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Time of India
23-05-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
Team Canada sexual assault case: Defence ridicules ‘useless' witness as trial spirals into courtroom chaos
Defence calls witness 'useless' in the Hockey Canada sexual assault case (TSN/Twitter) The sexual assault trial involving five former members of Canada's 2018 World Junior hockey team took another dramatic turn on Day 16, as the defence sharply criticized Crown witness Brett Howden, calling him 'generally useless' following a day of conflicting testimony. Howden, who now plays for the Vegas Golden Knights, was under scrutiny for inconsistencies in his statements surrounding an alleged group sexual assault that took place in London, Ontario. Defence calls witness 'useless' as Brett Howden's memory questioned in Team Canada sexual assault trial Justice Maria Carroccia ruled that although Howden's testimony revealed some contradictions, there was no evidence he was intentionally misleading the court or pretending to forget. 'In my view at this stage, I cannot find that Mr. Howden is feigning lack of memory or is being insincere about whether he has a recollection of his earlier statements or particulars of the events he's asked to describe,' Carroccia said. The decision followed an application by Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham to cross-examine Howden under Section 9(2) of the Canada Evidence Act. The Crown highlighted 18 areas where his testimony had allegedly shifted, but Justice Carroccia found only four to be materially inconsistent. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Buy Brass Idols - Handmade Brass Statues for Home & Gifting Luxeartisanship Buy Now Undo Still, she stopped short of allowing cross-examination, deferring that decision for now. In a striking moment, Carter Hart's defence attorney, Megan Savard, launched a scathing critique of Howden's credibility and demeanor. 'The witness is plainly unsophisticated. He didn't come to court dressed for court [he had messy hair and was wearing a brown hoodie]. He is inarticulate and a poor communicator... I would say, if anything, we may all say at the end of the day, this witness is generally useless,' she said. Also Read: Is $96M Mikko Rantanen just a playoff fraud? — Stars fans furious after Game 5 no-show The trial centers on allegations that Michael McLeod, Dillon Dube, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart, and Callan Foote sexually assaulted a woman in a hotel room during the early hours of June 19, 2018, following a Hockey Canada event. McLeod faces an additional charge of being a party to the offence. All five players have pleaded not guilty. The case continues to unfold as the court navigates witness testimony and legal maneuvering. Get IPL 2025 match schedules , squads , points table , and live scores for CSK , MI , RCB , KKR , SRH , LSG , DC , GT , PBKS , and RR . Check the latest IPL Orange Cap and Purple Cap standings.
Toronto Sun
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Toronto Sun
Hockey Canada trial: Judge downplays concerns over NHLer's memory
Hockey Canada trial: Judge downplays concerns over NHLer's memory Legal arguments over potential evidence inconsistencies dominated Wednesday proceedings Article content Hockey player Brett Howden didn't return to testify at the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial as planned Wednesday, but his memory did. Advertisement 2 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account or Sign in without password View more offers Article content Article content Recommended Videos tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Hockey Canada trial: Judge downplays concerns over NHLer's memory Back to video tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Play Video Article content Specifically, legal arguments took up most of the day at the high-profile trial of five 2018 Canada world junior hockey teammates, without the 27-year-old Vegas Golden Knights player present, and centred on some of the answers he gave the Crown during his testimony that began on Tuesday. The Crown began making an application under the Canada Evidence Act to seek permission for cross-examining their own witness, suggesting that what Howden couldn't remember even after he was given opportunities to review his previous statements in 2018 and 2022 was feigned memory around issues that would be unhelpful for the defence. Crown attorney Meghan Cunningham had pointed to 18 areas of potential inconsistency, many of them related to Howden's earlier answers where he couldn't remember specifics of the events. 'His lack of recollection on those areas is not sincere,' she said. Your Midday Sun Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. There was an error, please provide a valid email address. Sign Up By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Thanks for signing up! A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Your Midday Sun will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Article content Advertisement 3 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content The defence argued Howden's memory lapses were genuine, considering the events occurred seven years ago. Defence lawyer Megan Savard pointed out Howden, who testified via remote link from Nevada, is 'plainly unsophisticated.' 'He didn't come dressed for court. He is inarticulate, a poor communicator, careless (with his) words,' she said. 'And if someone is deliberately feigning, you would expect a general trend towards being helpful, whereas I would say, if anything, we may all say at the end of the day, this witness is generally useless, but he's certainly not helpful to the defence.' At the end of the court day, Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia agreed with the defence. 'In my view I cannot find that Mr. Howden is feigning lack of memory or being insincere about whether he has a recollection of his earlier statements or particulars of the events he is asked to describe.' Advertisement 4 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content 'On more than one occasion, when given an opportunity to refresh his memory, Mr. Howden has testified that he has no present recollection, but was telling the truth when he answered questions previously,' she said and added he was 'effectively adopting his earlier statements due to his lack of memory' and 'not attempting to distance himself from his earlier statements. 