Umar Zameer and his lawyers walk away from the courthouse following his not guilty verdict, in Toronto in April, 2024.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
Lisa Kerr is an associate professor at Queen’s University’s Faculty of Law.
Two years ago, a jury acquitted Umar Zameer of all charges related to the tragic death of a police officer in Toronto. After the trial, Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy released a written ruling that contained her careful conclusion that two police witnesses had colluded and lied when testifying at the trial, while another was at least seriously mistaken in what she remembered, though perhaps innocently.
The Ontario Provincial Police has now released its own review of the conduct of those officers – effectively, an attempt to retry the case at the request of Toronto Police, this time behind closed doors and without any of the safeguards of a criminal trial. The report found no evidence of wrongdoing by officers, and suggested that the evidence of two experts that was accepted at trial was wrong.
Astonishingly, police officials and Ontario Premier Doug Ford immediately invoked the OPP report to impugn the trial judge, going so far as to demand an apology from her. The backlash to that demand has been fierce. The Chief Justice of the Superior Court has made clear that it would be both inappropriate and unethical for any judge to make the comments the Premier is demanding.
Here are the facts: After attending Canada Day celebrations in July, 2021, Mr. Zameer was attempting to go home in a car carrying his young child and pregnant spouse. A group suddenly stopped him in an underground parking lot in downtown Toronto. These were actually plainclothes police officers, searching for a suspect in a crime that had nothing to do with Mr. Zameer and his family. But Mr. Zameer panicked, thinking this was an attack. Attempting to flee to safety, Mr. Zameer’s vehicle tragically struck and killed police officer Jeffrey Northrup.
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Not all tragedies have a villain, but that doesn’t tend to prevent the hunt for one. Police laid charges of first-degree murder against Mr. Zameer, on the theory that he knew these were police officers surrounding his car and that he intentionally mowed down Mr. Northrup as he was standing in front of the vehicle.
Prosecutors are highly motivated in such a case to place the strongest available evidence before the court. A crucial piece of that evidence came from the Toronto police’s own expert, who concluded that Mr. Northrup was already on the ground, out of Mr. Zameer’s line of sight, when he was run over; a defence crime scene expert agreed. These experts testified and were cross-examined by lawyers on both sides in open court, as were police officers who collected and analyzed extensive forensic evidence.
Contrary to the Crown’s own expert and the rest of the evidence, three officers who were present at the tragedy that night all testified that Mr. Northrup was standing in front of the vehicle, plainly visible to Mr. Zameer. Their accounts supported the implausible notion that Mr. Zameer decided to kill a police officer for absolutely no reason on his way home from a family outing. The jury acquitted him, clearly disbelieving the officers. It was entirely appropriate for the trial judge to draw attention to the false testimony provided by the officers.
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The OPP review rests on an interpretation of the evidence that serves to confirm the officers’ accounts, which were rejected by both judge and jury. The OPP managed to enlist a new crime scene expert – someone who did not participate in the trial – to provide a different opinion than the Crown’s own trial expert. We have absolutely no idea how this new opinion would have stood up in court or fared alongside the rest of the evidence, but the fact that the Crown didn’t present such an opinion at trial is one indication that it wouldn’t have fared well. The defence expert from trial has already identified the unsupported assumptions the new opinion seems to rest on.
It would be one thing for the OPP review to be used to suggest that criminal charges against the officers, such as perjury, may not reach the high bar required for conviction. But to use this report as a collateral attack on the trial process – and to effectively suggest that Mr. Zameer was wrongfully acquitted – shows a disturbing refusal on the part of police officials and the Premier to accept the legitimacy of the court process, which is a vastly superior mechanism for truth-finding than an internal police review.