VETERAN PROSECUTOR, MARNIE GOLDENBERG, ACCUSED OF TELLING TORONTO COP HE SHOULD HAVE GIVEN ‘FALSE EVIDENCE’ UNDER OATH – ‘WE PROTECT OUR OWN”

By Jacques Gallant of The Star
A veteran Crown attorney is being accused of berating a Toronto police officer while suggesting he should have given “false evidence” on the stand.

The explosive allegation involves a tense encounter between prosecutor Marnie Goldenberg and Const. Edin Hasanbasic in January, during which she admonished the officer in the hallway of the Toronto provincial courthouse at 10 Armoury St. — within earshot of several witnesses — about his testimony at the trial of a man accused of intentionally hitting another officer with a motorcycle.

Hasanbasic, who was called as a witness by the defence, had just told the court it didn’t look like a head-on collision and that the other officer “seemed like he was fine” and was not seriously injured; it was testimony that risked hurting the Crown’s case.

In his notes about the hallway encounter, Hasanbasic wrote that the prosecutor was yelling and swearing about his testimony.
He wrote that he told Goldenberg, “What am I supposed to do? Lie?”
“She responded with, ‘We protect our own,’” he wrote.

Goldenberg, a prosecutor of 22 years whose husband is a police officer, has acknowledged she confronted Hasanbasic, but adamantly denies saying those words — “Police officers are not my own, and it is not my job to protect them.”

He wrote that Goldenberg said her husband is a cop, and twice told him, “we protect our own,” including after he asked if he was supposed to lie. He then returned to a meeting room, telling (defence lawyer) Jamshidi and another officer, “The Crown just tore me a new one for being honest.”

He then overheard her say: “You’re a young copper and you have many years ahead of you. If you continue this way, you won’t have a lengthy or easy career.”

When Goldenberg took the stand (on a stay application), it was the second time this month that the longtime Crown attorney found herself in the witness box — she also testified just last week as the victim in an antisemitic threat trial, in which the accused woman was convicted.

While Hasanbasic testified that Young wasn’t seriously injured, since he finished his shift, Goldenberg said she told him in the hallway that’s because Young is a “38-year copper and that’s what they do,” going on to say that her husband is a “37-year copper” and would have also completed his shift.

Goldenberg became emotional on the stand, explaining that after raising the sergeant’s injury to Hasanbasic, she suddenly pictured her husband, who had had heart surgery a few years earlier, lying on a hospital bed. She said she also told Hasanbasic that she was becoming emotional, and ended the conversation by walking to the elevator.

MAPLEHURST CORRECTIONAL CENTRE – IS SO BAD THAT REGIONAL SENIOR JUDGE PAUL CURRIE WAS AFRAID TO BE INCARCERATED THERE. THE COVER-UP IS ARGUABLY WORSE

By Brendan Kennedy of The Star:
Justice Clayton Conlan made clear that his decision to throw out first-degree murder charges because of the abuse the accused suffered while awaiting trial at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex was about much more than the violent retribution they and nearly 200 other inmates endured.

That treatment over two days in December 2023 was “akin to torture,” Conlan wrote. But the judge’s 113-page ruling suggests he likely would not have granted the stay if jail officials — from high-ranking administrators to rank-and-file guards — hadn’t also tried to cover up what happened, and then further lied about it in court.
Thirty Maplehurst witnesses testified over weeks of pre-trial hearings. Conlan found most of them gave untruthful, evasive or “blatantly incorrect or false testimony.”

The deceit ranged from serious attempts to conceal what happened, to absurd, easily disprovable lies that left the judge stunned. Conlan rejected all of it, finding the search was conducted “for one reason and one reason only. It was done for vengeance.”

Conlan found management’s requests to have occurrence reports prepared four months later were part of an “after-the-fact effort … to coverup the real reason for the ICIT activation.”

Several Maplehurst correctional officers lied in court about things that were obviously disprovable and with explanations Conlan found to be absurd.

Justice Conlan was blunt in his assessment of their credibility. “They lied, under oath, in giving those explanations,” he said in court in August. “They’re completely preposterous.”

No Maplehurst staff member took responsibility for inmates being left in their underwear for up to two days after the ICIT operation. Some said they were left unclothed due to a shortage of clean clothes, although that was disproven by other witnesses and video evidence.

Inmates have said in interviews and affidavits filed in court that while they were left in their underwear, jail staff turned on exhaust fans that blew cold air onto the unit, causing them extreme discomfort to the point of pain.

IF YOU WANT TO GET “TOUGH ON CRIME” PERHAPS WE SHOULD START WITH EXPECTING AND REQUIRING THAT THE POLICE ABIDE BY THE LAW

per The Star:
Police Charter violations persist years after Star found cops violating rights of accused with alarming frequency: report
The continuing cost of police Charter violations — the most common being unlawful searches and seizures and delaying access to legal counsel — is resulting in people accused of serious crimes seeing charges tossed and the undermining of public trust, according to the paper, entitled Unlawful Enforcers: Charter Violations by Major Ontario City Police Services.
“Guns, drugs, reliable evidence of child pornography and breathalyzer test results are being excluded from evidence in trials,” finds the report, authored by Sunil Gurmukh, an adjunct law professor at Western University, and University of Toronto criminology professor Scot Wortley.
“Accused, who engaged in criminal activity,” they write, “are walking free.”
From 2015 to 2025, police in Toronto, Ottawa, Peel, York and Durham collectively were called out in court more than 1,000 times for Charter violations in 627 cases, the study found. In seven of every 10 of those cases, accused saw evidence excluded, charges tossed or a reduced sentence imposed.

