Poison (48 page)

Leitch had hit his stride. At the break, outwardly relaxed, he spoke with his wife and a friend, motioning as though working on his golf swing. “It looks like the jurors are actually interested in what you’re saying,” his wife said. Tony grinned. “You sound like someone who is surprised by that.”

After the break, he continued, looking down at his typed notes. One section had the heading “Corroboration of the Pill.” The evidence shows that neither Ranjit nor Lakhwinder had motive to falsely implicate Dhillon, he said. Neither had animosity against the accused. The next heading: “Lakhwinder not gilding the lily.” If she was lying, if she wanted to frame Dhillon, she could have said that she actually saw Ranjit take the pill from him. It would have been easy to do. But she had not said that.

He took the jurors back to the night Ranjit died, and the confrontation between Dhillon and the Khela family, proving that they suspected him. The family had called Dhillon to the house.
“And they asked him, ‘Did you give him the pill?’” Leitch raised his voice. “And Dhillon said, ‘I didn’t give him anything!’” The voice was booming now, filling the room.

Leitch closed by talking about evidence suggesting Dhillon was drinking the night of Ranjit’s death, and the danger that it could result in a finding of manslaughter, not first-degree murder. There was no evidence Dhillon was drunk, said Leitch. And in any case, “if you find, and I submit you should, that the accused formed his intent to kill Ranjit Khela before they took out life insurance together, then the accused’s intoxication on June 22, 1996, is completely irrelevant.” Leitch once more defended Lakhwinder. There was no way she could have killed her husband. “She wept—over his dead body,” he said, slowly. “She…told the truth…I ask you to return a verdict of first degree murder.”

Court was adjourned until the next day, when Silverstein would address the jury.

Russell Silverstein did not typically type out his closing comments. He always wrote some points down, and ad-libbed the rest. Now, with the Crown address completed, Silverstein returned to his hotel room and reviewed notes he had made from Tony Leitch’s address. He paced the room, thinking.
I fear Mr. Leitch may have left you, members of the jury—he may have left you with the wrong impression.
As well as having the advantage of speaking last, Silverstein had a stronger argument to make than in the first trial. He had an alternative suspect. Lakhwinder hated her husband; Dhillon was Ranjit’s close friend.

Later that afternoon, Silverstein went for a swim in the pool. There had been a time when he swam laps for several kilometers every day, but he hadn’t done that for some time now. How many lengths should he swim today? The question was meaningless, he reflected. Meaningless unless you know the dimensions of the pool. That afternoon, he swam about 1,500 meters. The pool was 12 meters long. That’s 125 lengths. Even as his slim figure cut through the water, he reviewed tactics in his mind. Reasonable
doubt. This case is
littered
with doubts. The standard to convict is that you must be sure. Well, what, members of the jury, can you be sure of? Back to the room, then dinner. Late evening, back at his desk, more notes. Counter the Crown’s main points. Skip points that will only cause trouble. But above all, review the evidence in a way that connects with the jury. Tell a story. Weave in allusions to the evidence that fits the story. As usual, he would try to combine content with performance. He was in bed by 1 a.m.

At 9:30 the next morning, Silverstein paced the hallway outside the courtroom, alone. He had been alone the entire trial, facing off against the Crown team, the detectives. The defender, taking on the greater resources of the state. Outside the courtroom, during breaks, Leitch could chat with his wife or a friend, Bentham huddled with Korol and Dhinsa, reporters always seemed to be chatting with someone from the team, although never the tight-lipped Bentham. Silverstein was always off on his own, talking on his cell, or walking around, thinking. The defense lawyer needs an ego, a gunslinger’s mentality. Silverstein had it. He passed Leitch in the hallway on his way into court. Leitch nodded in greeting.

“So, you thinking about all the things you should have said?” Russell asked, deadpan.

Leitch laughed, kept walking, appreciating the rib.

Outside the courtroom in a hospitality cubicle, Silverstein poured himself a cup of coffee.

“Hey Russell, why don’t you get your client to make it for you?” Korol cracked. Dhillon, the poisoner, had once offered the detectives a drink when they questioned him at his home. They had declined. Silverstein started to smile, then stopped and glared.

“That’s a cheap joke,” he said, and returned to his seat.

“Some things just need to be said,” Korol said with a grin.

Silverstein launched into his address at 10 a.m.

“It is a pleasure to have the opportunity, finally, to stand before you and address you directly,” he said to the jury. Finally. It was as though the Crown had prevented him from speaking to this point in the trial. And now the truth shall come out. He was in his element, performing, ad-libbing, talking to the jury, the stage his. He always tried to catch the jurors’ eyes. He believed that if you speak to them extemporaneously
—
or, at least, appear to do so
—
they will be more interested. He had to be an entertainer. That was the word he used to describe his approach
—
entertain the jury, and you will get and keep their attention, connect with them.

“You are judging the fate of another human being,” Silverstein said. “This case is not about insurance money, this is a criminal trial. The burden on you is to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. You don’t have to be certain of guilt, but you must be sure of guilt. Not to an absolute certainty, but you must be
sure
.” He said the word louder, with more emphasis, like a hard note on a piano. Are you
sure
?

