We can’t tell you whether Justice Louise Botham, who presided over the case, wrestled with whether to take the drastic step of shrouding the case in secrecy.
Note: This article was edited from a previous version.
An Ontario lawyer has been convicted of possessing child pornography and given permission to resign from his profession.
An Ontario lawyer has been convicted of possessing child pornography and given permission to resign from his profession.
It’s believed to be the first time that’s ever happened in Ontario.
But because of a publication ban imposed by a judge in his criminal case in Brampton in December 2009, there is almost nothing more you can know.
We can’t tell you why the ban was imposed in the Ontario Court of Justice, who asked for it or whether there was opposition.
We can’t tell you whether Justice Louise Botham wrestled with whether to take the drastic step of shrouding the case in secrecy.
We can tell you courts are meant to be open and this kind of ban is extraordinary.
But we can’t tell you whether Justice Botham followed principles the Supreme Court of Canada has told judges to consider when confronted with a request to ban publication.
We can’t tell you whether the judge insisted on seeing evidence that a ban was necessary to ensure the fairness of a trial and whether that justified infringing on freedom of expression.
We can tell you that Nadia Liva, the lawyer’s lawyer, told the Star by email that she and prosecutor Marquis Felix and Botham talked about a ban in the judge’s chambers beforehand and “it was agreed by all that the publication ban, in this case, was warranted.”
We can’t tell you whether Botham considered alternatives to a ban.
We can’t tell you the facts of the case.
We can tell you the mandatory minimum sentence for this offence under the Criminal Code is 45 days in jail.
We can’t tell you what his sentence was.
We can tell you a Law Society of Upper Canada panel felt it had little choice but to extend the ban to his disciplinary proceedings.
We can’t tell you what penalty the law society’s lawyers asked the panel to impose on the lawyer, or what his counsel had asked for.
We can tell you a bright pink sheet with the word “WARNING” is attached to multiple documents in the law society’s file on him, including the panel’s reasons for allowing him to resign.
We can tell you the pink sheet says the consequences of breaching the ban could include a reporter being taken to Ontario’s Divisional Court and the “punishment of that person in like manner as if he or she had been guilty of contempt of the court.”
We can tell you that’s not good.
We can tell you his disciplinary hearing took place in public, even though the media can’t say what transpired.
We can tell you his name is Howard Curtis Baker, only because the law society included his name on its website when he resigned from the profession.
We can tell you the Star’s lawyer believes we can report that in its Oct. 18 decision, the law society panel said “it must be strictly noted that, while this decision is a matter of public record, it must not be published, in the sense of publication in a newspaper or other media.”
We can tell you our efforts to find out what happened began when the law society sent out an email with a list of recently disciplined lawyers, which noted Baker had been given permission to resign.
We can tell you we contacted Justice Botham and asked if there was further documentation that could explain the reason for the ban and what it covers.
We can tell you she was quick to respond and tried to help, but said she strongly suspects what is contained in the transcript of the court proceedings “is all there is.”
“I remember the case but don’t even remember making the ban,” she wrote. “I’ll get a copy of the transcript and see if that refreshes my memory . . . let me take a look.”
We can tell you that last year, a Manitoba lawyer, Gary Dolovich, pleaded guilty to possession and distribution of child pornography and was disbarred.
We can also tell you that in keeping with a Law Society of Manitoba rule, that panel ordered that its decision to disbar Dolovich be published.
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