"Armishaw was living on Hadati Road with then-girlfriend Kayla Lindeman, Jaydin’s mother, but was at work when the boy became unresponsive and was rushed to Guelph General Hospital in November 2006.
Jaydin died approximately two days later in a London hospital of what doctors concluded was brain damage from being shaken. It was unclear, however, how many hours before he became comatose that the injury would have occurred. The range was four to 48 hours, court heard.
Langdon said the case comprised largely of hearsay statements, some conflicting, by people familiar with the common-law family and its circumstances. Disturbing aspects, he noted, included changing statements key players made, whether Armishaw and Lindeman and her grandmother had motive and opportunity.
Police, Langdon said, were so focused on Armishaw they didn’t pay enough attention on significant inconsistencies in Lindeman’s pronouncements, even though at one early point she was a suspect.
Repeatedly, Langdon criticized Smyth’s June, 2007 interrogation in which Armishaw ultimately confessed as so “relentless” the man would have concluded “resistance is futile.”" (September 26, 2011 story);
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In a June 26, 2007 interrogation by OPP Det. Sgt. Jim Smyth, Armishaw confessed to what medical experts termed shaken baby syndrome.
That came after Armishaw repeatedly demanded his constitutional right to silence on the advice of his attorney while under pressure by Smyth to ignore that guidance.
In a video recording of his interrogation, Smyth is heard telling Armishaw his silence “will have negative consequences” for the man. Smyth said several times Armishaw must speak up to make clear he didn’t plan the death or he’d be viewed as a cold-blooded killer, like someone who robs a store and shoots a clerk in the face.
“To my mind, that’s a threat,” Parry told Langdon. “It’s a systematic and repeated attack (on Armishaw’s legal rights).”
“How else can that be interpreted but ‘My lawyer can’t save me?’ ”
But without reasonable and probable grounds for conviction in a case without evidence linking Armishaw to the boy’s death, the overarching drive was to get a confession, Parry told the court. “It seems to me this was an all-or-nothing ploy.” (September 22, 2011 story);
THE GUELPH MERCURY;
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"Armishaw, 26, walked out of Superior Court a free man Monday after Justice Kenneth Langdon launched a scathing attack on police interrogation techniques used in June 2007," the story continues.
"They were used in a grilling of Armishaw in which police repeatedly brushed aside Armishaw’s desire to remain silent on the advice of a defence attorney.
It amounted to a coerced confession, Langdon said.
“I have without any difficulty concluded that (a confession offered by Armishaw in that session) is inadmissible,” Langdon said.
“His statement was not voluntary,” Langdon said, noting police interrogator OPP Det. Sgt. Jim Smyth “lied over and over” to Armishaw about the strength of the evidence against him. Langdon said that likely convinced Armishaw — alluded to in the trial as a man of limited intellect — “of his own guilt.”
Prosecutor Pamela Borghesan said after a recess the Crown was not going ahead with the case.
“Mr. Armishaw’s confession was a crucial piece of evidence in the Crown’s case,” she told Langdon. “Without it there is no reasonable prospect of conviction.”
“I enter a verdict of not guilty,” Langdon said in the third week of a voir dire, or trial within a trial, on the admissibility of the confession and other statements from people interviewed by police.
Armishaw cried as family members gathered around him, also weeping quietly as the group left the court.
“(I’m) pretty happy with the outcome and that’s pretty much all I can say,” Armishaw said, on the sidewalk outside court.
“I’m thrilled for him,” defence attorney Craig Parry of Kitchener said.
Parry said he was pleased the judge concurred with the defence that the aggressive interrogation techniques, including implied threats and inducements, by Smyth went too far.
Smyth suggested in a video-recorded interrogation that Armishaw might be seen, without confessing, as a cold-blooded killer rather than someone who shook a fussing baby in fleeting frustration.
“The tactics employed are very dangerous. They run the risk of coercing false confessions.” That’s because offering a false choice might lead an accused person to wrongly conclude “there’s no way out but to confess,” Parry said.
Asked if the case would influence how authorities approach future criminal investigations, Borghesan said: “I can’t comment on police techniques . . . and every case is different.”
Armishaw was living on Hadati Road with then-girlfriend Kayla Lindeman, Jaydin’s mother, but was at work when the boy became unresponsive and was rushed to Guelph General Hospital in November 2006.
Jaydin died approximately two days later in a London hospital of what doctors concluded was brain damage from being shaken. It was unclear, however, how many hours before he became comatose that the injury would have occurred. The range was four to 48 hours, court heard.
Langdon said the case comprised largely of hearsay statements, some conflicting, by people familiar with the common-law family and its circumstances. Disturbing aspects, he noted, included changing statements key players made, whether Armishaw and Lindeman and her grandmother had motive and opportunity.
Police, Langdon said, were so focused on Armishaw they didn’t pay enough attention on significant inconsistencies in Lindeman’s pronouncements, even though at one early point she was a suspect.
Repeatedly, Langdon criticized Smyth’s June, 2007 interrogation in which Armishaw ultimately confessed as so “relentless” the man would have concluded “resistance is futile.”
