14-05-2025
Woman's testimony ends after 9 gruelling days of questions at world juniors sex assault trial
A little context on the importance of the Crown's re-examination today.
We turned to Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer Annamaria Enenajor, who isn't connected to the world juniors case but spoke generally on re-examination.
Enenajor says it's done by the Crown and generally has three purposes.
'One is to rehabilitate a witness's credibility. The second is to clarify evidence that's been elicited in cross-examination that may have come out a little bit unclear or may have made the witness look worse than she actually is. And the third is to elaborate or contextualize evidence that came up for the first time in cross-examination.' she explains.
Enenajor says 'the stakes are huge.'
'Here we have a case where we have a witness who has withstood cross-examination for seven days, five different counsel, very skilled cross-examiners, each advancing their own theory of their client's innocence.'
Enenajor says it is incredibly challenging to try to poke holes in the defence theories of five different legal teams.
(A reminder that each of the accused men in this trial has his own team of lawyers).
