Blood in the Water by Silver Donald Cameron

Author:Silver Donald Cameron [Cameron, Silver Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2020-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

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Back in the courtroom, Justice Kennedy dismisses the jury for the day, and then expresses his concern about the Mountie’s suggestion that James should take a polygraph exam. It is, he says, “manifest that the officer overstated the reliability of the polygraph. Now he was doing it for a purpose, but I worry about the jury having some sense that if Mr. Landry had only taken a polygraph he could have cleaned this whole thing up. In fact, results of polygraph examinations are not admissible in court in this country, and they’re not admissible for good reason. They’re not nearly as reliable as the officer would have suggested, but the problem is that triers of the facts might very well think they’re definitive when they’re nothing of the sort. So I may say something to the jury in the morning about the polygraph.”

Both the prosecution and the defence agree. Luke Craggs also wonders about a more general issue.

“This goes back to the concern I had at the outset,” Craggs says, “that police will say things that are either hearsay that they gathered as a result of the investigation, or things which flat-out aren’t true, such as the polygraph—or you may recall the earlier example the officer gave about satellite imagery being available, and overstating the availability of that imagery. These are interrogation techniques, and I think it’s important that the jury understand that they are interrogation techniques.”

Justice Kennedy agrees.

“I could tie that into a repeat of what I said at the very beginning: that it’s what Mr. Landry says, not what the officer says, that they are to consider.” He could also remind them that this interrogation took place very early in the investigation, so the officer asks James to consider how his story will look when Phillip’s body is recovered and examined—which didn’t happen. When the jury returns in the morning Justice Kennedy will address these matters, reminding the jury that the only actual evidence in the video is what James Landry says; what the police say is not evidence.

There is something surreal about this. As a spectator in courtrooms, I sometimes feel I am watching actions taking place in an alternative reality. For example, anyone who watches courtroom dramas on television has heard judges say things like “The jury will disregard that remark.” The trial then continues as though the jurors have obediently wiped those words from their cranial hard drives. But in fact the jurors can’t un-hear the remark; it has lodged in their memory, and it will have an effect, try as they may to disregard it. Similarly, when Nash Brogan introduced that extraordinary petition of Isle Madame citizens calling for Dwayne Samson’s release on bail, he didn’t really expect the judge to send Dwayne home. But by demonstrating that the people who knew Dwayne best considered him a trustworthy man in a bad situation, he was ensuring that everyone in the courtroom understood how spectacularly out of character it was for Dwayne to be accused of any misdeed at all, let alone murder.

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