Smyth repeatedly told Armishaw the evidence pointed clearly to Armishaw.
“That was a lie,” Langdon said. “It was meant to be a lie.” This squeezed the man into a tight corner, fairly or unfairly.
“He has no alternative but to own up.”"
The story can be found at:http://www.guelphmercury.com/news/local/article/600417--guelph-man-acquitted-in-baby-s-death
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SEPTEMBER 22, 2011 STORY); DEFENCE LAMBASTES POLICE INTERROGATION TACTIC; (Guelph Mercury September 22, 2011);
GUELPH — Kitchener defence attorney Craig Parry lashed out Wednesday at a police interrogation tactic against accused baby killer Cory Armishaw that suggested the man didn’t need legal counsel.
“It’s one of the protections that ensures our democracy functions,” Parry told Mr. Justice Kenneth Langdon in Superior Court, where Armishaw is on trial for second-degree murder in the November 2006 death of his girlfriend’s 2 ½-month old son, Jaydin Lindeman.
In a June 26, 2007 interrogation by OPP Det. Sgt. Jim Smyth, Armishaw confessed to what medical experts termed shaken baby syndrome.
That came after Armishaw repeatedly demanded his constitutional right to silence on the advice of his attorney while under pressure by Smyth to ignore that guidance.
In a video recording of his interrogation, Smyth is heard telling Armishaw his silence “will have negative consequences” for the man. Smyth said several times Armishaw must speak up to make clear he didn’t plan the death or he’d be viewed as a cold-blooded killer, like someone who robs a store and shoots a clerk in the face.
“To my mind, that’s a threat,” Parry told Langdon. “It’s a systematic and repeated attack (on Armishaw’s legal rights).”
“How else can that be interpreted but ‘My lawyer can’t save me?’ ”
But without reasonable and probable grounds for conviction in a case without evidence linking Armishaw to the boy’s death, the overarching drive was to get a confession, Parry told the court. “It seems to me this was an all-or-nothing ploy.”
Armishaw has pleaded not guilty in a trial by judge alone. The focus to date has been on resolving legal issues, using in part case law. Those matters include admissibility of statements made to police and circumstances surrounding the confession, which the defence maintains was coerced and the prosecution maintains was freely given.
“There are no inducements, threats, oppressive atmosphere or trickery such that Mr. Armishaw’s right to remain silent has been breached,” prosecutor Pam Borghesan said, adding the confession was therefore voluntary.
The two sides initially tangled Wednesday over the admissibility of expert testimony by South Miami forensic psychologist Bruce Frumkin, who said Friday that Armishaw’s limited intelligence and high susceptibility to suggestion made him vulnerable to the will of police interrogators.
In defence submissions, Parry’s associate lawyer, Kirsten Van Drunen, told Langdon those psychological weaknesses made Armishaw susceptible to making false or unreliable statements. Though he initially proclaimed his innocence, she added he was also vulnerable to police suggestions that the case against him was solid when it wasn’t.
Van Drunen said “Mr. Armishaw is more suggestible than average.” He was also “more prone to give in to misleading information and change his responses under pressure.”
She said Frumkin’s testing methods on Armishaw last June 11 are generally accepted by his peers in the profession, and she urged the court not to dismiss his testimony that Armishaw was “vulnerable to providing a false confession.”
But Borghesan said that while Frumkin acknowledged high suggestibility may make a person vulnerable to pressure, he wouldn’t offer an opinion on whether a particular confession was voluntary or false. She compared it to someone saying an animal isn’t a duck per se, but “swims and quacks.”
Borghesan added courts haven’t universally accepted all of Frumkin’s methods of assessing accused persons in the 600 American cases he’s been involved with. “In Canada, this would be a first.”
Armishaw, she continued, would have had a stronger desire to co-operate with the psychologist than police interrogating him in the months after the boy’s death in the basement unit he and Kayla Lindeman shared.
Further, she emphasized Frumkin’s testimony isn’t required.
“Juries are capable of assessing the reliability of confessions,” she said, referring in this case to Langdon alone.
As to Smyth’s methods, Borghesan said “inflating” the evidence against an accused during interrogations isn’t unusual or objectionable.
But Parry took exception to this characterization.
“To say it’s exaggeration,” Parry said, “is disingenuous.”
Parry said the point of the “lie” was to make clear to Armishaw that “resistance is futile.” Smyth, he said, told Armishaw the medical evidence pointed to him as the boy’s killer when this wasn’t the case.
“You know Mr. Armishaw bought it hook, line and sinker,” he told the court. The bottom line is Armishaw doubted his innocence, the attorney added.
“As a young kid, he lacks the tools to intellectually scrutinize the falsehoods being presented to him,” Parry said of Armishaw, who was 21 when the toddler died. “He’s buying it.”
And yet, Parry said, there were others who had opportunity to harm the boy, though police didn’t pursue those possibilities.
Borghesan said investigators eliminated those others.
“Police did have the requisite grounds for arresting Mr. Armishaw for murder,” Borghesan said.
The trial continues today.
http://www.guelphmercury.com/news/local/article/598198--defence-lambastes-police-interrogation-tactic
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;