'There is no basis upon which I can conclude that Mr. Howden is being untruthful about his lack of details,' she said. However, there were four areas of evidence on which the Crown could still seek to cross-examine Howden, the judge said. That argument is set to continue on Thursday morning. Howden, whose Las Vegas team was recently eliminated from the NHL playoffs by the Edmonton Oilers, was already a constant presence in photos and videos made exhibits before he started his testimony at the trial of five former teammates who were in London on June 18 and 19, 2018, for a Hockey Canada gala and golf tournament to celebrate the championship. Advertisement 5 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content Michael McLeod, 27, Carter Hart, 26, Dillon Dube, 26, Alex Formenton, 25, and Cal Foote, 26, have all pleaded not guilty to sexual assault. McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to a second sexual assault count for being a party to the offence. The trial, which has received widespread media attention, is focusing on what happened in Room 209 at the Delta Armouries hotel where McLeod and a woman, then 20, returned after meeting for the first time at Jack's Bar on Richmond Row when some members of the team were there drinking and dancing. McLeod and the woman, now 27, had consensual sex. But the issue at the trial is what happened after their first sexual encounter. The woman, whose name is protected under a publication ban, testified that unbeknownst to her, McLeod had invited teammates into the room for what she described as unwanted sexual activities with them. Advertisement 6 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content She was a Crown witness for more than a week. She testified to having memory lapses about what happened that night and being extremely drunk after a night in the bar. She also said she had what could best be described as an out-of-body experience – separating her mind from what was happening to her body – to cope with the unwanted sexual activities. But the defence has collectively presented a counter-scenario that the woman asked McLeod to invite the team to the room for 'a wild night' and that she initiated the sexual activities and invited the men to participate Howden is one of the first players identified in the Jack's dance floor security videos played during the trial and appeared to be the first contact the woman made with a player that night. The woman testified that Howden introduced her to McLeod while at the bar. Advertisement 7 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content Howden testified that while he was in the hotel room, he didn't want anything to do with what he described as her inviting all of them to have sex with her. He recalled the woman flirting, 'taunting,' 'egging' and 'chirping' the players when they refused to engage with her. 'Everybody was kind of in disbelief or shocked this was happening,' he said. At times, however, even after opportunities given to him by the Crown to refresh his memory by being referred to segments of his 2018 and 2022 statements to the London police and Hockey Canada, Howden had little memory about certain issues. The trial has seen its share of hiccups. Two juries chosen to hear the case have come and gone, and mistrials declared in both cases. The first mistrial involved an unexpected contact a juror said she made with a lawyer during a lunch at the Covent Garden Market. The other, made on Thursday, was a complaint that one of the defence teams were whispering to each other when the jury walked into the courtroom, which was perceived as them commenting on the jurors' appearance. The note to the judge called them 'unprofessional.' The defence team for Formenton denied any impropriety. Carroccia dismissed the jury on Friday and the case is now continuing on as a judge-alone trial. jsims@ Article content Share this article in your social network Read Next
Toronto Star
22-05-2025
- Toronto Star
Hockey Canada trial pores over NHLer's ‘lack of memory' about night of alleged sex assaults
The Oxford Dictionary defines feigning as 'the act of pretending or faking, especially with the intent to deceive.' A nicer way of saying liar-liar-pants-on-fire. It took nearly a full day of voir dire in a London, Ont., Courtroom — legal arguments betwixt the prosecution and the defence, plumbing case law and pondering as they retreated to their own corners of the ring — before Justice Maria Carroccia ruled that there was no feigning in the testimony (thus far) of a former junior hockey player called as a witness by the Crown in the trial of five former junior hockey players charged with a range of sexual assaults. And then they knocked off early. Because, you know, they have to give the next step in this interminable proceeding a good think. Basically, Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham had been vexed by the testimony of Brett Howden, a member of the 2018 world championship squad and now with the Las Vegas Golden Knights. She had sought leave under a section of the Canada Evidence Act to cross-examine Howden — her own witness. That is an infrequent but not necessarily rare strategy. Cross-examination is typically more confrontational and the domain of the defence. Howden's recollections of what happened in Room 209 in the early morning hours of June 19, 2018, were patchy in some areas and, said Cunningham, contradicted what he'd said in previous statements to investigators. 'Mr. Howden's memory loss is a feigned memory loss,' Cunningham told Carroccia in what is now a judge-alone trial, following a mistrial and a dismissed jury in the last few weeks. 'This is not a complete memory loss. He remembers some details but doesn't remember the details that are particularly damning to his friends and teammates.' Not that Howden got a complete pass from the defence, either. Itching to get their hands on him, I'd say. Megan Savard, lawyer for Carter Hart, described the witness as unsophisticated — goodness, he testified via video link from Vegas wearing a hoodie! — inarticulate and sloppy with language. But had Howden been deliberately feigning, then surely he would have tried being more efficacious towards the accused, said Savard. 