An Ontario court justice has stayed a prosecution after finding the veteran Crown attorney in the case lost her objectivity and swore at and berated a police officer over his testimony, telling him that “we protect our own.”
Prosecutor Marnie Goldenberg took the stand to say she denied getting angry and denied calling the officer’s testimony “disgusting” and “pathetic” because his testimony didn’t support her case against a man accused of driving his motorcycle into another officer.
But Justice Mara Greene said she didn’t believe Goldenberg’s evidence because it ran counter to other eyewitness accounts of the tense moments in the Toronto court hallway, as well as a soundless surveillance video that shows her gesturing and shaking her head while talking before walking away.
“I am hesitant to say Ms. Goldenberg lied, but I was unable to accept her evidence,” Greene said as she read her judgement at the Armoury Courthouse on Monday.
“This is not about a state actor having a bad day and losing their temper. In my view, this goes further than that,” Greene said.
“In my view, an officer being berated by a Crown attorney in the presence of the officer in charge for testifying for the ‘wrong side’ and saying ‘we protect our own’ sends a message to the entire police community: you stay on side or there will be consequences. It is that conduct that impacts the integrity of the justice system,” Greene said.
August 2024 incident
Goldenberg was prosecuting the charges against 36-year-old Khalid Idris, who was accused of intentionally driving into Toronto Police Sgt. Brian Young on Aug. 7, 2024, while Young was on paid duty directing traffic on Lakeshore Boulevard.
Idris was accused of fleeing the scene, and disguising the parts of his motorcycle that were damaged in the collision.
A body-worn camera video captures the moments of the collision, where a motorcycle knocks into Young in the intersection before taking off. The video shows Young bleeding from a cut just below his knee. He’s later treated in an ambulance, another video shows.
Justice Greene said in her ruling that the court heard Young called his injury a “nick” and completed his shift.
Hallway exchange
Const. Edin Hasanbasic was called by Idris’s defence lawyers and testified the crash didn’t appear to be a head-on collision and that Young was not seriously injured.
It’s that comment that appears to have sparked the hallway exchange, where Hasanbasic wrote in his notes that Goldenberg told him his evidence was the most embarrassing and pathetic she’d heard in years.
“What am I supposed to do, lie?” Hasanbasic wrote in his notes, according to the ruling, and also wrote that Goldenberg responded, “We protect our own.”
Goldenberg, who the justice noted is married to a police officer, was not in the courtroom for the decision, and prosecutors there referred CTV News to the Ministry of the Attorney-General.
Crown attorneys ‘have to be held to the highest standards’: lawyer
Outside the court, standing with lawyers Elham Ellen Jamshidi and Peter Thorning, lawyer Alexa Bannister-Thompson said she’d never seen a ruling like that before.
“It’s a good reminder that the Crown attorneys play an important role in the justice system, and they have to be held to the highest standards to ensure that the trial fairness is maintained,” Bannister-Thompson said.
The judge also addressed an email sent by Det.-Const. Eloi Silva to the officers involved reminding them of the court date and saying: “Remember one of our own was hurt in this collision.”
Silva had said he only wrote this phrase to remind the officers what the case was about, but Greene found that he had already sent a similar e-mail with the particulars of the case and that the e-mail was “a direct message to the officers that this case matters because it was an officer – ‘one of their own’ that was hurt.”
“It is my view this was an inappropriate email to send. I further find that D.C. Silva then came to court and was not honest about why he wrote the offending phrase… While the e-mail is irresponsible, I cannot find that it is so egregious as to be an abuse of process on its own. In my view, on this particular piece of evidence, the cover up is worse than the original offending conduct,” Greene wrote.
