Victim Impact

by Mel Bradshaw

  Shawn’s party came through the doors at 9:55 and dispersed itself—his parents to the public gallery, his lawyer and Shawn to the table reserved for counsel. Shawn was paying no attention as yet to the prisoner escort officers, under whose control he would soon have to place himself.

  “Order in court,” the clerk bellowed. “All rise.”

  The woman in the wheelchair apart, all in the gallery rose, including her helper, the accused’s family, the victim’s husband and father, ten to fifteen members of a high-school law class with their male teacher, two girls—underdressed for late November—of an age to have been part of the class, but who sat apart, three reporters, and a couple of subdued-looking men, who might have been waiting for the case after Shawn’s to come up.

  The judge flapped his way to the bench. These judges never introduced themselves and were never addressed by name, so Godin had given them private nicknames, some based on the Seven Dwarfs, some on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Today they had drawn Happy, a blond pretty boy, and surely as young as you could be and still be a Superior Court judge.

  The first stage in proceedings was the Crown’s reading of the charges against Shawn Whittaker pertaining to the events of September 1; namely, breaking and entering, theft under five thousand dollars, and manslaughter. The judge took a good look at the defendant before asking him to say how he pleaded. The crucial first impression. Remorseful but dignified—that was how Shawn flattered himself he appeared and that was how he intended to act.

  He rose and said, “Guilty, Your Honour.”

  The plea was the signal for Eliot Szabo to rise and ask that bail be formally revoked and that Shawn enter the glassed-in prisoner’s box—where Godin stood waiting to receive him.

  “Chuckles!”

  “Quiet,” Godin whispered. “You’ve never seen me before.”

  Shawn barely managed to nod. Shock gave way to fear, a rushing fire in the blood. Could he ask to consult counsel? Straining on tiptoe, dignity forgotten, he tried to make eye contact, but his lawyer was looking down at her papers. Chuckles hissed at him to sit. Shawn could do nothing—except sit and think, Natasha had better demolish Ted’s statement.

  Next came the presentation of the Agreed Facts. Eliot Szabo, in black gown, stood at a lectern and read aloud in a clear, flat voice a white document stapled at the top left corner. Ten to twenty pages, Ted estimated. He had not been given a copy.

  “Sometime before ten p.m. on Friday, September 1, 2006, the defendant, Shawn Whittaker, unlawfully entered the family home of Ted Boudreau and Karin Gustafson located in the City of Mississauga and stole a computer and several disks. While the defendant Shawn Whittaker was in the house, Karin Gustafson returned home. Her body was found at the foot of the cellar steps by her husband when he returned to the house between eleven fifteen and eleven thirty that evening. The following are the facts and circumstances surrounding the death of Karin Gustafson and the liability of the defendant Shawn Whittaker.”

  There followed some background, an orientation to the Boudreau house, and details of the police investigation. The pathologist’s report was paraphrased imprecisely as having found “more than one” trauma to the back of Karin’s head. Nothing else in these sections misrepresented what Ted knew. Then came the defence admissions, beginning with a claim by Shawn that, on one of her visits to the Handy Buy, Karin had told Shawn that her husband had a new computer, and that from that moment Shawn had formed the intention to steal it. Ted did not believe Karin would have said any such thing.

  While in the Boudreau home, Shawn further alleged, he had picked up whatever CDs came to hand in the hope that either the music or the data on them might have some resale value. To identity thieves, for example, in the latter case. These were Shawn’s ways of writing the Dark Arrows out of the story. Ted had expected their absence and took it in stride.

  He sat on the edge of his seat, however, when Szabo came to the admissions concerning Karin’s death.

  “. . . The defendant admits that when he came upon Karin Gustafson in the back vestibule of 19 Robin Hood Crescent, he pushed her out of his way to facilitate his escape from the house. As a result of this push, Karin Gustafson fell down the cellar steps, striking her head against the concrete floor at the foot of those steps.”

  Nonsense, thought Ted, but he wasn’t alarmed yet. This story clearly wouldn’t square with what Nelson had told him of the pathologist’s findings.

