‘You… thought you were above the law’: Jacob Hoggard’s lawyers slammed over late reveal of secret phone recording
Just a few months ahead of Hedley frontman Jacob Hoggard commenced sending sexual, flirtatious messages to a 15-12 months-aged admirer in the spring of 2016, a further Canadian new music business celebrity was standing demo for allegedly sexually assaulting two women.
Though cross-inspecting the complainant, now in her early 20s, this thirty day period, Hoggard’s defence lawyer Megan Savard asked if the younger lady, a fan of Canadian songs, had listened to of Jian Ghomeshi’s acquittal that March.
The complainant, who would have been in Grade 10 at the time, looked blank.
“I didn’t know who he was just before till coming to this court system,” she stated. “And I even now really don’t really know who he is or what he does.”
Even with out an specific point out, the previous CBC Radio host’s sensational trial and defence by attorney Marie Henein has loomed huge over Hoggard’s circumstance, and lots of other individuals ahead of it. The legislative legacy of the situation applies specially every single time a defence lawyer seeks to confront a sexual assault complainant with a personal document in their possession to advise they are lying or have a memory way too unreliable to be thought over and above a affordable doubt.
In Ghomeshi’s circumstance, it was the unexpected reveal of a handwritten “love letter” to the accused. In Hoggard’s, it was an emotional 15-moment cellphone phone with a complainant that he secretly recorded — but which beneath a new write-up-Ghomeshi law, the outraged demo choose stated, need to have been developed and argued about just before the trial ever commenced.
In 2018, amid the #MeToo motion and in the wake of the Ghomeshi demo, the Liberal federal government launched laws to “ensure that victims of sexual assault and gender-centered violence are taken care of with the utmost compassion and regard.” The legislation incorporated altering the regulations all over how a complainant’s non-public information — information that can incorporate their previous sexual history, health care diagnoses or other deeply particular details — can be released all through cross-examination.
This kind of data could now have to be uncovered prior to demo at a hearing on whether or not the data are private and then regardless of whether they are applicable. If the answer to the two is certainly, there is a 2nd hearing in which the complainant can make submissions, typically as a result of a court-appointed law firm.
Defence legal professionals argue this method forces them to reveal essential parts of proof that could contradict a complainant’s account to them, providing time for them to possibly regulate their testimony perfectly in advance of cross-examination. Prosecutors and legal professionals for complainants argue the legislation guards sexual assault complainants from the humiliating and unfair use of personal, own private data. Defending a complainant from that knowledge encourages the reporting of sexual assaults, they argue.
And, as the constitutionality of the legislation is set to be decided any working day by the Supreme Court of Canada, those people psychological tensions performed out in Hoggard’s trial for the violent rape of a teenage lover and a young Ottawa woman.
When Hoggard’s defence attorney Savard paused her cross-examination of the Ottawa girl and all of a sudden disclosed to the court, exterior the jury’s presence, that she was about to participate in a secretly recorded 15-moment telephone connect with involving the complainant and Hoggard that took area times just after the alleged sexual assault, Excellent Court docket Justice Gillian Roberts was outraged.
“You, for some explanation, considered you ended up earlier mentioned the regulation,” Roberts later on informed Savard, one of the legal professionals who lately argued ahead of the Supreme Court docket that the new principles are unconstitutional.
Savard argued that the recording was not a personal document and consequently not included by the approach laid out in the laws.
She claimed there is no acceptable expectation of privateness in the phone, throughout which the complainant regularly advised Hoggard experienced been coached or prepped by a law firm after she texted him and accused him of sexual assault.
Crown prosecutor Jill Witkin — who argued in favour of the laws at the Supreme Courtroom on behalf of the Lawyer Basic of Ontario — mentioned that the report, an psychological, susceptible cellphone simply call recorded secretly and with no the know-how of the complainant, need to be personal. The complainant appears clearly distressed through the get in touch with, in which she tells Hoggard: “Every time like I was making an attempt to say no to you … You just pushed me like to the level in which it was just so agonizing.”
