As usual, Christie Blatchford gets it right.
A front page story in the Tuesday Globe excoriates an Ottawa judge for remarks he didn’t make in the decision on the O’Brien influence peddling case. There’s another column that carries on with the same nonsense.
In his decision, Justice Douglas Cunningham assessed testimony from one Crown witness and found that the portion of her testimony on which the Crown was relying was not really central to the conversation she was having at the time.
Even during the portion of the witness’ evidence led by the Crown, there were sufficient variations in the statement to raise questions about her recollections. On top of that, the defence was able to demonstrate that, having had many significant events in her life at the time of her statement to police, the judge concluded that the witness’ “recollection of a brief, casual portion of her conversation is so imprecise that, through no fault of her own, I must assign it little weight”.
There is no reference by the judge to the sex of the witness or anything of the sort. There is nothing but a straight-up factual synopsis of the evidence, which is what you’d expect from a judge.
And out that, the legion of professional Irks has launched into an incredible pile of nonsense.
Shame on Toronto’s national newspaper for giving such crap such prominence.
But, as usual, Christie got it right.
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