Maplehurst inmate abuse led to the collapse of a murder case. Other cases could be at risk too

The Maplehurst Correctional Complex is shown in Milton, Ont., on Friday, March 8, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

More criminal cases are expected to be thrown out in the wake of a decision by a Superior Court judge to stay first-degree murder charges against three men due to abuse they suffered at an Ontario jail, a legal expert tells CP24.

In his decision, released last month, Justice Clayton Conlan wrote that the Charter violations that took place at Milton’s Maplehurst Correctional Complex in late December 2023 were “akin to torture” and “an outrage to basic standards of decency.”

Conlan said over two days, on Dec. 22 and Dec. 23, 2023, about 200 inmates, including the three men facing first-degree murder charges, were strip-searched and restrained with zip-ties while wearing only their underwear.

Every cell was searched and “left close to barren” and for two days, the inmates were left without bedding or clothing, except for the underwear they were wearing when they were taken out of their cells, the judge said.

The actions of the correctional officers, Conlan wrote, were in retribution for an earlier assault on a fellow officer by one inmate. None of the three accused were involved in the assault.

“What happened here was well beyond mere excessiveness,” the judge wrote, adding that deploying armed and tactical guards to punish nearly 200 inmates was a “grossly disproportionate” response to the assault on a correctional officer by one inmate.

The judge also said some of the abusive conduct appears to be “systemic and ongoing” at the facility as demonstrated by “the continuing efforts, after December 2023, to get rid of or to withhold relevant evidence, to collude with one another, to give untruthful evidence in reports and to the CSOI investigators and to this Court.”

A trial in the case would “serve to perpetuate the wrongs that occurred here,” Conlan wrote.

“If a stay of proceedings is not granted, and if these wrongs are left alone, they will, in my opinion, leave an indelible scar on the administration of justice and continue to trouble us all.”

Prosecution will not proceed against the three men, Joseph Richard Whitlock, Kulvir Singh Bhatia, and Karn Veer Sandhu, who were accused in the fatal shooting of Arman Dhillon in 2022.

“The unthinkable has come to pass,” Conlan wrote.

“First-degree murder and attempted murder charges will not be tried on their merits. The victims of the shootings and their families and close ones will not see the proceeding continue to its normal end. The community as a whole will not get the satisfaction of having a proper trial on the merits.”

CP24 has reached out to the offices of both Attorney General Doug Downey and Michael Kerzner, Ontario’s solicitor general, but has not yet received a response.

‘I don’t see anybody getting a different result’

While many of the cases involving the 200 inmates have already seen a resolution, lawyer Boris Bytensky, the president of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association, told CP24 that any other cases that are still before the courts will likely see charges stayed.

“There’s a very strong public interest to make sure that the that the decisions of the courts are consistent,” said Bytensky, who is not involved in any of the cases associated with the Maplehurst incident.

“I don’t see anybody getting a different result, particularly because there’s nobody else that’s going to be facing more serious charges.”

He called Conlan’s decision to toss first-degree murder charges “exceptional.”

“Hopefully we’ll never see such a combination of exceptional circumstances, really, truly transgressions by the state authorities that are completely over the line,” he said.

Bytensky said there may have been a different outcome had the judge not found that some of the correctional officers, many of whom testified before Conlan during a pre-trial hearing, attempted to cover up what transpired.

“The attempts to try to bury and lie about Charter violations is a significantly aggravating aspect of what happened,” he said.

“It took a combination of egregious conduct by jail officials and a cover up, and arguably a cover up of a cover up, to lead to the stay of proceedings being granted.”