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CBC
26 minutes ago
- CBC
Judge's decisions in Hockey Canada sexual assault trial are Thursday. Here's what could happen
Social Sharing WARNING: This article references sexual assault and may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone impacted by it. On Thursday, Justice Maria Carroccia will deliver her decisions in the world junior hockey sexual assault trial — a case that dates back to 2018 and has manoeuvred numerous curves as it played out over eight weeks in a London, Ont., court. Five former players are charged with sexually assaulting a woman, known as E.M. due to a standard publication ban, in a hotel room in June 2018 while the team was in the southwestern Ontario city to celebrate their world championship win months earlier. Cal Foote, Dillon Dubé, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart and Michael McLeod have all pleaded not guilty. McLeod faces an additional charge of being party to an offence for his alleged role in facilitating the assaults. The sexual assault charges carry a maximum sentence of 10 years. The trial, which began in Superior Court in early April and wrapped with closing arguments in mid-June, was roiled by procedural drama. A mistrial was declared within the first week, and a new jury had to be selected after a defence lawyer and a juror had a brief interaction over the lunch hour. A second jury was discharged after a juror sent a note accusing one of the defence teams of making fun of the jury. Carroccia and the lawyers then opted to move forward with a judge-alone trial. There were numerous arguments and trials within the trial about evidence, witnesses testifying to not remembering certain things under questioning, a long and tense cross-examination of E.M., as well as protests outside the court by people supporting E.M., and others backing the players. At the outset, the Crown emphasized that what is and isn't consent would be key in the trial. Leading up to Thursday's rulings, CBC spoke to Toronto-based lawyers Andrew Furgiuele and Gillian Hnatiw, who are not associated with the trial, to get insight and their views on possible outcomes. What if all the players are found not guilty? "They're done. They are free to go and subject to any potential Crown appeal," said Furgiuele, a criminal defence lawyer. "Their time as accused people would be over and they would be moving on with their lives. "That would be the end of the case and the end of the road for the prosecution in terms of trying to get a conviction against them. They'd be free." What if they are all found guilty? "Then the judge will have to decide whether they will continue to be released on bail or whether they'll be held pending sentencing," said Hnatiw, a civil litigator who frequently handles sexual assault cases. "I expect that they would be released and that a date for sentencing would be set." What if some of the accused are found guilty, some are not? "The people who are found not guilty move on," Furgiuele said. "For the individuals who would be found guilty on that hypothetical, they would move towards sentencing. And then after the sentencing is done, if they wish to appeal their conviction, that would happen after that." Then there is McLeod, the only former player facing an extra charge, of being party to the offence. "I think that it would be possible for him to be party to someone else's offence," said Hnatiw. "And so he could, in theory, be acquitted of sexual assault, but be found party to someone else's offence." If there are any guilty findings, how would sentencing proceed? "There are guidelines that sentences are supposed to be pronounced, generally speaking, within six to nine months," said Furgiuele. "Realistically, by the time both sides, both the Crown and the defence, got all the sentencing materials that they would want to get together and time was made for a sentencing hearing, you'd be looking at a few months." Typically, before sentencing, judges will consider the background of each individual and their psychological states, said Hnatiw. They would also consider whether it was a first offence and whether the individual expressed remorse at the sentencing hearing. What if the Crown appeals? If the Crown doesn't like any of Carroccia's decisions, it has 30 days to file a notice of appeal, which would set out legal flaws in her reasoning. "The reasons are her roadmap, her legal roadmap as to how she made her decision. And those reasons are ultimately what would need to be scrutinized before either the Crown or the defence could assess whether they had much of a chance on appeal at all," said Hnatiw. "After that, it will go quiet for some time because they will be ordering and preparing the transcripts of all the evidence from the trial." WATCH | What we heard during June closing submissions at Hockey Canada sex assault trial: Closing arguments wrap at hockey sexual assault trial 1 month ago Hnatiw said there typically might not be any new evidence brought before a Court of Appeal. "They're really just scrutinizing what was before the trial judge and listening to arguments from lawyers about whether she got something wrong. You can obviously bring an application for fresh evidence, but that's a rabbit hole." However, Carroccia did rule to exclude some evidence from the trial: a text exchange between two witnesses described Dubé slapping E.M.'s buttocks, which the Crown fought to use. "If the Crown was to appeal any of these rulings and say that if we'd have been permitted to introduce this evidence, then the verdict may have been different, then they would be able to bring that before the Court of Appeal as part of the paper record," said Hnatiw. "It's very, very difficult for the Crown on appeal to get a conviction entered," said Furgiuele. He said the Crown would have to prove a significant error in the judge's legal reasoning and that the reasoning led to the acquittal. "Those would be the hurdles they would have to go over to convince the Appeal Court to overturn the acquittal and order a new trial." Hockey Canada sexual assault trial recap 1 month ago The sexual assault trial of five former world junior hockey players stretched across three months in London, Ont., before finally coming to a close with the last witness. CBC's Katie Nicholson breaks down some of the key moments and testimony. What if the players appeal? Like the Crown, the defence teams have 30 days to file a notice of appeal. "After sentencing is done, they would then go to file a notice at the Court of Appeal to signal their intention to appeal," Furgiuele said. "Accused people who are found guilty and then appeal, they have slightly broader rights of appeal. They can appeal questions of fact, so they can appeal that there's been a misapprehension of a fact, as well as all of the legal errors, or errors in a legal analysis." The statistics, generally speaking, are not good for individuals who appeal, said Furgiuele If you're in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911. For support in your area, you can look for crisis lines and local services via the Ending Sexual Violence Association of Canada database.
