The Crown began presenting its case Monday at the trial of two special constables charged in the death of a man in a cell at Halifax Regional Police headquarters in June 2016.
Dan Fraser, 62, and Cheryl Gardner, 47, who were working as booking officers on the night in question, are charged with criminal negligence causing the death of Corey Rogers.
“In most criminal cases, trials are about what somebody did,” Crown attorney Chris Vanderhooft said during his opening statement in Nova Scotia Supreme Court.
“In this criminal negligence causing death case, the trial is about what someone, or some people, did not do.
“I intend to prove to you that Dan Fraser and Cheryl Gardner had a duty that night, a duty to Corey Rogers when he came into their prisoner-care facility. Once they accepted him, they had to make sure that he was OK.”
Rogers, 41, was found unresponsive in his cell about three hours after he was arrested outside the IWK Health Centre in Halifax for public intoxication on the night of June 15, 2016.
Vanderhooft told the Halifax jury that the evidence will show Rogers vomited after he was left alone on the floor of the cell face down and was unable to clear his airway because of a spit hood that had been put over his head.
Rogers lay there for more than two hours before he was discovered by Fraser at about 1:40 a.m., the prosecutor said.
What was the first thing Fraser did when he found Rogers?
“He removed the spit hood,” Vanderhooft said. “Unfortunately, it was too late.
“All of this, I’m afraid, was captured on video, and you will have to watch that video during this trial. It won’t be easy.”
Vanderhooft said Rogers died because the booking officers failed to fulfill their duty to him.
“All they had to do was get him medical care, take the spit hood off, check on him every 15 minutes, make sure that they could wake him up, and do their jobs,” he said.
“All of this, sadly, happened to someone who had simply been drunk in public.
“We aren’t saying the booking officers went to work that day looking to kill someone. But their handling of Corey Rogers that night fell way below what was expected of them and caused an entirely preventable death.”
The trial is scheduled to sit for two weeks, although Justice Kevin Coady told the eight-man, four-woman jury it likely won’t take that long.
Dead man was new father
The first witness called by the Crown was Rogers’ girlfriend Emilie Spindler, who gave birth to their daughter on June 14, 2016.
Spindler said Rogers stayed with her at the IWK until about 3 p.m. the next day, when he left to go pick up a social assistance cheque. She said he was in a good mood and seemed happy.
When Rogers returned to the hospital at about 10 p.m., security staff refused to let him in because he was intoxicated. Security phoned upstairs to the maternity ward and Spindler went down to the lobby to talk to Rogers, who was being argumentative.
Spindler said she calmed Rogers down and they went outside together and had a smoke until police arrived to arrest him for intoxication. She said he chugged half a pint of Fireball whiskey in front of the officers before they handcuffed him and took him away.
“He was intoxicated, but I’d seen him worse than that before,” she said.
Rogers had spent time in the drunk tank before, she said, so she wasn’t worried about him.
“They told me he would be back out in the morning,” Spindler recalled the officers saying. “I said OK and went back into the hospital to see my daughter.”
Ron Johnston said he saw Rogers at about 3:30 p.m. on June 15.
“He was so happy,” Johnston said of his friend. “Over the moon was the only way to describe him.”
He said his niece had a cradle to give Rogers for the new baby, so they took it to his home in Spryfield before dropping Rogers off at Victoria Park, not far from the hospital, between 4 and 5 p.m.
Johnston said he could smell alcohol on Rogers “but he certainly wasn’t loaded.” He said he had no idea where Rogers went after they dropped him off.
The jury also heard evidence from two regional police officers Monday.
Const. Brian Pothier said he was in the police station when he got a radio call from Fraser at 1:43 a.m. saying there was an unresponsive male in Cell 5.
Pothier testified that he ran to the booking area and found Fraser standing over a prone man in the cell.
He said Fraser told him, “I think he’s dead.”
Pothier said that when he touched the man on the shoulder to see if he was warm, he recognized him as Rogers, whom he had encountered before. He said Rogers’ feet were blue and he had defecated in his boxers.
He also said the spit hood was on the floor behind Rogers” head and there was a clear liquid beside it.
Det. Const. Randy Wood went through photos he took of the scene in the cell and of the inside of the police car Rogers had been transported in from the hospital. He also introduced items seized by the province’s Serious Incident Response Team during the investigation, including the spit hood.
Vanderhooft, in his opening statement, said the spit hood was put on Rogers at the police station because he had become belligerent and was spitting in the police car. He said the arresting officers carried Rogers into the station and placed him on the floor in the booking area.
SIRT laid the charge against Fraser and Gardner in November 2017.
Special constables are not police officers but are civilian members of the force who handle duties such as booking prisoners.
