Capstone: reviewing the Bayview Pharmacy trial

On the last day of the course, Desjardins hands each student a copy of Justice Abernathy's reasons for judgment, delivered orally on Thursday, October 15, 2026, and transcribed. They run to fourteen pages. He asks the class to read them twice: once as a citizen, to understand why Shane Brennan was found guilty of breaking into Bayview Pharmacy and not guilty of possessing break-in instruments, and once as a police officer, to find every place where something an officer did, or failed to do, changed the result. Then, as in the investigation course, the class will review the case against a standard, score it, and decide what Port Ardent should do differently.

Kwan joins them for the final session. He tells the class that he reviews every trial he loses in part, not just the ones he loses entirely. 'This one we mostly won,' he says. 'But I want to know exactly why we lost the count we lost, because the next case might not have a fingerprint to fall back on.'

The reasons for judgment

The judge began by identifying the only real issue: identity. The defence had admitted that the pharmacy was broken into at about 02:10 on March 14, that the till float of 210 dollars and six boxes of nicotine gum were taken, and that the laundromat camera's clock was accurate. She then summarized her earlier rulings. She had admitted the first ninety seconds of the 911 call for the truth of its contents. She had qualified Grace Liu as an expert in friction ridge examination. And she had excluded the contents of the backpack because the search breached the Charter, and because, under Grant, admitting them would bring the administration of justice into disrepute. The roadside statement had not been offered by the Crown.

She then reviewed the evidence of identity. The 911 call described a tall man in a grey hoodie with a white wave-shaped logo on the back, with a bicycle. The laundromat video showed a cyclist in a grey hoodie arrive in the lane at 02:07:40 and leave at 02:13:05. The pharmacy video, corrected for its clock, showed a man of similar build in a grey hoodie with a white wave-shaped logo enter through the rear window at 02:10:30, go to the till and the shelf where the gum was kept, and leave at 02:12:40. Okeke's in-car video showed Brennan, sixteen minutes later and about a kilometre away, on a bicycle, wearing a grey hoodie with a white wave-shaped logo on the back. And Liu's evidence established that Brennan's right middle finger left a print on the inside face of a glass shard that remained in the broken window frame, in a place Whitaker's evidence showed no customer could reach.

Applying R. v. Villaroman, the judge asked whether, on the whole of the evidence, guilt was the only reasonable conclusion. She considered the defence suggestions: that Brennan might have touched the glass at some other time, that the hoodie was a common design, and that a man on a bicycle a kilometre away at 2:30 a.m. was a coincidence. She found that no reasonable explanation for the print existed other than that Brennan reached through the broken window during the break-in, and that the combination of the print, the matching logo, the timing and the bicycle left no reasonable doubt. She found Brennan guilty of break and enter and theft under section 348(1)(b). On the break-in instruments count, she found that without the pry bar there was no evidence, and acquitted. Sentencing is scheduled for December 9, 2026, after a pre-sentence report.

Scoring the case

The class used a rubric with ten areas, each scored 0 for a serious problem, 1 for a problem that weakened the case, and 2 for work that met the standard. Each student scored the case alone, then the class compared scores and discussed differences. Priya Sandhu scored the 911 call and dispatch a 1, not because of anything the call-taker did wrong by the standards of the time, but because the logo never reached the officer who needed it. Marco DiSanto wanted to score notes and reports a 0, because the synopsis was wrong; the class settled on 1, because the error was corrected promptly and openly before trial and the notes recorded Brennan's words accurately. Nobody disputed the 0 for the backpack.

