In this file courtroom sketch, Christopher Husbands appears in court. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tammy Hoy Photo: (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tammy Hoy) TORONTO — As a jury was on Wednesday convicting Christopher Husbands of two counts of second-degree murder and five of aggravated assault in connection with the Eaton Centre shootup in downtown Toronto, I was poring over a transcript of his bail hearing four long years ago.
That hearing, at least in theory, marked one of those times when Husbands, then just 21, might have been kept in jail, thus on paper perhaps somehow avoiding the shooting.
Instead, he was released on bail.
Another such theoretical point occurred about five weeks before the lethal gunfire in the food court.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014 – Dirk Derstine, lead defence attorney in the Christopher Husbands trial and Stephanie DiGiuseppe, Junior Counsel on the case, speak to media. (Laura Pedersen/National Post)
Husbands was then in Hamilton, Ont., facing a raft of serious weapons charges, but most of them were withdrawn by the prosecutor and instead he walked free.
These are the sorts of decisions, which appear in the rear-view mirror that lives in all our heads, as lousy mistakes: If only he’d been detained, if only the charges hadn’t been yanked, if only Husbands had been … just kept in jail.
On Dec. 2, 2010, he appeared before Justice of the Peace Karin Dresher.
Though he certainly had a criminal record, it was mostly for minor offences (marijuana possession, one for cocaine and breaches of previous bails) and was facing a charge of sexual assault on his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Husbands appeared as a young man on the cusp, teetering between straightening out his life and falling off the proverbial cliff for good.
On the plus side, he had two sureties — an older brother with an unblemished track record who was willing to have him live with his wife and child, and a friend who was willing to ride herd on him, too.
And Husbands was in school, studying business administration at George Brown College and getting good grades. (Later, in the summer of the shooting, he was working part-time for the City of Toronto in an after-school program, which caused a huge kerfuffle when he was arrested.)
Christopher Husbands arrives in court in a file photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
If the brother and friend weren’t perfect sureties — both were unemployed, and the woman was a single mom with four young kids at home — they were well-intentioned and Husbands’ brother in particular was a serious fellow.
He told the JP he and his wife ran a strict household. As he put it, “We are a very structured family.”
Asked what he meant by that, the brother explained he and Christopher were raised in some chaos, with a mom who drank, a father who was often absent and low expectations.
He was raising his son differently. They had routines: They had a bedtime; they had a breakfast time.
“We have peace so everything follows a structure because we have a plan, you know … The rules in my home are very important rules. We try our best because we grew up in a society, I guess, where I am considered at risk, so we try to be just not typical. We try to be the best that we can.”
Abdulahhi Hassan Roble, father of one of the Eaton Centre shooting victims Ahmed Abdulahhi Hassan, speaks. (Laura Pedersen/National Post)
This was his third time bailing out his little brother; he had no money to speak of, but he was willing to promise $2,000.
He was all of 24 at the time.
The woman surety was older, almost 40, and she too was willing to promise $2,000.
Are sureties ever chased down afterward for the money they pledged if the bail went bad? Few, I would bet. Do any actually call the police, as they all solemnly swear they will, oh yes, at the first sign of trouble? Some, probably. Maybe.
But the gravitas of the bail program I suspect exists mostly in the ordered minds of the middle class. Most people probably just want to get their brother/son/friend out of jail to somewhere warm and safe; if getting to that point involves a certain glossing of the truth, then so be it.
Craig Stevenson, father of Hunter Stevenson who was injured in the 2012 Eaton Centre shooting, speaks to media. (Laura Pedersen/National Post)
Jail is a hard place, getting harder all the time. I am reliably informed that as of this month, for instance, in the federal prison system, the small cartons of milk inmates used to get with their meals have been replaced by powdered milk and the little packets of jam are also history. It’s no longer enough that you lose your liberty, apparently. Better we should continue to punish in all manner of small, cruel ways.
I ordered the Husbands’ bail transcript some short time after he was arrested as the Eaton Centre shooter.
I looked at it with fairly unmerciful eyes. When I read it again, it was different: This week, with some neighbours, I’ve been involved in trying to help a friend who has been arrested. We may not be able to successfully bail him out, but if we can we will. Because jail sucks and he’s a friend.
I hope Christopher Husbands’ brother is still running his serious, structured family, that the woman’s kids are doing well, and that they remain glad that at least they tried.
cblatchford@postmedia.com
No comments:
Post a Comment