In the recording, Hoggard denies any wrongdoing in a deliberate, calm tone she accuses him of sounding scripted, as if he consulted a attorney.
Witkin argued that an application should have been brought in progress, supplying the complainant an possibility to see the record and get legal advice. Now, she claimed, the complainant could have to choose among doing exercises her rights and ending her testimony.
Savard explained the simply call and the contents of the phone were being required to impeach the complainant on some of her testimony — the complainant experienced testified the only cellphone call involving her and Hoggard was 30 seconds prolonged and denied she ever mentioned she desired stitches in her vagina, which she reported in the recording. Savard claimed she initially determined to enjoy the simply call just after hearing the complainant’s testimony, incorporating that the contact is no “smoking gun” and could slash both equally techniques by also corroborating some of the complainant’s testimony and her psychological condition at the time.
Savard reported that if the call experienced not been recorded, she could have questioned concerns about it without having an software. The complainant has also testified about a lot of of the subject areas in the phone, these as her injuries and clinical records, and sent textual content messages about them, which lessens her privateness fascination, she argued.
She additional that revealing the simply call in advance would have undercut the defence scenario.
Justice Roberts claimed she did not purchase that argument.
“It suggests that in practically each scenario you could do an conclusion-operate close to this piece of laws which is not what Parliament meant,” she reported.
Roberts claimed she felt like her fingers ended up tied simply because the complainant, who had to vacation in from Ottawa, was in the center of cross-assessment and therefore bound not to focus on her testimony with everyone.
Savard responded that being unable to elevate these issues mid-demo is a “fundamental dilemma with the laws,” but reported the resolution is to get the complainant a lawyer and have a hearing.
“And then that’s a mistrial simply because you’ve got the complainant, as you perfectly know, in the training course of cross-assessment not only speaking to an individual about her evidence but speaking to a attorney about her proof. If we want a verdict from this jury, it is just not a remedy that is on the table,” Roberts stated.
Roberts claimed she was “backed into a corner” but dominated the cell phone phone and screenshots of some textual content messages saved by Hoggard ended up not non-public information since the complainant had no expectation of privacy and were being admissible at trial.
Having said that, she mentioned, the phone would have to be played for the complainant without the jury current.
“It strikes me as particularly the sort of factor the witness really should be notified of in advance of she gets in the box,” Roberts explained. “She shouldn’t listen to that for the to start with time in entrance of all these men and women. That strikes me as flat out cruel and accurately the sort of detail the legislation is hoping to stay away from.”
Savard agreed the complainant could be explained to about the simply call prior to it was played, but she argued it ought to be played to her for the first time in court docket devoid of the jury present, fairly than privately.
“That straddles the line involving shielding the ideal to entire respond to and defence and the ideal to silence by not necessitating the defence to basically give up their tactic in advance and enabling the witness consciously or unconsciously to tailor their proof to it whilst reducing the privacy invasion to the witness,” she mentioned.
Roberts ruled that the simply call would be performed to the complainant in a space by the court’s target-witness assist individual, with a police officer present to choose notes if she explained nearly anything — a compromise to maintain the two the dignity of the complainant and Hoggard’s good trial legal rights.
As the mobile phone simply call was performed ahead of the jury in excess of a harrowing 20 minutes, the complainant shook and wept, prompting Roberts to interrupt the contact and notify her she “did not have to sit right here and suffer” and that they could start once again tomorrow. The complainant stated she would proceed, and afterwards testified it was “traumatizing” to hear Hoggard’s voice.
She explained she had blocked out the connect with from six decades ago as element of making an attempt to endure and that she experienced exaggerated her accidents to Hoggard as portion of attempting to make him comprehend what he’d accomplished so he’d apologize.
In her closing arguments, Savard suggested the jury could see the complainant’s psychological response to the simply call as her remaining caught in a lie. The Crown argued the jury really should consider the complainant’s own explanation.
Clarification — June 1, 2022: This story has been edited to make clear the defence place on why a hearing less than the new legislation was not required.