“I fear Mr. Leitch may have left you with the wrong impression,” he continued, and then challenged the Crown point for point, bringing the jurors inside his own head. Focus on the rational. Do not let emotion get the better of you. We are here to uphold the law. Do the right thing, the intelligent thing. Ranjit Khela died horribly, yes. Nobody denies that. But that’s not what this trial is about. “Don’t let the agony of his death infect your reasoning.”

Silverstein drew back his left foot, balancing the toe of his shoe on the floor, both hands grasping the lectern. “There’s no doubt Ranjit Khela died of strychnine poisoning, but in order to convict Sukhwinder Dhillon, you must be able to answer ‘No’ to these two questions: One, might Ranjit have died accidentally? And two, might his wife Lakhwinder have killed him? If you answer ‘Yes’ to either of those, you must acquit him.”

Ranjit Khela could have killed himself accidentally, Silverstein argued. He had been disillusioned with Western medicine, he could have turned to Indian homeopathic remedies to help his back and impotence. Diluted strychnine could help both problems.

Or he could have been killed by his wife, Silverstein continued. Lakhwinder had better opportunity than Dhillon, had served Ranjit his last meal, and had been alone with him just before he went into convulsions. She had better motive, too. She stood to gain financially from his death, from life insurance and getting part of the house. And there was strife in their marriage. Ranjit insulted her, called her fat, forced her to have two abortions, cut her hair, abused her. She was angry that his parents were coming to live with them.

“Motive of the heart and soul and animosity are greater [than money],” Silverstein told the jurors. “Lakhwinder hated Ranjit’s guts. And yet, by all accounts Ranjit and Mr. Dhillon were the best of friends.” Lakhwinder longed for a better life, an escape. Moreover, it was a stretch, Silverstein argued, to assume that Dhillon, in the insurance agent’s office one day with Ranjit, suddenly, on the spot, hatched a plan to have his friend take out a policy and then kill him for the money. How on earth could Dhillon have come up with that so quickly?

At his seat Warren Korol, typing on his laptop, peered over the top of his glasses and smirked. Every day the full Dhillon story was kept from the jury, he grew more irritated. “Dhillon had a plan on the spot because he did it before when he killed his wife,” Korol growled quietly to Dhinsa.

Silverstein now turned his attention to Dhillon’s lies to Cliff Elliot. Dhillon had lied to the insurance investigator, Silverstein said, to hide the fact he was not Ranjit’s uncle as he had claimed on the insurance form. Just because he lied didn’t mean he had murdered one of his best friends. Defrauding an insurance company is wrong, there’s no question of that. “But that doesn’t make him a killer.”

And what about the manner of death? The Crown claimed Ranjit consumed a large amount of strychnine, inconsistent with accidental death or with eating it in his food, given the poison’s extreme bitterness. And yet, it had taken Ranjit two or three hours to die. That suggested the dose was in fact quite small, didn’t it? Korol burned; strychnine deaths can be drawn-out affairs, and Silverstein knew it. Parvesh’s death had been just that.

Silverstein lanced Lakhwinder’s credibility one more time. She is a liar. She lied to police, lied under oath, repeatedly. And now, all of a sudden, we should believe she is telling the truth? “It is impossible to accept a word she says about anything.” He wrapped up. Echoing Bentham and Leitch, he said that, yes, we value life in Canada. “But there are other values in this country and other civilized countries, and one of those values is the enlightened system of justice that we have. And it says that before a person can be found guilty of any crime, you must be sure
—sure
, which is what ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ means. You can’t be sure of anything in this case. And you must acquit Mr. Dhillon.”

Judge Glithero spent Monday explaining the rules to the jury, then sent them to deliberate. They hung charts on the wall, family trees, other documents, like students working on a group project. If the jury did not have a decision by 9 p.m., they would be sequestered for the night in a hotel and barred from discussing anything about the case until they resumed deliberation together. At 8:30 p.m. Monday night, December 2, they arrived at a verdict. Ten minutes later the cellphones rang. The verdict was in. The lawyers, the judge, and Dhillon gathered in Courtroom 11. The jury was brought in and took their seats. The foreman stood up.

Guilty. Sukhwinder Dhillon was guilty of the first degree murder of Ranjit Khela. Silverstein asked that the jury be polled. Each juror spoke aloud.

“Agree.”

“Agree.”

“Agree.”

“Agree.”

“Agree.”

“Agree.”

“Agree.”

“Agree.”

“Agree.”

“Agree.”

“Agree.”

“Agree.”

Several jurors choked with emotion as they answered. One of the women cried as she spoke the final word. Korol knew that the pain the jurors felt sending a man to prison for life would have been mitigated if they knew everything Dhillon had done, his trail of murder and bigamy. For the jurors, the story had been incomplete. Glithero thanked the jury for their work. The six men and six women stood and filed out of the silent courtroom.

Dhillon had grumbled to his interpreter constantly over the course of the trial, but kept his anger within the confines of the prisoner’s box. But now, a convicted murderer for the second time and no longer before the jury, Dhillon couldn’t take it any longer. He stood up and began shouting in Punjabi at the judge: “No justice! No justice!”

Dhillon turned around. Warren Korol’s face glowed with victory. Beside Korol was Dhinsa, a look of quiet satisfaction on his smooth, tanned face. Dhillon hated him most of all. “The Indian police officer got me,” Dhillon cried. “I haven’t done anything! Dhinsa
—
it was Dhinsa. Framed me! Told Lakhwinder what to say!”

“No justice!” Dhillon shouted in Punjabi in court.