Poison (46 page)

On Tuesday, September 24, 2002, less than a week before the trial, Korol, Dhinsa, Leitch, and Bentham met for lunch in downtown Hamilton. They had become friends. And the game was on again. It was Korol’s day off. The afternoon was warm and sunny, he wore casual tan pants and a patterned beige short-sleeved shirt that hugged his arms and shoulders. He reached into a kit bag, pulled out a piece of dark plastic, then slid it onto the table. It was a hospital X-ray of what looked like a skull. And that thing wedged in the back?

“Yeah, it’s an arrow,” Korol said. “The guy took it right in the back of the head.” And? “He survived, actually. Doctor said it wedged exactly along the line that he would normally cut if he was performing brain surgery. Any other spot, and the guy’s dead. As it is, the doctor just removed it and sewed him up. No problem.”

Korol had worked on the case. The victim had been sleeping and his buddy, horsing around with a crossbow, had aimed at him. Whap, right in the head. The buddy fled the scene. It didn’t take Korol long to find him. Again he picked up the X-ray. “I thought I’d mount it, put a light behind or something,” he said, grinning, as though talking of decorating with a potted plant. “Make a nice conversation piece.”

Jury selection began the following week in St. Catharines. About 80 people were in the room before the judge. He told them that in addition to the usual reasons a potential juror might be excused from serving, he wanted anyone who knew details of the Dhillon case through the media to identify themselves. One man said he had read about the case in the papers.

“Will it impact your ability to be impartial?” Glithero said.

“It might, yes,” said the man.

“You are excused.”

In the age of the Internet, it seemed a naive exercise. Any potential juror could discover the facts about Dhillon simply by typing his name online. All it would take was for a juror to walk one block from the courthouse, sit down at one of seven computer terminals on the second floor of the St. Catharines Public Library—no membership card necessary—type “Sukhwinder Dhillon” into the Google search engine and learn in seconds that Dhillon had been convicted of poisoning his wife last July. The Crown lawyers and the detectives knew how easy that would be. Warren Korol, wearing an emerald-green sport coat he had made to order by Raymond’s of India, watched the lawyers pick the jurors.

“We’re leaning toward picking anyone that has Internet access,” he cracked.

Before the murder trial began, the man whose actions had led to the mistrial had his own day in court. Rai Singh Toor, Kushpreet’s father, had been charged with obstruction of justice. Rai entered court, his narrow face ridged with creases. He wore slippers the color of tarnished gold. He kept his bony hands folded over his chest, as though soothing a burning heart. He looked frail, but the black and gray tangle of his beard, black turban, and dark, deep-set eyes gave him an angry, intense aura. The impostors from the mistrial fiasco had been tried and found guilty under the Immigration Act of using false or improperly obtained documents to enter Canada, and of obstructing justice. They had been sentenced to two years in jail and ordered deported to India on their release.

The case against Rai Singh seemed open and shut. John Abrams, a tall, lean defense lawyer, was calling no witnesses. But then nothing to do with Rai Singh ever seemed certain. Korol sat in the gallery, reviewing his notes. A Crown named Toni Skarica prosecuted Rai. John Abrams knew he was in tough. During a break in the proceeding, Skarica noticed a stack of books on the desk in front of Abrams.

“What is that, a stack of Bibles for your client to swear on?” Skarica quipped.

“I fear it will take more than that,” Adams shot back.

Rai Singh’s trial lasted barely two and a half days. Abrams argued that Rai had not willfully obstructed justice. He was merely trying to make sure the prosecution had all the witnesses it needed. But Skarica said Rai’s actions—and more important what resulted from them—were too much. “The accused caused a mistrial in the double murder trial after two and half months of evidence,” Skarica said. “And as a direct result of his actions, the Crown lost significant, cogent, compelling evidence on the most serious crime in our justice system.”

Justice David Crane rendered his verdict: guilty. Rai Singh’s wife, Daljit, and his daughter were in the courtroom. Daljit moaned, then began crying. Rai Singh stared with intensity, but no sorrow.

A few weeks later, Rai Singh appeared again before the judge, this time for sentencing. “Mr. Toor’s intention was to commit perjury and arrange others to commit perjury,” Crane said. As he spoke, Rai Singh checked the time on the clock on the wall.

The judge sentenced him to three years in prison, after which he would be deported to India. It was the ultimate punishment for a man who so badly wanted to get into Canada. For a case in which coercion or intimidation were not factors, three years was the longest sentence for obstruction of justice in Canadian history. He was led away in shackles. Daljit rose, turned to leave court, and saw Kevin Dhinsa. She pressed the palms of her hands together in the traditional Indian sign of greeting and respect, and nodded her head. Dhinsa looked at her and said nothing.

Inside the Crown attorneys’ temporary war room in the St. Catharines courthouse were the boxes of evidence in the five-year legal battle against Dhillon. They had labels like Ranjit Medical, CFS, Cause of Death, and Forensic Testing. They posted photos on the wall. There was a golf scorecard with a message in blue ink for Brent Bentham that said, “Good luck Brent v. Dhillon.” Dhinsa taped a sign on the back of the door: “Brentdeep Singh Bentham/ Anthonywinder Singh Leitch.” In contrast to the Crown’s club-house,
and as if to underscore his inherent disadvantage in this second campaign to convince a jury to acquit Dhillon, defense lawyer Russell Silverstein had a modestly proportioned office just outside the courtroom. Silverstein was acting alone, with no junior counsel. Apple Newton-Smith, who had assisted in Dhillon’s first trial, had moved on to other cases.