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Shackled, abused and humiliated: Report paints grim picture of life in ICE detention
Starving men with their hands tied behind their backs, forced to eat out of Styrofoam containers "like dogs." Women incarcerated alongside men and denied access to showers or medical care. Dozens of people shackled and left on buses for days on end. These are just a few of the stories documented in a new report on the conditions at three migrant detention centres in Florida amid U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. "I would say the key phrase that would come to mind is, you know, fundamentally abusive," Belkis Wille of Humans Rights Watch (HRW) told As It Happens guest host Megan Williams. The report by HRW, Americans for Immigrant Justice and Sanctuary of the South paints a gruesome picture of abuse, overcrowding and denial of medical care at the Krome North Service Processing Center, Broward Transitional Center and Federal Detention Center. The U.S. government vehemently denies the allegations, and says it is, in fact, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who are being victimized. In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assistant secretary, accused the report's authors of contributing to a political environment that's creating uptick in assaults against the "men and women of ICE who put their lives on the line every day to arrest violent criminal illegal aliens to protect and defend the lives of American citizens." Massive surge in detentions Since being elected to his second term in the White House, Trump has enacted a program of mass deportations from the U.S. Acting on a presidential executive order, ICE agents, often masked, have been conducting raids all over the U.S. and clashing with protesters in the process. As of April, 45 out of 181 authorized detention facilities across the country have exceeded their contractual capacity, the HRW report says. The detained include dozens of Canadians. The Trump administration has characterised ICE detainees as violent criminals. But ICE's own data shows that of the nearly 58,000 people in detention nationwide, 71.7 per cent have no criminal convictions and 47 per cent have no pending criminal charges. Some of the detainees interviewed in the report, Wille says, came to the U.S. legally under recently cancelled Temporary Protected Status programs and were arrested while attending their annual immigration appointments. Detainees describe being shackled on buses Wille's interviews with detainees at Krome took place in a small visitation room that she described as clean and organized. But each detainee she spoke to told her that, just a few weeks prior, that room was being used as a holding cell. "This was a tiny room with just a desk and two or three chairs," she said. "People were held there for a week or more because the processing cells were so full." Overcrowding, the report notes, is a major problem at all three facilities. Cells designed for 66 people, she said, are instead crammed with as many as 140. People are being kept for weeks in processing cells that are only meant to hold them for a couple of hours. Those waiting there, she says, are forced to sleep on concrete floors with "frigid air blasting." That's if they're lucky enough to get a cell at all. "Many of them were arriving at a time when Krome was so overcapacity that they were actually kept shackled in buses for, you know, in some cases, days," she said. "No access to a shower, barely any access to the bathroom, very limited access to food and water." Because of overcrowding, the report says women are being held at Krome, a men's facility, in rooms with exposed toilets visible to men in the adjacent cells. "When they asked to get access to medical care, to their much-needed drugs, they were told by the staff at the facility, 'We can't give you any medical support because this is a male-only facility. And we can't give you access to the showers or to outdoor spaces for recreation time because this a male-only facility,'" Wille said. DHS told CBC women at Krome are kept separate from male inmates and provided with medical care "like all detainees." Diabetes, HIV medications allegedly withheld Denial of medical care, the report found, is not limited to women. "I spoke to one man who needs four insulin shots a day because of his diabetes," Wille said. "He was given less and less access to his insulin and finally was stripped of all access to this insulin for a period of five days, and then he collapsed and ended up in the hospital." The report's authors also spoke to HIV-positive men who say they were denied their medications until the virus, long kept under wraps, became detectable again. This can't be blamed on a lack of resources, Wille said, noting that ICE just saw a major funding boost. Nor, she says, is it a matter of detainees falling through the cracks. "These are prisons that do have medical staff there. They have individuals who have diagnosed conditions, where they have all of this on record," she said. "Denying them their access to medical care, that is a choice." Forced to eat with their hands tied The same is true, she says, of the abuse detainees say they're subject to. Two of the detainees interviewed described being moved, along with other men, from one facility to another, and kept for hours in a transfer cell with no food, their hands tied behind their backs. When their lunch arrived in Styrofoam containers, the men begged the guards to let them eat. "But the guards refused to unshackle them," Wille said. "So the men had to, with their mouths, basically lean over and eat from these boxes on chairs with their hands tied behind their backs." In the report, both men described the incident as dehumanizing. "We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs," Harpinder Chauhan, a migrant from Britain, said in the report. The report says the abuses documented at the facilities are violations of international conventions as well as ICE's own policies. It called on the Trump administration to dramatically reduce the number of people in custody. But McLaughlin at DHS called the report's claims "lies" and said all detainees are provided with meals and medical treatment.
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Vigil honours slain Montreal girl
July 22, 2025 | The New York state community where a 9-year-old Montreal girl was found dead holds a vigil in her memory as police say she died by drowning. Carney reiterates he wants the best deal for Canada, suggesting the U.S. trade deadline may be fluid. And, remembering Ozzy Osbourne — the godfather of heavy metal.