The Criminal Lawyers’ Association’s statement on calls for a judicial apology in the Umar Zameer case  

The OPP report on the officers’ conduct in the Umar Zameer trial was a repackaging of the evidence already heard by an impartial jury that unanimously rejected the officers’ accounts and acquitted Mr. Zameer.  At the conclusion of the trial, the Toronto Police Chief declared that: “we were hoping for a different outcome”.  To achieve that result, the police investigators appointed themselves judge and jury and retried the case by accepting novel theories never tested at trial.  The police intentionally chose this flawed and biased process instead of engaging in a public, independent, and adversarial review of Justice Molloy’s findings. In the wake of the release of the OPP report, the President of the Toronto Police Association and the Premier have called on the trial judge to apologize to the officers involved in the case. These statements are unprecedented and an inappropriate attack on judicial independence. These comments are an attempt to subvert the justice system.     Judicial independence is a cornerstone of our constitutional democracy. Judges must be impartial arbiters to protect the integrity and legitimacy of the courts. Judges are given a wide latitude when deciding issues of credibility because alongside juries, they are in the best position to determine whether or not to believe a witness. Trial judges’ decisions are available to the public and can be appealed by the parties. The public can debate and comment on the outcome.   Judges cannot and should not change or apologize for their decisions based on requests from other branches of government or from witnesses in a case.  Adam Weisberg, President, on behalf of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association For all media inquiries, please email media@criminallawyers.ca

The OPP report ‘exonerates’ Toronto cops of perjury in the Umar Zameer murder case. It looks like a whitewash to me. For my money, I’ll follow Justice Anne Malloy.

“An Ontario Provincial Police investigation into the conduct of three Toronto police officers who testified at the first-degree murder trial of Umar Zameer has “exonerated” the officers against allegations they lied about the death of their colleague, Const. Jeffrey Northrup.

“They’ve been vindicated,” Toronto police Chief Myron Demkiw said at a news conference on Tuesday.

In sum, the OPP’s report, released Tuesday, picks apart the work of a Toronto police reconstructist and re-examines the evidence and testimony presented at trial to conclude there is no evidence that Det. Consts. Lisa Forbes, Antonio Correa and Scharnil Pais lied.

The finding contradicts the conclusions of Zameer’s trial judge, Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy, who made explosive allegations of dishonesty and collusion among the three officers.
Even before its release, doubt was cast on the validity of one police service investigating another by Zameer’s criminal defence lawyer, Nader Hasan, who said in a statement that alleged police misconduct required a “truly independent public review.”

IS ONTARIO’S SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY UNCONSTITUTIONAL?

Our Supreme Court struck down mandatory registration under the federal sex offender registry. Finally, we have managed to apply the same principles to Ontario’s sex offender registry. According to The Star:
“The Supremes found that “mandatory registration is overbroad, since it captures offenders who are not at an increased risk to reoffend” and automatic lifetime registration was likewise overbroad. As a result, anyone added since 2011 to the National Sex Offender Registry — which was created after the Ontario registry — could apply to have their status changed.
Parliament amended the national registry to bring it into compliance with the Charter, making mandatory registration application only to repeated offenders or those convicted of serious child sexual offences. Judges now have the discretion to exempt some offenders.
(Justice) Garg concluded the Ontario law is inconsistent with the federal law and needs overhauling.
Roberts’ lawyer, Dean Paquette, told CBC Hamilton that Garg’s ruling is “significant” and could see changes to Ontario’s sex offender registry, depending on how the appeals process plays out. “In time, the argument we have made will be adopted by higher courts and become binding.”

THE CASTLE DOCTRINE – With the exercise of ICE officers/soldiers entering homes in the U.S. without judicial warrants, it’s worthwhile to quickly review the Castle Doctrine as explained by Radley Balko in his book entitled “Rise of the Warrior Cop – The Militarization of America’s Police Forces”.

“America inherited the Castle Doctrine from British common law. Put simply, the Castle Doctrine holds that “a man’s home is his castle”. But it springs from an older, much broader sentiment that the home should be protected as a place of refuge, peace and sanctuary. One of the earliest recorded pronouncements of the idea came from the Roman statesman Cicero: “What more sacred, what more strongly guarded by every holy feeling, than a man’s own home?” Implicit in the sentiment is not only the right to repel criminal intruders but also the idea that the state is permitted to violate the home’s sanctity only under limited circumstances, only as a last resort, and only under conditions that protect the threshold from unnecessary violence. Thus, before entering without permission, government agents much knock, announce and identify themselves, state their purpose, and give the occupants the opportunity to let them in peacefully. The Castle Doctrine establishes the home as a sanctum in which a citizen can expect to be let alone, a principle that the US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis called “the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men.””