RCMP Watch

Elisabeth Johns, Cornwall Standard Freeholder

The lawyers at an RCMP inspector’s code of conduct hearing bantered testily back and forth Monday as they tried to determine what evidence should be heard.

The defence lawyers for Insp. Jean-Yves Lemoine, who is facing allegations he manipulated a junior officer’s wife into an affair, were continually hopping to their feet as they objected to nearly every bit of evidence the prosecution team tried to introduce.

The tribunal hearings, which were originally scheduled to only be held over five days, are now stretching into 15 days.

This is partially due to the fact one of the main witnesses, the junior officer - whose name is protected under a publication ban - was on the stand for close to six days.

The junior officer’s wife’s name is also protected under a publication ban. Lemoine was the former inspector for the Cornwall region.

Because of this lengthy process, Supt.Jean-Michel Blais, one of the adjudicators overseeing the hearings, cautioned the prosecution team to stick only to the allegations Lemoine is facing as the adjudicators dismissed witnesses.

“This is the fourteenth day with regards to our hearings,” Blais said yesterday. “We still have this week, another week and a further week.”

Two witnesses were dismissed within an hour into the hearings because, as one defence lawyer said, they were simply being brought to testify to “bolster” another witness’ credibility.

“The evidence stands the way it stands,” said Stephanie Mulcaster. “There is nothing to show this witness has any material evidence to add.”

Several nasty barbs were traded back and forth between lawyers as they tried to hammer out which evidence should be admitted.

At one point, prosecution lawyer Jean-Daniel Hacala, appeared to be bitingly calling a defence lawyer a “learned colleague.”

Fellow prosecution lawyer Helene Desgranges snapped at a defence lawyer when he interrupted her with an objection, remarking: “If you keep doing that, I’m going to start interrupting you in the middle of your sentences.”

It took several hours, but the hearing did finally hear from its first witness of the day, an RCMP staff sergeant out of Montreal who headed up the investigation into Lemoine’s alleged code of conduct breach.

Staff Sgt. Pauline Gauvin discussed a number of cell phone calls made from Lemoine’s cell phone to the junior officer’s wife’s cell phone, her home phone and her work phone, as the prosecution went through the cell phone invoices she had collected during her investigation.

The calls were made between November 2004 and April 2005.

Gauvin also testified she collected statements from the officer and Lemoine.

When asked what the junior officer’s demeanour was like when she interviewed him, she replied: “I had a defeated man before me.”

“He was very sad, a little bit lost,” she continued. “He wanted justice to be done and repeated it to me over and over again.”

From the cell phone invoices, Gauvin also testified it was clear the junior officer called his wife using his RCMP-issued cell phone.

“No,” Gauvin replied.

“Is it your intention to now report this misuse of the cell phone?” McKinlay asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “The inquiry is over now. I didn’t see that at that time (when she was investigating Lemoine), I wasn’t looking into that.”

The defence team is expected to begin calling its witnesses today.