Ghomeshi makes his way through a mob of media with his lawyer Marie Henein. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette MONTREAL — What grand news it is that Toronto police have laid criminal charges against former CBC radio star Jian Ghomeshi.
I say that only because news it is.
Of late, it seems to me, more and more of the judgments and punishments that are being dished out are of the extrajudicial variety, so I am relieved to see one such matter back where it belongs, in the flawed but familiar arms of the justice system.
The most vivid example of this extrajudicial business is probably still the story of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who to this date has never been criminally charged despite a substantial public record of sordid allegations — a good many of them belatedly acknowledged by the mayor himself — against him.
He was the author of much of his misfortune; he was in the process revealed as a serial liar and friend of bad people, and he did admit to a drinking problem, occasional crack cocaine use and a litany of bad behaviour.
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)
All of that is true, but the investigation, as such, was conducted by the press, and as Canadians have seen — when two Toronto newspapers paid money to buy evidence against Ford in an unusual departure from what had been the norm in Canada, and more recently this week, when the Halifax Chronicle Herald decided it knew better than a judge when the public interest requires that a publication ban be flouted (and, presumably, when it ought to be honoured) — the press is governed by its own rules and standards and these are, shall we say, shifting.
The most recent example of extrajudicial justice is what’s happened to those two Liberal MPs, Scott Andrews and Massimo Pacetti, who were alleged at first by two still-unidentified female NDP MPs to have engaged in serious misconduct and harassment and promptly expelled by Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, to whom one of the NDP members had complained, purportedly privately.
This week, of course, one of those NDP MPs did a series of interviews with the media, her identity withheld at her insistence, detailing what she says was allegedly non-consensual sex — or as she says with “no explicit consent” — by Pacetti.
There is no process in place on Parliament Hill to deal with complaints by MPs against MPs. The women thus far have refused to come forward to police. (I suggest, as a friend told me the other day, the Ottawa police make just a tiny effort to get the names from Trudeau and then find the women.) There is no formal complaint of any kind; the two men have had no opportunity (but for what they may read in the press) to know what it is they are being accused of, let alone to defend themselves. They haven’t been charged, let alone tried, let alone convicted, but their reputations are in tatters, as are their careers; yet thus far, no one but them seem to be much bothered by it.
There are plenty of other examples about.
Earlier this month, prosecutors dropped charges of sexual assault against three former McGill Redmen football players after, according to the Montreal Gazette, an unidentified friend of the alleged victim, in whom she had confided, reluctantly told the Crown the woman told her the sex had been consensual. The alleged victim came forward afterwards anyway, to denounce the process and suggest the trio were guilty anyway, from behind a veil of anonymity.
Ditto Bill Cosby, who has been brought down by an ever-growing list of women coming forward to media to accuse him of drugging and sexually assaulting them. He was once charged criminally with such a crime, but prosecutors dropped the charges because they didn’t believe they had a reasonable chance of conviction. Cosby’s accuser then sued him civilly. He settled out of court, in effect buying her silence.
Bill Cosby during an interview. (AP photo)
Some of the women now making allegations — to the media — were among a group of “Jane Does” who were slated to testify at his civil trial.
I never got Cosby’s humour; was he even funny? And in the same way, I didn’t get Ghomeshi’s fame. I do not defend them, but rather the old-fashioned animal called due process.
Given a choice between the free-for-all of a public ruination and the regulated process that is a trial, I know which I prefer.
I know the failings of the justice system up close and all too well. I’ve spent more days than I can count trying not to pull out my hair in frustration in the criminal courts, including several this very week as in Montreal, where the murder trial of Luka Magnotta grinds to a protracted close. The lawyers talk too much; the rules often seem arbitrary and dated; the law is sometimes an ass.
It’s hardly perfect, born of man as it is.
Trying to make it better — whether by challenging the processes, changing the laws in Parliament or making new law by hard-won cases in court — is only reasonable.
But, my God, whoever believes that what happened Wednesday in Toronto — and it was just a physical manifestation of extrajudicial justice — when Ghomeshi and his lawyer were cornered by a wild pack of reporters and cameramen, is better, or offers even a prayer of ever being better, is deluding himself/herself.
Real justice — creaky, slow, complicated, nuanced, just like life and, dare I say, sex — doesn’t lend itself to a hashtag.
Postmedia News
cblatchford@postmedia.com
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