Dhillon entered the courtroom in an olive-colored suit he would wear for the entire trial with a red and black square-patterned shirt underneath. His gray hair was shaved tight at the back and sides to reveal rolls of flesh on the back of his thick neck. It was Monday, October 7, 2002.

Korol, his laptop open, looked out over the top of his half glasses. In his suitcase was a book titled Great American Speeches. He was up to U.S. president Harry S. Truman’s address after the dropping of the atomic bomb. At times during breaks in the trial, Dhinsa worked on a Tom Clancy novel or checked his PalmPilot, allowing himself the pleasure of glancing at the photos of his infant son he had saved on the screen.

Silverstein asked that Dhillon’s shackles be removed for the trial. Judge Glithero agreed. A police guard unlocked the handcuffs and slid them off, then Dhillon bent forward so he could remove the ankle locks.

“Mr. Silverstein,” intoned the court registrar. “Is that Mr. Sukhwinder Dhillon in the box?”

“It is.”

“Mr. Sukhwinder Singh Dhillon is accused of committing murder in the first degree of Mr. Ranjit Singh Khela by poisoning. How do you plead?” Translator Neeta Johar started to repeat the question in Punjabi to Dhillon, but he understood.

“Not guilty,” he said to her in English, and the translator repeated his plea.

In the prisoner’s box, Dhillon rubbed his right thumb with his left, rocked in his seat, looked at the jury with no expression on his face, his eyes vacant. Glithero instructed the jurors. They must find a verdict based on the evidence. The accused, Mr. Dhillon, is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The Crown must prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“That means Mr. Dhillon cannot be probably guilty, or likely guilty. Or guilty on a balance of probabilities. Absolute certainty is impossible,” but the jury must be sure he committed the murder in order to convict him.

The unspoken issue of Dhillon’s track record was the shaky foundation on which the trial rested. The accused was a convicted murderer, but the jurors could not find out about it. “Avoid all media,” Glithero told the jury. “Discuss the case with no one.” In the American justice system, the judge noted, jurors routinely hear information not germane to the case. The judge asks the jury to disregard this statement or that. “In our system, if there’s something you ought not to hear, you won’t hear it. Please do not do any research on your own or investigating on your own into this case.”

Dhillon bristled as he watched Dhinsa walk to the front of the courtroom, sit at the desk, and aid the computer slide presentation from Tony Leitch. Intentional or not, Dhinsa’s presence in front of the jury was a smart move by the Crown. Show the jurors that this is not a case of ganging up on an East Indian. Show that one of the investigators is himself of Indian background. Leitch went through his opening address, recounting Dhillon’s dealings with Ranjit Khela and Ranjit’s death. Leitch repeated the phrase Bentham had used in Kitchener.

“This is a case of murder for money.”

Dhillon mumbled under his breath in Punjabi as Leitch spoke. “This is not an episode of
Law and Order
,” continued Leitch, “but I ask that you pay attention as closely as possible.”

Russell Silverstein sat back reflectively in his chair, left leg crossed over right, the tip of one arm of his glasses between his teeth. He knew he had a better shot this time. He could offer the jury another suspect. There had been no such alternative in the first trial. And he had a new tactic to convince the jury his client was innocent.

Dhillon’s conviction for the murder of Parvesh loomed over the trial every day. As the parade of Crown witnesses took the stand, everyone in the know in court was mindful of what might slip out. Judge Glithero seemed to lean in his seat in anticipation whenever a witness spoke. What if they uttered her name, just by accident? He worried about a mistrial. It could happen any time. Three times during the trial the interpreter asked Glithero to excuse the jury when a Punjabi-speaking witness was testifying. The witness had been speaking about Parvesh and Dhillon. So she did not repeat in English what was being said.

Silverstein, in turn, had to be cautious not to hint at any suspects other than Lakhwinder, or suggest that she had special access to strychnine that Dhillon did not. If he did, the Crown could pounce and introduce the Parvesh murder. Game over. “We need to ensure,” Leitch said to Glithero, with the jury out of the room, “that the cat is not let out of the bag—at least not until Mr. Silverstein decides it should be let out.”

In the absence of the jury, the debate over disclosing slices of Dhillon’s past to the jury was an ongoing one among the lawyers. During a lunch break, Silverstein and Leitch argued about disclosing Dhillon’s finances. Dhillon had received more than $200,000 in life insurance after Parvesh’s death. Leitch wanted the jury to hear about the payoff, even though he couldn’t say exactly where it came from. He wanted to say it was found money, insurance benefit money, cash that Dhillon wasted.

“I want to shine the light on that,” Leitch said, “that he pissed this money away.”

“I don’t see the relevance,” Silverstein said.

“I want the whole truth out there,” Leitch replied.

Leitch took his case before Glithero.

“The jury should see his financial affairs fully. The bugaboo for us, Your Honor, is we can’t say he got the $200,000 from the death of his wife. But it can be described as insurance proceeds, with no attribution. For all we know, the money was from a car accident benefit. The jury needs to see the money moving around,
they need to see the greed, and that he had some level of sophistication. The jury needs to know it came from a source that wasn’t his business.”

The payment would go to prove motive: Dhillon handled money poorly and was desperate for more. So he had Ranjit take out a big life insurance policy, then killed him for it.

Judge Glithero sided with Leitch. The Crown, he said, seeks to paint a picture of Dhillon as an irresponsible, unorganized person who walked into some money and wasted it—“to show, in the vernacular, need and greed.” To deny the jury at least some idea of where the money came from, he added, “doesn’t paint an accurate picture.”