Over the past 20 years two major criminal prosecutions in this area have collapsed in a way bringing disquiet over police investigative procedures. Both involved the technique called Mr. Big – who arrived only after ordinary sleuthing was not working out.
On October 1, 1994 the bodies of two men were discovered in a packaging plant. Police called to the scene quickly pronounced the deaths were caused by electrocution. No steps were taken to preserve the scene for forensic examination. Then after 36 hours the medical examiner found three gunshots to both bodies. By then the unsecured crime scene was so thoroughly contaminated that nothing useful could be gleaned from it. The police began questioning and focused on Jason Dix as a suspect, largely ignoring another prospect. As Dix did not confess to the crime, the police mounted a Mr. Big sting. The operation did not yield the hoped for admission, though Dix’s willingness to get involved in a criminal venture fanned suspicion. Other evidence, ultimately found unreliable, led to Dix’s arrest. That brought on a gong show featuring jailhouse informants and a prosecutor tendering a fake letter to keep Dix locked up. Ultimately that prosecutor withdrew from the case. Another prosecutor then concluded there was simply no case against Dix, and the charges against him were dismissed.
On May 31, 2009 a man and a woman were brutally murdered on a rural acreage. Two young males at large from a provincial youth care facility were found the next day in a truck belonging to the man. Possessing property from a recently murdered person is highly suspicious. They were charged. But there was a major inconsistency – no forensic evidence connected the two youths to the scene of the crime. Their DNA and prints were not found there, nor was blood or gunshot residue found on them. Significantly, a police blood spatter analyst concluded the perpetrator of the violence would have been liberally sprayed with blood, and had actually got blood from one victim onto the other. After the arrest the police pushed ahead with questioning, and one youth confessed, but this confession was rejected by a judge at trial as unreliable and the charges stayed. The police then mounted a Mr. Big sting operation which apparently proved more productive than in the Dix case. The youth who had confessed earlier was soon telling police what they wanted to hear. Unfortunately, at his recent second trial it turned out that all he said to Mr. Big he could have learned at the preliminary inquiry. And it also seemed that the youth confronted with the inducements of Mr. Big was psychologically very prone to say whatever was wanted from him. Another case tossed.
Anyone inclined to brush off the collapse of either case as unwarranted judicial meddling in fine police work should read the exceedingly detailed decisions in both cases, readily available on the Court of Queen’s Bench website. The Mr. Big technique is controversial, employed in Canada and Australia, but not in the United States or elsewhere. True, Mr. Big can help truth emerge. But the inherent defect in the approach is that in an inducive atmosphere Mr. Big offers financial and psychological incentives which can promote a suspect to concoct the confession the police are after, along with making exaggerated and self-aggrandizing statements. It is time to consider retiring Mr. Big and his gang.
Writer David Haas is a long term St. Albert resident.