  “Subsequent to Karin Gustafson’s fall,” Eliot read on, “the defendant proceeded to the bottom of the cellar steps to ascertain her condition. He raised her head from the floor to inspect her pupils and to see if she was breathing. On failing to detect any vital signs, the defendant was agitated and allowed Karin Gustafson’s head to slip from his grasp. From this mishap resulted a further crack to the back of her head on the concrete floor.

  “The defendant admits that pushing Karin Gustafson was an unlawful act. However, in pushing her, he did not intend either to kill her or to cause her bodily harm. His sole purpose was to remove her from his path and keep her from blocking his exit. He accordingly pleads guilty to manslaughter . . .”

  So four blows to the head had through legal alchemy become two.

  A cry of protest rose in Ted’s throat. Getting ejected from the room, however, formed no part of his plan. His outrage merely strengthened his resolve. He’d already written and distributed his Victim Impact Statement: it was too late for him to change a single syllable. And yet, when it came time to deliver it, his nerve might have failed him. Now he knew it wouldn’t. His sense of betrayal would sustain him.

  The last part of the agreement consisted of the Crown’s self-congratulation on having avoided a trial that “risked causing distress to the victim’s family”—at which point Ted heard stifled choking sounds from Markus. Ted hoped his father-in-law was not allowing himself to become too distracted, for the next sentence was even richer. “The defendant’s guilty plea and admissions are a public recognition by him of his responsibility for this crime and of his remorse.”

  The judge thanked Szabo pleasantly, reviewed what he regarded as the salient features of his presentation, and said that, in view of the facts admitted to, he thought the pleas appropriate. His Honour announced his intention of now proceeding to the sentencing stage.

  This was the point at which Shawn’s lawyer got to her feet. Her voice, despite the lack of inflection apparently de rigueur in officers of the court, was crisp and carrying.

  “Your Honour, we have been given a copy of a Victim Impact Statement filed by the deceased’s husband, Mr. Ted Boudreau. We submit that this statement is improper in content and should not be read in court.”

  The judge made a show of looking through his papers without settling on any one of them. “On what grounds, Ms. Cullen?” he asked.

  “It alleges facts not in evidence.”

  “Oh, I think you can trust me to disregard any improper material. I’d like to hear what Mr. Boudreau has to say.” The judge couldn’t have been more than ten years older than Natasha Cullen, yet his position allowed him a paternal air.

  “In that case, Your Honour, may I request that the sentencing hearing be held in camera? The allegations Mr. Boudreau makes could, if believed, endanger the safety of my client.”

  “Would a publication ban meet the needs of the defence, Ms. Cullen?”

  “In camera, Your Honour. The parties that would wish to harm Mr. Whittaker as a result of Mr. Boudreau’s allegations are unlikely to rely on media reports.”

  “Any objection, Mr. Szabo? Very well. So ordered.”

  Proceedings were suspended while the special constables cleared the media and spectator benches. Charles Godin reflected that Shawn must really have something to hide.

  The in camera motion surprised Ted less than, to deflect Markus’s ire, he pretended. He told Markus not to feel obliged to wait around, as Ted could take a taxi home. Markus was furious with this new lawyerly trick to test his patience. He sn
arled that he would prowl the corridor until the conclusion of the hearing. Ted had better be prepared to give a full accounting.

  Nor was Ted surprised when Szabo failed to oppose the exclusion of the public. The Crown counsel was full of sunny promises and unspoken reservations. He’d never had a jury verdict go against him? Of course not, because he plea-bargained rather than take a dubious case that far. Szabo would see to it that Ted got to read his statement? Yes, that was the promise, but he’d also collaborate with the killer’s lawyer to make sure no one was listening.

  Hardly anyone. Ted had already spotted, filling out a PEO uniform, a pair of broad shoulders he’d last seen covered in biker’s black leather.

