The lawyer who represented Umar Zameer is calling for a public inquiry into how police handled his client’s case and the creation of a new investigation by Ontario Provincial Police that cleared three Toronto officers of potentially colluding.
Defence lawyer Nadar Hasan panned the OPP report, saying it had relitigated evidence the jury had already settled on — and lambasting Toronto’s police union president and Premier Doug Ford, who said the judge in the case should apologize.
Hasan’s client, Zameer, was acquitted of first-degree murder by a jury in the death of Det. Const. Jeffrey Northrup, a plainclothes officer who was fatally run over in downtown Toronto in the summer of 2021.
The judge in that case called into question the testimony of central witnesses in the Crown’s argument — Det. Lisa Forbes, Det. Const. Antonio Correa and Det. Const. Scharnil Pais — suggesting they lied and colluded.
Over the past two years, OPP has conducted an investigation into the suggestion, which cleared the officers this week.
After the report was made public, Toronto Police Association President Clayton Campbell said the judge should apologize for suggesting the police officers lied. Premier Ford echoed the call at an unrelated event.
Hasan said the demand was a “Trumpian” attempt to undermine the independence of the justice system.
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“The premier who loudly denounced Mr. Zameer being granted bail five years ago has shoved his oar in to say that the trial judge ought to apologize,” he said.
“If this sort of Trumpian interference with the court process happened in another country, we would be laughing at the absurdity of it all.”
Legal observers and civil liberties advocates have also condemned the call for an apology as an attack on the independence of the judiciary.
“Judicial independence is a cornerstone of our constitutional democracy,” Adam Weisberg, president of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association, said in a statement.
“Judges cannot and should not change or apologize for their decisions based on requests from other branches of government or from witnesses in a case.”
Shakir Rahim, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s criminal justice program, said the calls for an apology are “wholly unacceptable.”
Hasan raised concerns about the OPP report before it was even published, noting neither he nor Zameer had been consulted.
On Thursday, he was deeply critical of it for relying on evidence the jury rejected, including details of where Northrup was when Zameer’s vehicle struck him.
“This case was decided decisively by a jury two years ago, after a jury heard all of the evidence,” he told reporters on Thursday. “We expected the worst from a police investigation into other police. These kinds of reviews invariably range from the inadequate to outright whitewashing… But what we got was far worse.”
Hasan said he wants to see a public inquiry into what went wrong with his client’s arrest and charging, as well as a broader look into the new OPP investigation.
“It’s scandalous that these sister police agencies are now trying to pass this off as either an independent investigation or one that uncovered new evidence,” he said.
Hasan demanded the release of all communications between Toronto police, its union and OPP during the drafting of the investigation.
“We need to now set the record straight about this so-called OPP report that was released this week,” he said.
“We are here today because we are witnessing a chilling moment in the history of the Canadian justice system.”
After the release of the report, Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw praised Forbes, Correa and Pais for their resilience.
“Their reputations were questioned publicly and repeatedly, their credibility was challenged and in the court of public opinion, some had convicted them,” he said at a news conference Tuesday.
“That is an extraordinarily heavy burden for anyone to carry.”
–with files from The Canadian Press
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