Poison (49 page)

With Dhillon waving his arms and shouting, Korol feared for the safety of the Punjabi interpreter. There was a court security guard, but Korol moved to the front of the courtroom and stood
next to the box. If Dhillon wanted to take a swing, finally, at the cop who had hunted him from Hamilton to Ludhiana, this was his chance. Dhillon did nothing. Korol looked straight ahead and spoke. “Have a nice life, Dhillon.”

Dhillon was already serving a life sentence for murdering Parvesh. In the United States, a killer like Dhillon
—
if he was convicted in a state that did not have the death penalty
—
would be serving two consecutive life sentences, perhaps 200 years, after being convicted for a second murder. But in Canada, sentences are concurrent. The fact that Dhillon was also guilty of killing Ranjit Khela did not change the term. He would still serve one sentence of life in prison. He would be eligible for parole after 25 years.

The main implication of the second conviction was on Dhillon’s likelihood of success with the so-called faint hope clause in Canada’s Criminal Code. The clause allows a prisoner to apply for early parole, under certain conditions, 15 years after conviction. The law was changed in 1997 so that multiple killers could not apply, but the change was grandfathered. Dhillon’s crimes were committed in 1995 and 1996, so he would still be eligible. The Crown lawyers felt a double conviction would persuade any parole board to reject his application.

Many of those familiar with the Dhillon case wanted to see the killer deported to India, jailed there. Then again, in Indian bureaucracy the right price and influence can achieve anything. If Dhillon were deported, surely he’d find a way to get early release. On the other hand, given another tradition in the Punjab
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revenge
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perhaps justice more swift and brutal would await Dhillon once he got out of an Indian prison. It is unlikely Dhillon will ever be returned to India. He is not a new immigrant; he is a Canadian citizen and had been a Canadian for more than a decade at the time of his first murder conviction. He has all the rights of any other citizen
—
including the right to serve his sentence, likely to last the rest of his life, in Canada.

You couldn’t see it on his face, not at all. But surely Justice C. Stephen Glithero felt relief, somewhere inside, when Dhillon was convicted for the second time. Glithero had labored to ensure Dhillon’s right to a fair trial, and was forced to make difficult decisions. From one perspective, his rulings had been too much in favor of the defense, given everything that Dhillon had done or was suspected of doing. In denying the Crown’s repeated attempts to enter evidence of Dhillon’s other crimes, the judge forced the prosecutors to go the extra mile, work harder. Glithero had separated the two trials. He had ruled out of order several statements made by Dhillon because of what he believed were inappropriate police procedures. Glithero had trusted the jury to determine the truth without having access to all the information. They had convicted Dhillon based on the evidence they had been given. The system had worked the way it was supposed to. Had the juries in Kitchener and St. Catharines acquitted Dhillon, Glithero’s rulings would probably have made headlines across the country: “What the jury didn’t know.” He would have been a very unpopular judge in some quarters.

But Glithero never cared about public opinion. He made his decisions based on what he felt was right, to guarantee justice for Dhillon. And two different juries decided that justice for Dhillon was life in prison. Soon after the second trial ended, a journalist called Glithero to talk about the case. Judges rarely speak to reporters. Glithero wasn’t like other judges. What about the severance decision? Didn’t it give Dhillon a shot at acquittal? “It was a difficult call and I came to the best decision I could,” Glithero said. “It’s there, if the Court of Appeal doesn’t like it they can do something else with it. If these sorts of things were easy issues, then the lawyers wouldn’t need a decision from me, would they?”

He returned to his St. Catharines hotel. It had been a long haul, with many nights away from his wife. During the trial he grew a thin mustache. And he fell yet again off the no-smoking wagon, just as he had done many times over the years. Fresh air awaited, however. Glithero had two weeks’ vacation time coming to him in
February. Perhaps one week to hang around home in Cambridge. And the other week? There had been no time to talk it over with his wife. A trip south sounded nice. Maybe Florida or Arizona. Exactly where, he wasn’t sure. Get some sun, play some golf. He loved the sport, played at Galt Country Club in Cambridge, a pretty course along the Grand River. No lumpy greens or modern man-made design touches that plagued other new courses. Galt is old school. What you see is what you get.

“So what’s your handicap?” asked the journalist. Glithero waited. The former defense lawyer considered the question.

“Seventeen,” he said. Then he paused. “You’re not going to print that, are you?” he said. “Geez, what a mean son of a gun you are.”

