Saskatoon police lose in Supreme Court bid

KIRK MAKIN

Globe and Mail Update

December 18, 2008 at 10:32 AM EST

A 2004 inquiry report into the hypothermia death of Saskatoon native Neil Stonechild at the hands of police became final today, when the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear a case that called into question the report's conclusions.

The court denied leave to appeal to Saskatoon City Police Association and two former constables – Larry Hartwig and Brad Senger – who had hoped to challenge the breadth of the inquiry and its damning conclusions.

Mr. Stonechild, a 17-year-old aboriginal, disappeared Nov. 24, 1990, on a bitterly cold night. Five days later, his body was found in field outside Saskatoon. An autopsy indicated that he had died of hypothermia.

An inquiry called into his death concluded that Constables Larry Hartwig and Brad Senger had the 17-year-old in their patrol car the last night he was seen alive.

Despite their consistent denials that they ever so much as seen Mr. Stonechild on the night he died – let alone confined or abandoned him outside the city – the two officers were fired within a day of the report's being released.

The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal earlier rejected a bid by both officers and the police association to overturn the findings of the inquiry commissioner, Mr. Justice D.H. Wright. The court ruled that Judge Wright did not exceed the scope of his authority by naming individuals. Nor, did the justices agree that the report had violated the constitution by making findings of civil or criminal liability.

“Findings of fact, of course, will frequently indicate that specific individuals are at fault in some way,” Mr. Justice Robert Richards wrote in the ruling. “However, this in itself is not sufficient to warrant circumscribing the work of inquiries. The efforts of most commissions would be largely pointless if they could not involve findings about what went wrong and why.”

Neither officer has ever faced criminal charges in the matter.

The inquiry found that Constable Hartwig and Constable Senger took Mr. Stonechild into custody and that injuries and marks on his body were probably caused by handcuffs.

The report condemned the Saskatoon Police Service for not conducting a proper investigation of the death. It said that senior officers were defensive and attempted to protect their reputations to the detriment of the inquiry.

The decision to deny leave to appeal was made by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, Mr. Justice Morris Fish and Mr. Justice Marshall Rothstein.