The search for truth continues

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on May 3, 2018.

Hatters may have strong views about a civil lawsuit that has been launched against the Medicine Hat Police Service, a local Crown prosecutor, and the Alberta justice system by a woman whose murder conviction was quashed two years ago.

It could, however, be the only route the public will ever have to know anything about who may have killed Casey Armstrong, who was found dead at his home on the May long weekend in 2011.

After months of investigation, local police charged Wendy Scott, also known as Wendy Herman, and Connie Oakes.

Oakes was convicted by a local jury of second-degree murder after testimony from Scott, who had previously pled guilty to playing a smaller role in the crime.

On appeal by Oakes’ lawyer, the verdict was quashed — she was not declared innocent.

The Crown had a year to lay new charges. It didn’t, with officials offering little more than a feint statement that they felt they couldn’t garner a conviction.

And that’s where it laid, mostly undisturbed until last week when lawyers for Oakes filed a lawsuit at the two-year deadline for making such a claim.

That statement alleges that Medicine Hat police were “negligent and malicious” in its investigation.

That has not been proven in court, nor has a statement of defence been filed.

The question for Medicine Hatters should be: If no one has been successfully charged and prosecuted for the murder, then why not and what is being done to rectify that?

Police work is no doubt difficult and perhaps for the public hard to grasp what is certainly a difficult science.

The Medicine Hat Police Service says it’s reviewed the case and have made it clear in not so many words that they feel they have rightly determined the culprit to be Oakes.

Perhaps, but the view from outside police headquarters could be that the case has back-of-the-filing-cabinet written all over it.

They have only left the impression that they feel they made their best case.

That’s likely acceptable for a large number of Hatters.

It’s a widely and strongly held belief that courts, judges and the legal system fall down often enough, allow the guilty to go free with little regard to common sense.

And there’s all indication that Oakes is a bad character, with criminal conviction before this case and since.

However, justice is not the application of public opinion.

It’s the search for truth.

The public should be curious about how we’ve come to the current state of affairs, where a woman’s claiming malicious prosecution. We should be hugely concerned there’s no apparent route to officially declaring who is responsible for the murder.

It’s been left hanging two years, unmentioned, unexplored, shrouded in all sorts of assumptions — the sort that after a while become as good as fact in the public’s mind.

Either Oakes had a part in the murder or didn’t.

If so, why couldn’t authorities garner a clean conviction for second degree murder, or broker a plea for a lesser charge, which has happened in numerous other local homicide cases?

If she didn’t play a role in the murder, then who did?

Oakes’ lawsuit focuses on the way police and prosecutors dealt with her during the investigation and trial.

It’s not likely to catch a killer. This isn’t the movies.

Perhaps the criminal trial was an unwinnable case.

It’s not hard to believe police are often handcuffed themselves while investigating major crimes. By definition, a criminal investigation involved concealed fact and motive.

The lawsuit asks if authorities did their job correctly.

If that or other outstanding questions are answered, we’ll only have this lawsuit to thank.