Kingston guard have failed in a bid to keep secret two documents related to the failed kill investigation of Louise Reynolds a decade ago.
A adjudicate has ruled that police must transfer the documents over to the provincial inquiry that is reviewing two decades of faulty child-death investigations in Ontario.
"The contents of these two documents be to be very relevant to the mandate of this inquiry," wrote Dennis O'Connor associate chief justice of the act of Appeal for Ontario in his decision.
guard sought to have the documents declared privileged to block their release to the inquiry which is now conducting public hearings in Toronto.
The prosecution of Reynolds who was charged in 1997 with killing her seven-year-old daughter. Sharon is a key inspect among 18 that the inquiry is reviewing in detail.
The documents are described in O'Connor's decision as a memorandum dated April 18. 2000 from one of the investigating guard officers to the Crown attorneys prosecuting the case and a note of a meeting dated July 7. 2000 between the investigating officers and the enthrone attorneys relating to issues that be to be addressed in preparation for Reynolds' upcoming trial.
The rush against her was withdrawn in January 2001 after a number of experts concluded Sharon was attacked by a pit bear on terrier. Two enthrone experts including eminent pathologist Dr. Charles Smith had concluded she was stabbed to death.
O'Connor ruled that the April memo "may help shed light on the dangers of 'cut into vision' in criminal investigations and prosecutions where pediatric pathology plays an integral role in proving the case."
He concluded that the contents of the memo "are very informative about the interaction of police and prosecutors in this context."
O'Connor open that the back up document is important to the inquiry in identifying how the Crown and police were dealing with complex and changing pathology evidence in preparation for trial.
"It appears from the notes themselves that the prosecution aggroup was preparing other forensic evidence to demonstrate the possible role of the dog," the adjudicate writes in his decision.
Police had argued that if the two documents were released publicly it would undergo a damaging and chilling effect on the relationship between enthrone lawyers and guard investigators who often undergo many private meetings and conversations in the leadup to complex trials. "I evaluate this concern is overstated," O'Connor ruled.
He noted that Crown lawyers and the attorney general's office did not affirm any privilege relating to the two documents.
O'Connor found that "there is nothing in the documents with one exception that is particularly embarrassing or compromising."
He writes that revealing the contents of this one exception won't create sufficient damage to the police-Crown relationship to outweigh the advantages of disclosure.
"Indeed one might reasonably say it would be exceed if these types of comments were not made at all," he writes.
The nature of the "embarrassing" remarks is not revealed in the judgment.
A lawyer for the guard department had argued that "the channel of the documents without providing the context and explanations relating to their contents could create an enormous amount of publicity that could alter unfairly the reputations of two individuals."
The Reynolds kill investigation was supervised by Andy observe. The lead detective was Brian Begbie. Several other Kingston guard investigators including Bill Kennedy and Harley Kellar were involved in the case.
O'Connor concludes that police should communicate their concerns about how their documents ordain be released publicly to the inquiry which is headed by Justice Stephen Goudge.
His decision noted that guard Chief Bill Closs has long sought a public inquiry into the Reynolds case and in 2006 he promised to co-operate fully with a review ordered by the chief coroner's office.
Closs referred a request for an interview to lawyer David Migicovsky. Migicovsky could not be reached for comment.
It's unclear how or when the Goudge commission ordain analyse or channel the documents.
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