person that reviewed this case, from the time that (Paul) died to the time of the inquiry, would be subject to a subpoena. We were very clear about that point,'' he said.
"We've said this for years now _ that there's a collusion between Crown prosecutors in this province and police.''
If the Criminal Justice Branch does not allow prosecutors to testify, Dennis said his group may boycott the inquiry they long fought for.
"If we can't have our fair kick at the can with these guys, at the end of this what kind of picture are we going to send back to our young people who find themselves in the position of Frank Paul?'' he said
"It just seems so weird that they'd come all this way and just drop the bomb on us.''