  The Crown did petition successfully for Ted’s right to remain for the entire drama and not just be summoned for the part of it in which he was to speak. There was an air of untroubled naïveté about the young judge that depressed Ted even as it suited him. His Honour wanted to explain the mysteries of the law to his lay audience, which the lawyers had between them reduced to Shawn and Ted.

  Eliot Szabo was once again first to speak at the sentencing hearing. He said that the break-in on September 1 was a serious crime resulting in the death of an innocent woman. He dwelled on this without departing from the fairy tale account of the death already presented.

  “In the other pan of the balance,” he said at length, “we find that Shawn Whittaker has no adult criminal record. As a young man of only twenty-two years, with a supportive family, he is a good prospect for rehabilitation—providing we do not make the mistake of locking him up for too long with incorrigible criminals. It is with all these factors in mind that the Crown and the defence are making a joint recommendation that Shawn Whittaker be sentenced to a period of six years imprisonment. I would point out that, based on survey data from the nineteen nineties, this is slightly above the average length of a custodial sentence for manslaughter.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Szabo,” said the judge. “When the Crown and defence make a joint recommendation of this kind, it is my custom to attach considerable weight to it. Now, before I ask if Mr. Whittaker has anything to say, was there a Victim Impact Statement?”

  “Your Honour, yes,” Szabo said. “To be read by the deceased’s husband, Mr. Ted Boudreau. Your Honour should have a copy of it.”

  “Yes, of course, Mr. Szabo.” The judge smiled at his own absent-mindedness. “That’s why we’re in camera. Is it attached to the Agreed Statement of Facts?”

  “No, Your Honour, a separate piece of paper.”

  The judge pursed his lips as he pawed through his pile of documents yet again. Ted thought he might be looking for the standard four-page form, which Ted—as was his right—had not used.

  “Ah,” said the judge, “just one page. Is this it? Yes.” His Honour lifted the page and turned it over, with the air of politely making a new acquaintance he didn’t expect to be with for long. “Mr. Boudreau?”

  “Yes, Your Honour.”

  “Do you understand that you must read your statement exactly as it is written?”

  Ted said he did and was called to the witness stand. From here, he had a clear view of Chuckles’s face. It was a wide, cold face, wearing a respectful courtroom expression. Ted had been given more than he could have counted on, as much as he’d dared to hope.

  What he’d counted on was that the biker/PEO would learn the contents of Ted’s unusual statement, through courthouse gossip at worst. What more he got would depend on Chuckles’s skill at rigging duty rosters. Chuckles would naturally prefer to work Shawn’s sentencing hearing himself—no less to hear first-hand what was said than to remind Shawn to behave himself. All the same, Chuckles’s presence had been no sure bet. Ted had lucked out.

  At a signal from the judge, he read:

  “The death by criminal violence of my wife Karin has had a huge emotional impact. Without claiming that my heart is tenderer or worthier of consideration than that of any other husband, I’ll mention four circumstances that have aggravated my pain. First, I am by training and occupation a criminologist, which means I have been conditioned to believe that murder is a statistically negligible rarity. I’d have done better to prepare myself with the knowledge that it can happen to anyone. Second, some people don’t particularly value their life. Karin loved hers, including a musical career still on the upward trajectory. Her death is a loss to her and to all the friends and strangers deprived of the sweet strains of her cello. Third, some husband-wife partnerships are more affectionate than others. Some have gone stale or even toxic. I’ve never heard of, or indeed imagined, one happier than the partnership I shared with Karin. After eight years of living together and seven years of marriage, we were still head over heels. Fourth, and this is a circumstance I have told no one, at the time of her death Karin was expecting our much-wanted first child. Conception wasn’t easy for us. To reach this point, we worked through every medical procedure. Some caused Karin considerable discomfort, which she endured with nothing but gratitude to modern science. Now all her pain is for no gain.” Ted felt his voice starting to wobble; he took a moment to steady himself. “And I have lost my child and my child’s mother along with my wife.”

  Ted saw he had the judge’s attention. He forged ahead in a reassuring courtroom monotone.