The prosecutors and detectives left the courthouse after it was over and walked two blocks in bitter cold to a restaurant and bar called The Honest Lawyer. Later, Russell Silverstein joined them for drinks. It’s a lawyer’s tradition to get together with your adversary once the battle is over. In fact, years ago, competing lawyers gathered for drinks as soon as the jury retired to deliberate. That doesn’t happen much any more.

Silverstein lamented that he had been defeated, but was glad the trials finally were over. The case, and Sukhwinder Singh Dhillon, had consumed so much of his life. For Bentham and Leitch, Dhillon was the longest and most complicated case in their careers. It would not be long before Tony Leitch found himself arguing, again, before a different judge, that similar-fact evidence be allowed in a murder trial. The game did not change.

Bentham went back to work. The media exposure from the Dhillon trials had been considerable. But the experience had made the taciturn Crown attorney no more open with journalists. Near the end of the second trial, a reporter approached Bentham in the corridors of the courthouse. Was the journalist after some insight from Bentham into the case? No, he simply wanted to know where Bentham had attended law school. Well? Where was it? Bentham
said nothing as he walked. Really, that’s it, law school. Where did you go? Please. Bentham finally gave in.

“Osgoode,” he muttered.

“There’s my lead,” joked the reporter in mock-scoop fashion. ‘Brent Bentham went to Osgoode’!” Bentham grinned to himself and kept walking, saying nothing.

In the end, Silverstein had been surprised by the verdict. Courtroom staff who watched him in action thought Silverstein had, in fact, convinced the jury to acquit his client. What happened? Silverstein had played his strongest hand. He was able to address the jury last. But going last is perhaps overrated, he reflected. The jurors had to have guessed something was up, thought Silverstein. They had watched the interpreter request adjournments from the judge when Punjabi witnesses were on the stand. Why was that? What was it that they shouldn’t hear from the East Indian witnesses? They had heard evidence that Dhillon came into some insurance money prior to Ranjit’s death. What was that all about? There was just too much swirling around Dhillon. But no one knew what the jurors had been thinking, or ever would. In the United States, jurors routinely talk once a verdict is rendered. It’s against the law in Canada for jurors to speak about the nature of their deliberations.

At The Honest Lawyer, Korol spoke to Silverstein. “Hey Russell, where are you staying tonight?” Silverstein had checked out of his hotel and not made new arrangements. “Stay at our place,” Korol said. “Plenty of room.” That night, as Dhillon lay in his cell, the two Crown attorneys, two detectives, and the defense lawyer sat together in a room at the Four Points Sheraton, had a few beers, reflected on the case. The battle was over. The two sides had gone at it hard over two trials. It was never personal, they were all doing their jobs. It was time to blow off steam, rib each other about the case that had dominated their lives. They talked well past midnight, into the early hours, before turning in. Silverstein slept on a pullout couch in the room of his opposite number, Bentham, and Korol.

In the morning, as the others slept, Silverstein got up, dressed and left the hotel for court. His shoes crunched in the new snow. It was the coldest winter morning of the year, the air pricked exposed skin like frozen needles. Mist rose from Lake Ontario and hung in the air like pieces of cotton. By the time he arrived at the courthouse, the sun was shining brilliantly, causing snow that swirled in the harsh wind to glitter like silver confetti.

Silverstein was proud of his handling of the second Dhillon trial. He had won many of the small battles, the submissions before the judge. He had succeeded in keeping so much information about Dhillon away from two juries. Now he loaded boxes with legal documents and cleaned out his small office in order to return to Toronto. There was no break or vacation planned. In fact, Silverstein was to have handled a bail hearing in St. Catharines that very morning. The hearing had been postponed, though, so it was time to go. He carted the boxes out on a trolley, down the elevator, and out to his car. Then he walked back inside. He looked fit and had dressed casually in taupe corduroy pants, a sweater, and brown leather bomber jacket. On his last trip down the elevator, a court staffer asked if the trial was over.

“Yes, last night,” he answered.

“And?”

“Convicted.”

He didn’t use the word “guilty.” No doubt in his own mind he had proved that his client was not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But the jury had decided otherwise. They had chosen to convict. Before he headed back to Toronto, Russell Silverstein poured himself a coffee at the courthouse snack bar, stirred in cream, then walked briskly with his assertive stride down the long hallway, one hand in his pocket, head up, and exited out a side door, alone.