ANOTHER CANADIAN ABSURDITY: AND DO THEY HATE TO ADMIT THEY WERE WRONG!

Using "evidence" gained under hypnosis! Hypnotic subjects have great imaginations!

Despite continued pleas of his innocence, Robert Baltovich will face a new trial in the alleged killing of his girlfriend, Elizabeth Bain. The 22-year-old Bain disappeared in June, 1990, and has never been found. Baltovich has been out on bail since 2000, when his appeal was launched. The Ontario Court of Appeal overturned Baltovich's conviction last December....

Because the original conviction was made in 1992, it will be far more difficult for the prosecution to present a strong case for Baltovich's guilt. "This is going to be a very tough fight for the prosecution," legal analyst Steven Skurka told CTV Newsnet. He says the crown's key witness was put under hypnosis in order to identify Baltovich, because her memory of seeing him with Bain before she vanished was so poor. "She couldn't remember anything. And that was years ago when the first trial took place. So the mountain is going to be much icier for the prosecution to climb. This is going to be a very tough case."

Baltovich was released after spending eight years in prison, during which time he became a cause for the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. In the court's appeal decision, the crown's case was determined to be largely superficial, and consisted of "three bodies of evidence: opportunity, motive, and after-the-fact conduct indicative of guilt." But the appeal was granted largely because of the trial judge's charge to the jury, which was deemed to be prejudicial against Baltovich. "The charge to the jury was unfair and unbalanced. It also contained significant errors of law that were prejudicial to the appellant," the decision reads.

However, the evidence against Baltovich was enough for the Ontario Court of Appeal to decide he must face another trial. Baltovich's lawyers have argued it could have been Paul Bernardo who killed Bain, and they will likely use the same argument again. Skurka said that Bernardo was familiar with the area where Bain disappeared, the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus, and may have even known her. "He lived in Scarborough before and he lived there after the murder," Skurka said. "So there is evidence to connect him to her and to potentially the crime. And you can be sure that Robert Baltovich's lawyers are going to be doing everything they can to properly bring him into the case."

At the time, Bernardo was raping women in the area and was known as the Scarborough Rapist. Bernardo, currently facing life in prison for the torture and killings of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, has reportedly denied killing Bain.


Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)