Lawyers question fairness of same-day bail for Calgary cop charged with murder
CBC
Some members of Alberta's legal community are calling into question the treatment of a Calgary police officer charged with murder earlier this week who was able to get released on bail the same day he was charged.
"It's very difficult to get before a King's Bench judge on short notice and on the same day is absolutely unheard of," said Paul Moreau, the past president of the Criminal Trial Lawyers Association and a former prosecutor.
Const. Craig Stothard, 51, was charged this week with two counts of second-degree murder stemming from a May 29, 2023 shooting.
Online video from that day shows a slow-speed chase as police cars followed what investigators allege was a stolen cube van along Memorial Drive.
WATCH | Video shared on social media shows police vehicles slowly pursue a white cube van in 2023:
Police say about 45 minutes into the pursuit and after several attempts to stop the vehicle, an officer fired shots into the van.
Wesley Davidson and Levon Boyce Fox were both killed.
This week, following a two-year investigation, the Alberta's Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) laid the charges.
Within hours of Stothard's arrest, he was brought before Court of King's Bench Justice Nick Devlin where he was released with the consent of Edmonton prosecutor Jeff Rudiak.
"It's frankly amazing to see an individual charged and being put in front of the Court of King's Bench in reverse onus, double homicide within literally hours," said Jim Lutz, a senior defence lawyer in Calgary.
Last month, Lutz had a second-degree murder case where a man with no record waited a month and a half in the Calgary Remand Centre for a bail hearing.
"I'm not sure how we can justify two tiers of justice in this particular instance."
Kelsey Sitar, the president of Calgary's Criminal Defence Lawyers' Association, estimates the wait times to get before a King's Bench judge is about two-to-four weeks but "sometimes longer."
Both Lutz and Moreau say a same-day bail hearing in superior court could only have happened as a result of previous arrangements between the Crown and defence lawyers.
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