February 6, 2013 – 10:03am By IAN FAIRCLOUGH and PATRICIA BROOKS ARENBURG Staff Reporters
PDATED 8:52 p.m.
Nova Scotia’s justice minister has asked a federal complaints commission to review the RCMP’s handling of the case of a woman who tried to hire a hitman to kill her husband.
But Ross Landry told reporters he saw nothing in the RCMP’s internal review that raised any serious questions.
“What’s at issue for me is the public opinion and the perception in the public and that there’s a feeling of doubt or question and we want to put that to rest,” Landry said Wednesday.
“And if there’s gaps or anything in the process or service, we want them identified and addressed.”
Landry said he wrote to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, an independent agency, over calls for an external review. The calls, including three to his office asking for a public inquiry, came after the RCMP’s own investigation found it had done nothing wrong in handling Nicole Doucet’s case.
Doucet, formerly Nicole Ryan, was acquitted of counselling to commit the murder of her then-husband Michael Ryan in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Last month, Canada’s highest court overturned her acquittal, saying her defence of duress didn’t apply, but ruled it would be unfair to subject her to another trial. The court also criticized the RCMP, saying “authorities were much quicker to intervene to protect Mr. Ryan than they had been to respond to (Doucet’s) request for help in dealing with his reign of terror over her.”
Ryan shot back in a YouTube video as well as in an interview with The Chronicle Herald. He said it would have been clear that he didn’t abuse Doucet had he been called to testify. He also said he wanted a public inquiry into the matter.
The RCMP’s review found it didn’t ignore Doucet’s alleged claims of abuse. Of the 25 calls the RCMP received involving the married couple from 2006 to 2008, they laid one charge after Ryan allegedly uttered a threat.
The other calls, the RCMP said, were for civil issues like division of property or vehicles and a report that the family dog had been left outside.
Landry, a former Mountie, will not make the RCMP’s review public but said “the issues of domestic violence or violence are not the primary focus of the complaints … so making the assumption that there were complaints that weren’t acted upon may not necessarily be the right direction to go in.”
Nova Scotia RCMP said in a brief statement Wednesday afternoon that it “will co-operate fully” with the commission and will not comment further now that the process is underway.
Pamela Harrison, provincial co-ordinator for the Transition House Association of Nova Scotia, called the external review “a good next step.”
“I think this is about transparency,” Harrison told reporters. “And we want women to feel safe in going to the police and being able to make complaints.”
Harrison, whose group had pushed for an external review, said she looks forward to reading the commission’s report.
“Regardless of the outcome of this inquiry, both the citizens of Nova Scotia and, in particular, domestic violence victims will be better served by more information,” she said.
Liberal MLA Andrew Younger said he was pleased with the minister’s decision.
“The public wants answers,” he said.
In an interview Tuesday, Dalhousie law professor Archie Kaiser said the province needs to call for a public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the case.
“Looking at the three decisions from the courts that have considered this case, what emerges from all of them is quite a startling indictment of the criminal justice system in Nova Scotia,” Kaiser said.
“Even though the Supreme Court of Canada said (Doucet) was not entitled to a defence, they seem to concur with the other justices that she was not well-served by the criminal justice system and that she was not able to depend on the kind of police protection that abused women are entitled to.
“That’s quite a strong criticism of the way police and, I suppose, to some extent, Crowns deal with domestic abuse issues.”
Kaiser said because there is contrary evidence about abuse in the two sides’ stories, “I think there is an urgent need for there to be a thorough inquiry into what occurred in this case that relates to the quality of service the police provided for (Doucet).”
He said he thinks the issue has put a “cloud over the justice system in Nova Scotia now, and either the criticisms of the courts have to be confirmed, in which case we have to have a host of improvements in service, or, if it turns out those criticisms are unfair, I suppose everybody can rest a bit more comfortably with the attention that battered women receive.”
Nova Scotia has its own independent team to investigate, among other things, public interest concerns involving police. But Landry said he felt sending the case to the commission was the best option.
The minister said he was “absolutely not” passing the buck by forwarding the case to a federal agency.
“The RCMP have received some criticism — whether it’s fair or not remains to be seen — and there’s a body that’s designed by the federal government, that they support, that’s objective. And their job is to conduct these very types of review. I think it’s the best place to put it at this time.
“If something surfaces out of that, that identifies a gap or an issue that we had not been aware of or not considered, then it’s at that time to assess and (evaluate) what this province should take further.”
With David Jackson, provincial reporter
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By IAN FAIRCLOUGH and PATRICIA BROOKS ARENBURG Staff Reporters