Police perjury case ends after judge cites Crown error

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This article was published 22/02/2011 (5585 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG – A judge has thrown out all charges against two Winnipeg police officers accused of lying under oath to provincial justice officials because the Crown failed to have witnesses identify the accused in court.

Const. Peter O’Kane and Const. Jess Zebrun were cleared Tuesday afternoon of perjury after their jury trial came to a sudden halt. The decision sparked a round of applause by numerous off-duty officers in court. It may also have saved the careers of the two accused.

Their lawyers filed a motion earlier in the day for a directed not guilty verdict, saying prosecutor Robert Tapper had failed to have any of his witnesses properly identify the two accused in court as required by law.

Queen’s Bench Justice Brenda Keyser agreed, saying the technical error by Tapper was enough to sink the case. Since defence lawyers weren’t consenting to the identification of their clients, Tapper should have ensured the issue was made crystal clear for jurors.

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Tapper closed his case last week but fought the defence motion by seeking to re-open it. He argued no damage was done because it was clear to everyone the officers at the centre of the controversy were indeed O’Kane and Zebrun.

The allegations of perjury, which stem from an allegedly improper search of a downtown hotel room and the seizure of nearly a kilogram of cocaine and $18,000 cash.

O’Kane, 40, and Zebrun, 33, were arrested in January 2008 after they allegedly took an illegal shortcut to arrest a known drug dealer. The internal investigation of the officers’ actions started in November 2006 after the Crown stayed drug-trafficking charges against the suspect and an accomplice when questions were raised at a preliminary hearing about the validity of a police search warrant.

O’Kane and Zebrun are alleged to have lied to a magistrate about how they obtained the search warrant, which they used to enter a room at the Fairmont hotel and seize the drugs and cash.

When they testified at the accused drug dealer’s preliminary hearing, O’Kane and Zebrun claimed their suspicions about the hotel room weren’t based on an illegal "sneak-and-peek," but rather on the information of a mysterious informant. The pair told a judge they never entered Room 1707 at the Fairmont until after they obtained a search warrant. They also gave different accounts in court of when they first went to the hotel the day of the July 2005 arrests.

O’Kane and Zebrun told court the drug investigation began with a routine call about a disturbance. They found a drunk and disorderly Scott Guiboche and took him to the Main Street Project under the Intoxicated Persons Detention Act. The case changed focus when a routine pat-down search uncovered nine rocks of crack cocaine. The officers also found a swipe card for a room at the Fairmont.

Much of the evidence against the two officers involves a global positioning system from their cruiser cars and recorded conversations with a police dispatcher and court officials. A manager from the Fairmont is expected to testify the two officers asked for entry to the suite prior to obtaining a search warrant on the premise they were searching for a missing girl.

However, the manager was never directly asked by Tapper to identify Zebrun and O’Kane in court – an oversight that proved fatal to his case.