(This column was published in the North Shore News on July 21, 2004)
Wonky juror causes mistrial in Ellard case
By Leo Knight
ON Sunday night the latest travesty of justice played itself out in a Vancouver courthouse.
Kelly Ellard was on trial for her part in the brutal beating death of teenager Reena Virk which shocked a nation. The case went to the jury five days earlier and by all accounts, it seems the deliberations began pretty much where they ended: 11 jurors saying she was guilty and one holdout saying no.
The hung jury resulted in B.C. Supreme Court Justice Selwyn Romily declaring a mistrial.
Essentially this puts the Crown prosecutor right back at square one, as though this trial never happened.
But it did.
And the evidence was, in my view, unequivocal, as it was for 11 of the empanelled jurors.
But the case was derailed by one lone juror who, for whatever reason, couldn't get their head around the obvious.
And an accused killer is now free.
The killing of Virk is a well-told story now.
She was a bit of a misfit.
On November 14, 1997, Virk was lured under the Craigflower Bridge in Victoria and beaten by a gang of teens, mostly girls.
She staggered away and was set upon again in the muddy waters and kicked and beaten and held under the water until she was dead.
Ellard, Warren Glowatski and six other girls were tried and convicted of the crime.
Ellard's conviction was overturned because judges of the B.C. Court of Appeal decided the Crown prosecutor asked inappropriate questions of Ellard in the first go-round.
In this trial, Glowatski, the six convicted girls and four others testified that Ellard took an active role in the killing.
Glowatski testified that Ellard held Virk's head under water and ultimately drowned her.
Not one witness or two, but 11.
Add to that the jacket of Ellard, covered in salt stains that in Ellard's own testimony she was unable to explain and the case seems clear.
Ellard bragged about killing Virk, according to the 11 witnesses.
All of them.
Several even described how Ellard told them how Virk's jeans came off during the final beating. Which, I might add, they did.
The defense pinned their hopes on the fact that some of the 11 witnesses had told different stories in an earlier trial or to police at the outset of the investigation.
For at least 11 of the jurors that didn't matter.
Victoria born author Rebecca Godfrey, who now lives in New York and has written a book about the case, has sat in on all of the trials relating to the killing of Virk.
She has seen the changes in the participants as they went from teenagers to young adults, some with kids of their own.
In a media interview Godfrey said at earlier trials the teens came across as "often defiant and detached and resentful of authority. This time all of them seemed more mature and adult."
In other words, believable. And they all told the same story of Ellard's guilt.
But try as they might, the jury could not come to the requisite unanimous verdict required.
In a note to the judge, the jury said, "We have exhausted all avenues of deliberation available and have reached an impasse that will not be resolved by any amount of further discussion."
I don't doubt that discussions in the jury room were heated and frustrating. Eleven to one at the start and five days later it remained the same. But at the end of the day, our jury system was unable to fulfil its duty and render judgement in what appeared to be a clearcut case.
There have been a number of mystifying decisions made by juries over the course of the last few years. The most glaring of course was the O.J. Simpson debacle in California, but there have been any number of others here in our own part of the world. The acquittal of Bindy Johal and company in the Dosanjh killings comes rapidly to mind.
I have raised the issue before and it seems time to do so again. Is it time to revisit the jury system as it is used in our courts today?
With this case as an example, it would seem the answer is yes.
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