December 16, 2009 Toronto Star
Robyn Doolittle
ORILLIA—Charges against two Ontario Provinical Police officers were dropped Wednesday, scuttling a disciplinary hearing that had been postponed for more than a year as OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino tried to have the judge in the case removed.
Insp. Alison Jevons and Supt. Ken MacDonald, two high-ranking officers, had been charged with Police Act offences for allegedly bungling an internal investigation.
"This matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of the prosecution and the subject officers outside the discipline process," said prosecutor Brian Gover during the brief hearing.
Their lawyer, Julian Falconer, had asked for the charges be thrown out, alleging that his clients were the victims of a "political prosecution" orchestrated by Fantino.
Falconer was midway through his cross-examination of Fantino in October 2008 when the commissioner's legal team stopped the proceedings and asked Justice Leonard Montgomery to recuse himself.
The request came after Montgomery cautioned the commissioner about making "side comments" and questioned Fantino's "professional conduct" after it appeared the commissioner reversed his testimony following a lunch break.
Those remarks, Fantino's lawyers said, left a "stain" on the commissioner's reputation. Montgomery refused to leave and accused Gover of attempting to "intimidate" and "pressure" him.
Earlier this year, a divisional court rejected Fantino's bid to have Montgomery removed from the case.
That ruling was upheld last month in the Ontario Court of Appeal, which said "the events in this case fall far short of the type of conduct that would give rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias."
As of mid-August, the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services had spent $448,552.44 prosecuting the case and arguing the various twists and turns the hearing has taken, according to information obtained by the Star in a Freedom of Information request.
When Fantino was last on the stand, he told Falconer any allegations he had devised a "political prosecution" against Jevons and MacDonald was "hysterical nonsense" and "absolutely mind-boggling."