Craig Babstock (Times & Transcript) – With more than 20 years experience as a Crown prosecutor, Luc Labonté knows how some people will react when they hear an RCMP officer had his assault charged stayed earlier this week. He knows that some will have the perception this individual no longer faces a charge because he’s a police officer.
“Unfortunately, we’ll never be able to change those people’s minds,” says Labonté.
But New Brunswick’s director of Public Prosecutions Services wants to assure the public that people who are charged with a crime are all treated the same, no matter if they are a Mountie, a plumber or a newspaper reporter.
“Our system is based on evidence, not on someone’s profession,” says the prosecutor.
The case in question involved an accusation a Mountie committed a summary assault against his spouse in December and was supposed to go to trial in Moncton provincial court on Tuesday. Instead, the Crown asked for a stay of proceedings, saying the request came from the head office in Fredericton, which the judge granted. Head office gave no reason for the request, beyond saying the file was reviewed and it was determined that it was not appropriate to proceed with a charge at this time.
Knowing the public is quick to scrutinize cases involving a police officer, Labonté agreed to talk about the procedure that’s in place in cases where a police officer is charged, in an attempt to reassure the public there is no bias, either for or against an officer.
In this particular case, an RCMP officer investigated the RCMP officer who was accused and eventually laid the charge against him in court. That investigator told the Times & Transcript earlier this week that his work was reviewed by officers from a non-RCMP police force in the province.
Labonté says while it’s preferable not to have officers from the same police force investigate one another, this particular investigation was independently reviewed by two Crown prosecutors. New Brunswick is what’s known as a “pre-screening province,” meaning that the Crown reviews charges and approves them before they are laid in court. The director says no prosecutor deals with files involving police officers from their own area.
“If I’m a Moncton prosecutor and they bring me a file about a Codiac RCMP member, I would immediately not look at that file and send it to head office,” says Labonté. “If a Moncton prosecutor said no to a charge for a Moncton police officer, it would look bad.”
The head office finds a prosecutor in the province who has not had dealings with that police officer. Because Mounties are frequently transferred, they also check where that person has been located in the past so there’s no conflict with the Crown assigned to the file.
During his career in Moncton, Labonté took on files involving police officers in other parts of the province of whom he had no knowledge, which allowed him to treat each case like any other file.
“We want to make sure they don’t get any special treatment or treated more harshly than any other person,” he says. “We ensure the threshold required to prosecute someone is met.”
A common misperception about Crown prosecutors is that they are out to register convictions, but that’s not the case. As a sign in the lobby of the Crown’s office in the Moncton Law Courts says, the goal is to present the facts and let the judge or jury decide guilt.
“We are to be an unbiased presenter of the facts, we’re not there to seek convictions,” he says.
Labonté says cases are constantly reviewed leading up to a trial and there are many reasons why a stay may be sought. For example a witness may disappear, a person can change their story, new evidence can be discovered, or a new person reviewing the file may have a different opinion whether or not it should proceed.
While Labonté can’t discuss the specifics of the Moncton case from this week, he says he reviewed the file and recommended the case not go to trial. That recommendation went to his deputy minister, who agreed. In cases where the Crown requests a stay of proceedings, it has a year to decide if it wants to lay the charge again.
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