Note to true-crime writers: Watch your backs

By guest blogger Brian Brennan

The Robert William Pickton murder trial has started in New Westminster Supreme Court with 350 media types from around the world accredited to cover the case. Most of these reporters — including two former Vancouver prostitutes blogging for the so-called “citizen journalism” website, orato.com — are filing for same-day or next-day publication. Others, including On the Take author Stevie Cameron, are taking notes for the true-crime books they plan to publish when the Pickton trial is over.

They should be watching their backs. True-crime writers don’t have an easy time of it in Canada these days. Let me show you what I mean:

On January 18, five days before the Pickton trial began, investigative reporter Derek Finkle was in a Toronto courtroom seeking to quash a Crown subpoena aimed at seizing interview notes, tapes, and other materials gathered while Finkle was writing a best-selling book, No Claim to Mercy, about the Robert Baltovich murder case. Then Finkle was hit with a double whammy. The lawyer for Baltovich — who is awaiting a retrial following the overturn of his 1992 conviction for allegedly murdering his former girlfriend — announced in court that he too wants to see Finkle’s research material. An exasperated Finkle told reporters afterwards that if he had known prosecutors and defence lawyers would be going after his notes and tapes for fishing purposes, he “probably wouldn’t have written the book.”

In October, 2006, Edmonton police served radio station 630 CHED with a search warrant asking for notes, scripts, and other material compiled by reporter Byron Christopher while researching the case of a 29-year-old former soldier, Michael James White, then charged but not yet convicted in the second-degree murder of his pregnant wife, Liana. The police collected the materials they sought, and White was found guilty in December, 2006. Reporter Christopher subsequently made a freedom of information request to Edmonton police to determine if officers had breached his privacy rights by improperly accessing his personal information in confidential police databases. He is still awaiting a response.

In January, 2006, Hamilton police filed a court application seeking notes of interviews Hamilton Spectator reporter Bill Dunphy conducted with a convicted drug dealer named Paul Gravelle. Three months later, a judge threw out the application. He said police failed to prove Dunphy’s notes would assist them in their case against Gravelle’s younger brother, Andre, who is charged in the 1998 murders of an Ancaster criminal defence lawyer, Lynn Gilbank, and her husband, Fred.

Betweeen 1998 and 2003, Ontario author Stephen Williams was subjected to a police raid on his house, thrown in jail overnight, and charged with more than 100 offences relating to two controversial books, Invisible Darkness and Karla: Pact with the Devil, he wrote about the Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka murder cases. Most of the charges alleged violation of court-imposed publication bans. Only one of them stuck. Williams finally pleaded guilty in January, 2006 to a single count of breaching a court order by briefly publishing the names of Bernardo’s sexual assault victims on his website. For that he received a suspended sentence and three years probation. Williams says the whole affair has ruined him financially.

In each of these cases, the writers found themselves dealing with lawyers or cops who seemed to think reporters should be working as agents of the state, helping — not hindering — them in their efforts to put bad guys in jail. Cameron has faced legal troubles too. In 2003, The Globe and Mail fingered her as a confidential RCMP informant in a bribery case involving the supply of 12 European-built helicopters to the Canadian Coast Guard. Cameron acknowledged that she did share information with the RCMP — a practice common among reporters seeking police cooperation while researching their stories — but denied any knowledge of the police designating her as a confidential informant whose identity they would have to protect.

“I was surprised by their efforts to use me as a kind of research assistant,” she says on her blog. She hired a team of lawyers to clear her name, filed a formal complaint against the RCMP for allegedly making false statements that damaged her reputation as a journalist, and is currently awaiting a ruling from an Ontario judge, Edward Then, on whether he brought the administration of justice into disrepute in 2001 when he issued an order to keep Cameron’s name out of court documents associated with the bribery case.

Will Cameron’s publication of the book she has titled The Pig Farm, or the publication of other books about the Pickton case, result in further legal hassles for true-crime writers in this country? It is instructive to note that such journalistic rights organizations as Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, which traditionally have focussed on the problems journalists face while doing their jobs in such international hotspots as Iraq, Pakistan, and Russia, are increasingly turning their attention to threats to press freedom in Canada.

Brian Brennan is a Calgary author and journalist. His latest title is How the West was Written: The Life and Times of James H. Gray.