Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Wouldn't this be perversion of justice?

Another question to be considered is whether Grewal broke the law when he gave the tapes and transcripts to the RCMP. The NDP and Bloc, as you'll recall, had asked the RCMP to investigate the conversations on the tapes after Grewal had revealed them to the public (see here).

If Grewal had given the RCMP the same tapes and transcripts to the RCMP as he released to the public, wouldn't this be obstruction of justice? Consider ยง137
137. Every one who, with intent to mislead, fabricates anything with intent that it shall be used as evidence in a judicial proceeding, existing or proposed, by any means other than perjury or incitement to perjury is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.
Now, granted, we don't really know that he did this. There were reports, if I recall correctly, that he had given the physical tapes, and not digital clips, to the RCMP.

But what of the transcript? That was heavily edited, as we've seen. And the fact that it took the Conservatives until June 5th to release a full transcript of the Grewal-Dosanjh-Murphy conversation, and that that transcript has a June 5th creation date, suggests that they did not have a better translation/transcription to release any earlier, with the suicide note released June 2nd.

They must have released something: on May 25th, Canwest (archived here):
Geoff Norquay, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's director of communications, said the party will consider releasing the tapes and contacting police only after the tapes are translated from Punjabi to English.
That translation obviously would have produced a transcript.

This all raises the question--what transcript did the Conservatives give to the RCMP on May 31st? If it was a full one, why did they not release it to the public? If it was a partial, edited one like the one foisted on the public, did it amount to fabricating evidence with intent?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home