After about a quarter-century in the journalism business, chronicling the daily grind of criminal matters was one of a few items on my personal list I hadn’t yet crossed off.
So, about six weeks ago, I took a court reporter gig for the Village Media network. Quite a change after 25 years of covering sports, which I still do on occasion.
Five weeks in, I’ve covered a murder trial that resulted in a not-guilty verdict, three sexual assault proceedings, and a handful of other cases, including the bail hearing for an alleged serial rapist in Midland.
All in a day’s work.
And yet, while I’m still getting my feet wet, it’s about what I expected.
My day almost invariably starts like the one before: delayed. Lawyers and court staff often must work through paperwork and last-minute issues before the video, in-person appearances and trials can get rolling each day. About 95 per cent of what goes on in the courts is nothing like what you see on television. Most matters are arcane — boring, even.
But through the blizzard of charges in plea/first appearance court every day, you can be jolted to attention when a shackled prisoner is brought before the court. These cases rarely warrant writing about — prisoners are usually there for the same reason everyone else is, to set a future court date — but are a reminder that even mundane matters are serious business at 75 Mulcaster St.
To wit: Literally moments before closing on Friday, Courtroom No. 7 handled the overflow from bail court downstairs. Two prisoners, both 30-somethings, were hoping to get sprung before the weekend.
It didn’t go well for the first, a respectable-looking man accused of doing some not-so-respectable things — drugs and weapons charges in Chatham. Police collared him near Barrie, a clear violation of his release conditions. Bail court couldn’t fully process his “bail package” and he was held over the weekend despite two sureties willing to vouch for him.
He’ll be back on Tuesday, when I suspect he won’t look nearly as spry as he did on Friday.
The other man now lives in Alberta but is alleged to have committed an assault 13 years ago when he resided here. He was allowed to go pending a $1,000 deposit, told to stay away from the alleged victim and to turn up by video for a future court date. On Christmas Eve, no less.
I found myself chuckling whether that made the kindly judge more Scrooge than Santa Claus.
I’m not sure I’d be paid to be in court to describe matters above, as oddly interesting as some are. It’s the serious trials and pleas that warrant covering.
This week saw two preliminary hearings for two murder trials — one for Orillia resident Brian Lancaster, who is charged with killing Kyle Farrows almost exactly a year ago and not long after serving a long prison sentence for the sexual assault of a young girl. The other was for Mohamad Lilo, who is alleged to be the ringleader of a gang that killed his ex-girlfriend after abducting her from a Wasaga Beach home. The body of Richmond Hill resident Elnaz Hajtamiri has never been found, but police believe she is dead.
So far, I’m generally impressed with the quiet professionalism of court staff, the skill of lawyers and the stately presence of the judges.
If I had one wish so far, it’s for the bloody pace to speed up a tiny bit. Some whip-smart lawyers should be running their submissions past a grumpy news editor before standing up before a jury. I’ve twice sat in court as two lawyers each engaged in ponderous arguments in front of tuned-out juries. It reminded me of trying to talk to my teenage children who were not in the mood to hear another word out of their dad’s mouth. On another occasion, a judge was so unimpressed with what she was hearing from one lawyer, I could feel a metaphorical chill creeping into the courtroom.
Last week, Crown attorney Dennis Chronopoulos was describing a jury’s role while making his final submissions in a second-degree murder trial. Chronopoulos made an excellent and blessedly succinct point, that juries’ jobs are to make sense of the madness. He had earlier told the same jury they were the masters of the facts.
Although Chronopoulos lost that case, no truer words have been spoken.