  “If these were the only consequences of Shawn Whittaker’s homicide, I confess I’d be thinking vengeful thoughts. However, there is another side to the ledger. Information he has provided since his arrest inclines me to plead rather for leniency. Shawn Whittaker’s tips enabled police to raid the Dark Arrows’ clubhouse and ecstasy lab last Thursday . . .”

  Ted looked up just in time to see Chuckles shift his considerable weight on his wooden chair and draw back his broad jaw in surprise. It was unlikely anyone else noticed, however, for Shawn was conveniently creating a distraction.

  “That’s a lie, Judge,” he called out, jumping to his feet. Because Ted’s statement had been provided in advance to his lawyer, Shawn was not blindsided as Chuckles was, but was simply panicking. How could he let a slur so damning go unchallenged? Especially when a goon from the brotherhood he was accused of ratting on was sitting not a metre to his right.

  Chuckles glared at him savagely.

  “Mr. Whittaker,” remonstrated the judge, “we do not heckle in a court of law. You are represented here by counsel, who may request the opportunity to cross-examine Mr. Boudreau when he is finished reading. In addition, you will have an opportunity to speak for yourself before sentence is passed. Please continue, Mr. Boudreau.”

  “. . . Shawn Whittaker has no doubt saved the lives of some teenagers that attend raves and are tempted to experiment with drugs. These lives should be weighed in the scale against the lives of my wife and child. Shawn has impressed me as someone who is not destined for a long life of crime. Although I know I am not supposed to make sentencing recommendations, my heart tells me that justice would best be served by a short custodial sentence for Shawn Whittaker.”

  During the latter part of this statement, Natasha Cullen had been softly tapping her teeth with a yellow stick pen. Now she got to her feet with it still in her hand.

  “Your Honour, Mr. Boudreau has introduced facts not in evidence. I’d like the opportunity to cross-examine him.”

  “By all means.”

  “Under oath, Your Honour.”

  The judge raised no objection, and Ted was duly sworn. His mouth was dry. This wasn’t something he’d expected, but he didn’t despair of keeping his head. He was plainly less rattled than Shawn.

  The person from whom Ted would have had the most to fear was dead. Ted’s story made sense only if Scar had leaked gang secrets to Shawn. Was it, Ted wondered, too much to hope that Chuckles had resented Scar’s position of authority within the gang and would be happy to believe that the enforcer of discretion had himself been indiscreet?

  “Mr. Boudreau—” Natasha Cullen addressed Ted for the first time, her voice flat and bored-sounding. “What make
s you think that Shawn Whittaker is the source of the tips used by police in their raids on the Dark Arrows?”

  “He told me.”

  “You mean he told you he’d tipped off the police? Because none of the officers he spoke to heard anything like that from him.”

  “No, I mean he told me, and I passed the information on to Detective Nelson.”

  “Why would—no, how would my client have any knowledge of where these two facilities of the Dark Arrows Motorcycle Club were located?”

  “The break-in Shawn committed,” said Ted, “was instigated by the Dark Arrows.”

  “That is not in the Agreed Statement of Facts, Mr. Boudreau.”

  “Nevertheless. He was paid for his services in part with the ecstasy tablets found on him in Niagara Falls. A gang member named Scar Hollister approached Shawn Whittaker at the gas bar/convenience store his family runs and recruited him for the job. Shawn became a friend of the club and was entrusted with certain information.”

  “Not true,” Shawn yelped.

  Chuckles leaped up and, unlocking the prisoner’s box, cast a questioning look at the judge. His Honour shook his head, waved the PEO back to his seat, and bestowed a kindly smile on Shawn.

  “Mr. Whittaker,” he said, “your behaviour strikes me as perverse. Mr. Boudreau is not seeking to malign you. On the contrary. And yet you are reacting as if you were being slandered. The only explanation I can find is that you fear some reprisal from members of this motorcycle gang. If so, rest easy. At your counsel’s request, we are in camera here. There is no one present that wishes you harm. Now please contain yourself. I wouldn’t want to have to ask the constables to remove you from the courtroom, but you have had your last warning.”