# Class review of the Bayview case: ten areas scored 0 to 2
areas = {
    "scene examination and exhibits": (2, 2),
    "video collection and clock offsets": (2, 2),
    "911 call and dispatch": (1, 1),
    "detention and pat-down": (2, 2),
    "search of the backpack": (0, 0),
    "rights to counsel / roadside question": (0, 2),   # (Ontario, Ohio)
    "notes and reports": (1, 1),
    "disclosure / discovery": (2, 2),
    "forensic identification": (2, 2),
    "testimony": (2, 2),
}
for i, place in enumerate(("Ontario", "Ohio")):
    total = sum(v[i] for v in areas.values())
    weak = [k for k, v in areas.items() if v[i] < 2]
    print(f"{place}: {total} of {2 * len(areas)}; areas below standard: {', '.join(weak)}")

Ontario: 14 of 20; areas below standard: 911 call and dispatch, search of the backpack, rights to counsel / roadside question, notes and reports
Ohio: 16 of 20; areas below standard: 911 call and dispatch, search of the backpack, notes and reports

The two versions of the case score differently on one area. In Ontario, the roadside question was asked after detention and before the right to counsel, which breached section 10(b), and the breach was serious enough that the Crown chose not to offer the answer. It also counted in the judge's Grant analysis of the backpack, because it showed a pattern during the stop. Desjardins tells the class that the difference is not about which officer was better; Okeke did the same things in both versions. It shows how much the rules of the jurisdiction matter, and why officers who move between jurisdictions, or who work near a border, must know which rules apply.

What went right

The class listed what the investigation did well, and why each mattered in court. Grace Liu examined the scene thoroughly, photographed the glass in place with a scale before removing it, and documented continuity so well that the defence barely questioned it. Erin Bose measured clock offsets before exporting video and recorded hash values, so the video was admitted without a fight and the recordings could be combined into a single accurate timeline. Whitlock collected the pharmacy video on the first afternoon, before it was overwritten. The disclosure package was complete and early, and included the in-car video that revealed the problem with the search. Okeke wrote a supplementary report correcting his synopsis as soon as he saw the video. Liu reported the unsuitable till print and her limitations honestly. And every officer who testified conceded what was true.

What went wrong, and why

The class traced the lost count back through a chain of small events. Mrs. Shaw mentioned the logo twenty-one seconds into her call. The call-taker typed a description before she finished and did not update it. The dispatcher broadcast what was typed. Okeke stopped a man who fit the generic description, which was reasonable. He patted him down for safety, which was lawful. Then, unsure whether he had grounds, he opened the bag to find out. He had also asked an investigative question before giving the right to counsel. Finally, writing his notes two hours later, he compressed the pat-down and the search into one sentence. None of these was a dramatic failure. Each was a habit or a gap that seemed harmless at the time.

Kwan adds one more. 'When you are unsure whether you have grounds, call it in,' he says. 'Okeke was alone, and that was part of the problem. If he had told dispatch he had a possible suspect on Crescent and asked whether the caller had given anything else, the call-taker would have played back the recording or checked her screen, and the logo would have come over the radio in thirty seconds. Every officer in this room will one day stand on a street at night, not sure if they have enough. That is the moment to get more information, not to search.'

Recommendations

The class drafted recommendations for the Port Ardent police service, as they had in the investigation course. Desjardins tells them that recommendations should be specific, address causes rather than symptoms, and be realistic.

After the verdict

A verdict is not the end of the officers' involvement. At sentencing, the Crown may file Brennan's record and a victim impact statement from Whitaker, describing the cost of the window, the lost stock and the effect on his staff, under section 722 of the Criminal Code. Officers may be asked about restitution amounts or the circumstances of the offence. Either side may appeal within strict time limits, usually 30 days, and an appeal court may order a new trial, in which case the officers will testify again, and their earlier testimony will be compared with what they say the second time. Desjardins reminds them that the case file, the exhibits and the officers' notes must be kept until every appeal is finished.

Desjardins closes the course with the two photographs from the first day: the broken window at night and the numbered markers in daylight. 'Every piece of evidence in this case was gathered by people who knew it might end up in court,' he says. 'Most of it survived because they did the work properly. One piece did not, because of a choice that took two seconds. The rules you have learned in this course are not obstacles to good police work. They are a description of it.'