A rchive Date
[ 31-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Told Crown Bernardo videos 'defence material'
2nd lawyer held back tapes
By ALAN CAIRNS - Toronto Sun
Wednesday, April 12, 2000
ST. CATHARINES - Five days after viewing Paul Bernardo's sex videos, his second lawyer, John Rosen, decreed them "defence material" just as former lawyer Ken Murray had done.
Subject to review and research, "I take the position that the material is part of the defence brief and there is no obligation on the defence to produce it," Rosen said in a Sept. 18, 1994 letter that rebuffed a Crown demand to turn over the tapes.
Four days after that letter, Rosen handed over the tapes with another letter, citing Bernardo's orders to "voluntarily surrender" them. The letter suggests Rosen sought a plea deal.
Kim Doyle, who served as a law clerk for both Murray, and later, Rosen, testified at Murray's trial yesterday. She said, in the initial stages of Murray's defending Bernardo, he sought advice from Rosen on what to do with "hard evidence" incriminating Bernardo's ex-wife, Karla Homolka. Murray is on trial for obstructing justice.
Rosen advised Murray not to give prosecutors the videos, but rather ambush Homolka at Bernardo's trial.
Doyle testified she believed Rosen was unaware that Murray had sex videos. She recalled that, when Murray announced he was resigning for "ethical reasons" 13 months later, Rosen said: "Ken just screwed the client."
Murray removed the 8 mm videos from a ceiling hiding place in Bernardo's Port Dalhousie home May 6, 1993 after a meticulous three-month police search failed to find them.
In the absence of direct evidence against Bernardo, prosecutors cut a deal with Karla Homolka that gave her a 12-year prison term in exchange for her testimony.
The videos contained graphic images of the confinement and sex assaults - but not the murders - of Kristen French, 15, and Leslie Mahaffy, 14, the fatal drug rape of Homolka's youngest sister, Tammy, 15, and a sexual assault on an unconscious teen the courts have named Jane Doe.
Doyle said Murray's team decided to set up Homolka at her expected preliminary hearing and hammer her with inconsistencies at Bernardo's trial.
After a direct indictment sent Bernardo straight to trial, Murray's team gained prison interviews with Homolka.
Doyle testified Murray's team opted to lay a foundation with simple questions but "hold (back) some of the major stuff" and confront her at trial.
After Murray quit the case in early September 1994, Doyle joined Rosen and Tony Bryant in the new defence team.
Doyle agreed with Murray's lawyer, Austin Cooper, that Rosen and Bryant asserted at Bernardo's trial that the videos were "devastating" to Homolka's credibility, showed her as an "outrageous liar" and more as a perpetrator than a victim.
"I felt we would have been in a much better position to portray her as a liar (if we had) been able to surprise her with them (the tapes)," said Doyle, when asked by Cooper for her opinion.
The videos, he said, were "fertile material" for cross-examination and Murray had no obligation to turn them over.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]]
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