'I would say, if anything, we may all say at the end of the day this witness is generally useless, but certainly not helpful to the defence.' Savard argued that, for the judge to accept that Howden is feigning memory loss would be to accept that the witness had deliberately decided to 'come to court and perjure himself for a group of men he hasn't really talked to in seven years. That's a pretty tall order.' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Lisa Carnelos, representing Dillon Dubé, pointed out that the Crown had met with Howden in Calgary in preparation for trial. 'They know he has legitimate memory issues.' Carroccia: 'As opposed to feigning.' Hart, Dubé, Michael McLeod, Alex Formenton and Cal Foote have all pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting a then-20-year-old woman in the hotel room after meeting at a bar. Their accuser spent nine days on the witness stand — actually from another location in the courthouse — most of it under gruelling interrogation by the top-drawer D-corps. News 'My truth': What we heard from the Hockey Canada sex assault complainant in nine days of testimony The jury has heard — in graphic detail — her allegations about what took place inside a London, Ont., hotel room in 2018. News 'My truth': What we heard from the Hockey Canada sex assault complainant in nine days of testimony The jury has heard — in graphic detail — her allegations about what took place inside a London, Ont., hotel room in 2018. The complainant, known only as E.M. — her identity protected by a standard publication ban —remained adamant throughout that she'd willingly had sex only with McLeod (the first time; there was allegedly a second episode in the bathroom later) and was shocked when he surreptitiously invited teammates to the room for a 'three-way'. The experience was so devastating that E.M. detached mind from body as a coping mechanism. She conceded, however, that she'd never said 'no', never tried to leave, and made sexually enticing comments to the young men, assuming a 'porn star identity' to make it through the ordeal. But, apart from the initial episode with McLeod, it was not consensual. That's at the heart of the case. Howden, who began testifying on Tuesday, is one of four ex-teammates thus far who've been called by the Crown. In the voir dire, Cunningham has raised 18 areas where Howden's testimony was markedly different from what he'd said in 2018, 2022 and 2023 in statements to London police, investigators hired by Hockey Canada — which launched its own internal probe in 2018 — and in text messages. E.M. testified that she became obviously upset when Dubé allegedly slapped her on her naked buttocks without her consent. Howden — who was in the room but didn't participate in the alleged events — told court on Tuesday that he'd heard a slap but hadn't actually seen it. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Cunningham countered by reading a text message from Howden to teammate Taylor Raddysh in 2018, in which he wrote: 'Dude, I'm so happy I left when all the s—- went down. Haha. Man, when I was leaving, Duber was smacking this girl's ass so hard. Like, it looks like it hurt so bad.' There are, apparently, two other statements in which Howden claims to have seen the slap. But at trial, he testified he has no present memory of the smack. Cunningham also raised Howden's testimony about a phone call he'd had with Dubé in 2018, in which Dubé asked him to leave his name out when Howden was about to be questioned by Hockey Canada's investigator. Continuing, Cunningham put it to Howden that Dubé said he was 'not happy that I did that'. 'I don't remember the conversation (with Dubé),' said Howden, who couldn't even recall who'd called whom. 'I just remember being asked to leave his name out of things.' The prosecutor noted contradictions in Howden's evidence of an interaction he'd had with Formenton in the hotel room. Court has heard that E.M. had led Formenton into the bathroom to have sex more privately and Formenton said to Howden: 'Should I do this?' But Cunningham pointed to a 2018 Howden statement in which he quoted Formenton as saying: 'Will I get into trouble for this? Am I OK to do this? Am I allowed to do this?' Cunningham: 'There is a material difference between 'should I do this' versus 'will I get into trouble if I do this'. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW In 2022, Howden told Danielle Robitaille, the lawyer hired by Hockey Canada to investigate, 'I do remember seeing the smack. That was drawing a line for me to leave because I had felt uncomfortable to that point. Once I had seen that, I just wanted to be out of there.' Cunningham: 'He's clearly connecting the slap to his decision to leave.' Further, Howden testified that E.M. had been flirtatious, egging on the players to have sex with her, presenting the complainant as the instigator. Yet he didn't remember other significant details, such as E.M. allegedly weeping and others in the room saying: 'Baby, don't leave.' When court resumed Wednesday following the late lunch break, Carroccia delivered her ruling specifically on the 'feigning' submission. 'In my view, at this stage, I cannot find that Mr. Howden is feigning lack of memory or is being insincere about whether he has a recollection of his earlier statements or particulars of the events that he's being asked to describe. On more than one occasion, when given an opportunity to refresh his memory, Mr. Howden has testified that he has no present recollection but was telling the truth when he answered questions previously. He was effectively adopting his earlier statements. 'He was not apparently trying to distance himself from his earlier statements. In fact, it is apparent he had a lack of memory in relation to some areas, even in 2022 and 2023. On the totality of the evidence, I incur there is no basis that Mr. Howden is being untruthful about his lack of memory in certain details about which he has been asked and I will not make such a finding.' The matter is far from settled, though. On Thursday, Carroccia will rule on the specifics of four instances where she found inconsistencies in Howden's testimony, from the perspective of memory loss over time and discrepancies in statements. Carroccia has yet to rule on the core issue of whether Howden can be cross-examined by the Crown.
