R V Bullen Observation Paper

Introduction

For the purposes of this assignment, I attended the court on three separate occasions. On February 15 and March 1, 2018, I had an opportunity to observe the criminal trial of R v Bullen. On March 2, 2018, I observed a criminal trial of R v D. D.

R v Bullen

In R v Bullen, the accused David Bullen, was charged with the drug trafficking and organized crime as a result of the police project Adelaide. This was a very lengthy and complex trial, involving offences committed across Ontario, involving several criminal organizations (e.g., Hells Angels, etc.), and testimonies made by various witnesses and experts. The trial is scheduled to be completed by the end of June, 2018.

Prior to entering the courtroom, I had to undergo another

I think that this type of order provided a good structure and allowed the Crown to control the flow of the testimony without the witness becoming rampant. He asked questions by using simple language, and he was loud, clear and did not rush. This tactic reminded me of what Lee Stuesser referred to as the “direct examiner’s three step” or “question, answer, pause” technique. It was so effective that Justice Labrosse did not feel the need to ask the Crown to slow down or ask the Crown to repeat the question.

Another approach which I found extremely effective was the fact that the Crown did not ask any compound questions and there was always one question at a time. Moreover, I think that this type of questioning was particularly useful in this case because the witness had a hearing disability to which the Crown alluded to at the beginning of the Direct Examination when discussing the

Genevieve McInnes. On March 1, 2018, there were the same attendees, with an exception of two additional under-cover police officers who sat in the back of the court-room and communicated through radios with each other.

The Defence counsel attempted to challenge the credibility and reliability of the Crown’s witness/police informant by alleging that the Crown’s witness left out significant portions from his criminal record when speaking to police. By challenging Crown’s witness, the Defence was brief and asked one question at a time, the questions were close-ended, simple and leading (i.e. “You would agree that it would be completely improbable to forget that you shot people?”) Moreover, the Defence built the questions factually so skilfully and smoothly that the ordinary witness may have been surprised that these questions will eventually lead to the discreditation of his/her credibility and reliability. This reminded me of the Cross-Examination principle “start safe and finish strong” which was discussed by Lee Steusser. However, the Crown’s witness/police informant appeared very well prepared and he seemed to have anticipated these questions, therefore he cited “trust issues” as a logical explanation on why he failed to disclose all of his criminal record to the police