Robert Baltovich
Sep. 24th, 2004 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Recent news in Toronto has Robert Baltovich's appeal going forward and gaining momentum. He was convicted of murdering his girlfriend Elizabeth Bain something like 12 years ago. The original case was mostly circumstantial (Bain's body was never even found). The appeal is mostly centered on the theory that Bain was actually killed by Paul Bernardo, then known as 'The Scarborough Rapist', who later did a whole bunch of really disgusting rape/murders, some on video, with his wife (Law and Order even did a 'Ripped from the Headlines' episode based heavily on his story). Today apparently the Crown (prosecution) had apparently misplaced evidence that partially supported Baltovich's alibi for the window they said the murder occured in.
Why am I mentioning this?
I was helping to prosecute the case.
Okay, well, not really. I mean, I was something like 14 when it happened. But in my last year of High School (or maybe the year before my last, can't remember anymore), I took a Law class, and a big portion of it was a mock trial. In order to make us do research, they based the mock trials on the real trials... most of them were decades old, but this year they tried somehing different and went with the Baltovich case, which was only a couple years old at that point. Our class was chosen as prosecution, another class took up defense. So, we got summaries of pretty much every news article on the topic (including later ones making the theory about Bernardo) and the trial, went through it all, and had a police detective who had investigated the murder stop by to talk to us and answer our questions. The teacher wanted me to be one of the lawyers on our side, since I was one of the top students, but I couldn't deal with that kind of pressure, so I was just one of many researchers and, (like many in each class) played some of the witnesses. I played Bain's brother, and a witness who spotted the car in the area that they suspected Baltovich dumped her body.
All in all it was a quite interesting experience. When we got to trial, it wound up being a hung jury. Still, my opinion at the time was that, although Baltovich was certainly pretty suspicious and there was a decent chance he did it, I didn't think there was enough evidence to cross the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' threshhold (although, I still wanted our side to win in the mock trial).
Now, I have no idea whether he did it, but the information coming up about the mistakes made is a bit disconcerting and looking like maybe he didn't.
Mostly just posting this for the sake of reminiscing.
Why am I mentioning this?
I was helping to prosecute the case.
Okay, well, not really. I mean, I was something like 14 when it happened. But in my last year of High School (or maybe the year before my last, can't remember anymore), I took a Law class, and a big portion of it was a mock trial. In order to make us do research, they based the mock trials on the real trials... most of them were decades old, but this year they tried somehing different and went with the Baltovich case, which was only a couple years old at that point. Our class was chosen as prosecution, another class took up defense. So, we got summaries of pretty much every news article on the topic (including later ones making the theory about Bernardo) and the trial, went through it all, and had a police detective who had investigated the murder stop by to talk to us and answer our questions. The teacher wanted me to be one of the lawyers on our side, since I was one of the top students, but I couldn't deal with that kind of pressure, so I was just one of many researchers and, (like many in each class) played some of the witnesses. I played Bain's brother, and a witness who spotted the car in the area that they suspected Baltovich dumped her body.
All in all it was a quite interesting experience. When we got to trial, it wound up being a hung jury. Still, my opinion at the time was that, although Baltovich was certainly pretty suspicious and there was a decent chance he did it, I didn't think there was enough evidence to cross the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' threshhold (although, I still wanted our side to win in the mock trial).
Now, I have no idea whether he did it, but the information coming up about the mistakes made is a bit disconcerting and looking like maybe he didn't.
Mostly just posting this for the sake of reminiscing.
