Shamelessly Evading Justice

Justice is sometimes hobbled by deliberate manipulation on the part of those whose profession one might believe tasks them to ensure that justice is done. But many within the legal profession seems to view it as a personal challenge to circumvent justice, claiming as they do that their primary interest is in seeing justice done, while cleverly twisting laws meant to protect people to serve the purpose of exonerating them from responsibility for the ills they visit on society.

It is incredible that the trial of Pembroke dentist Christy Natsis is still ongoing. But then, not everyone charged with dangerous and impaired driving causing death, driving with a blood-alcohol level well in excess of the legal limit can afford a high-priced criminal lawyer. "She was not required by law to provide a sample. The only appropriate result is exclusion of the readings in question", insisted her lawyer, Michael Edelson.

Arguing that the rights of his client were violated when Const.Ryan Besner terminated a telephone call a still-inebriated Natsis was holding in a windowless bathroom of a hospital, lying on her back, for forty minutes of back-and-forth with a lawyer other than the defence lawyer who is now arguing her case.  Const. Besner was concerned with the condition of the woman he had charged and brought on her insistence, to hospital and finally, after checking repeatedly, asked her to terminate the consultation.

Her current lawyer insists her charter rights were denied her; she had not been able to receive proper legal advice - that she could refuse to allow a breath sample to be taken as a result of the circumstances deemed to have been present at the time of her arrest. Those circumstances, the lawyer's assessment that the arresting officer could not conceivably have reached an adequate conclusion to warrant charges in the brief time between appearing on the scene and making the arrest.

A seasoned police officer who has seen more than his share of similar tragedies resulting in death, and assessing all the physical and circumstantial evidence is more than capable of reaching a swift conclusion and acting appropriately in a manner consistent with his experience and training and responsibility to the public. Yet lawyer Edelson insists that Const. Besner was not in possession of reasonable and probable grounds for arrest.

This is a conclusion that Christie Natsis herself quite agrees with. She had pleaded not guilty of the charges brought against her. That her incapacity due to having imbibed alcohol and driving impaired as a result took the life of Bryan Casey in a head-on crash on Highway 17 near Arnprior, on Mach 31, 2011 was clearly a figment of someone's imagination. Const. Besner ascertained that it was Natsis' black SUV that had crossed the centre line to cause the crash.

"The truth of this matter is plain - the accused made a conscious decision to break the law in a tragic manner, which left yet another Canadian dead at the hands of a drunk driver", said prosecutor John Ramsay, insisting that to exclude the "relevant and reliable" breath readings as defence lawyer Edelson demanded on an assumed Charter Rights 'violation', "would be a further blight on the administration of justice, after the Supreme Court has made it plain on multiple occasions just how reliable and admissible breath sample evidence is."

Const. Besner behaved in a neutral and professional manner throughout that fateful night of March 2011.  He noted the inebriated woman swaying, slurring her words, and smelled the unmistakable odour of her alcoholic breath, all together more than ample reason to hold her responsible and arrest her on the charges she swiftly denied. "She wasn't some kind of wilting flower in front of police", said Mr. Ramsay. She was, indeed, self-absorbed and demanding by all accounts.

And those accounts would be from the first-responder ambulance attendants, the other Ontario Provincial Police officers present, observers on the scene, including someone who happened to stop at the scene of the accident who knew Ms. Natsis personally and recounted that she asked for chewing gum, ostensibly to cover her alcoholic breath. As well as the observations made by the attending physician at the hospital.

This entire courtroom drama is becoming a justice-deriding fiasco. Demanding that observations made by the officers involved of Natsis' incriminating condition of inebriation, so evident to anyone on the scene, as well as the blood-alcohol readings, be excluded from evidence, is to make a calculated and cynical mockery of law and justice.

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Pembroke dentist Dr. Christy Natsis exits the Ottawa Courthouse with her lawyer Michael Edelson following the first day of her trial for impaired driving causing death.