Daniel Leonard’s statement to police upon his arrest for murder was tossed from evidence because police had subtly induced him to speak to them, employed veiled threats and breached his rights, according to a Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court judge.
Leonard, 38, had been set to go to trial before judge and jury in St. John’s at the end of September for the 2014 murder of 39-year-old Dale Porter of North River, Conception Bay North. He was acquitted before the trial began, after the Crown said it would be calling no evidence against him.
Prosecutors indicated there wasn’t a reasonable chance of a conviction, given a decision by a different judge a week earlier to exclude from evidence a statement Leonard had given to the RCMP when he was arrested. Her reasons for the exclusion were made public Friday.
Justice Deborah Paquette determined Leonard had not voluntarily given the videoed statement, but had provided it after police suggested he might be able to change the outcome of his situation if he spoke to them that night, warned him that by not telling the truth he was “looking dirty,” and denied him an opportunity to speak with his lawyers after telling him there had been a “huge change” in his legal status.
“Subtle veiled threats were also employed by the police,” Paquette wrote in her decision. “For example, (Leonard) was told that the train was coming down the tracks and he could either get on it by telling the truth or be flattened by it in failing to talk to the police.”
Having been told by his mother that police had come to arrest him, Leonard turned himself in on Sept. 28, 2016. He had spent the previous night drinking and doing cocaine and prescription painkillers, consuming 10 Percocet pills right before his arrest. Leonard spoke to his lawyers twice before police began interviewing him shortly before 9 p.m.
During the next 4 1/2 hours, Leonard repeatedly told investigators he was tired and wanted to go back to his cell. Paquette rejected Leonard’s argument that he had been too intoxicated to recall most of the events after his arrest and that his intoxication should have been obvious to police. She accepted his argument that his right to remain silent had been impacted by things the officers said.
“I’m not going to be here forever to let you tell your side of the story,” an RCMP officer had told Leonard. “It’s tonight. Tomorrow you go to court. Tomorrow they lay a second-degree murder charge on you. It’s huge. Huge. You can’t just sit back and let that happen."
The statements implied Leonard could change the course of the court proceedings by talking to police, Paquette ruled. She noted the officers had congratulated Leonard after he gave his statement.
“It is telling that he responds to this bravado by asking, ‘What happens now? Where do I go to stay tonight?’,” she wrote.
Leonard should have been given the chance to speak to his lawyers after an officer told him he was not only arrested for murder, he was being formally charged, the judge ruled.
“I’ve laid a bomb on you and I appreciate how hard it is to process what I’m telling you because I’ve just changed your life forever,” the constable told Leonard, saying it was the biggest day of Leonard's life. “You’ve got a big decision to make today with how you’re going to handle things that are told to you.”
Paquette ordered Leonard’s entire statement excluded from trial and said the denial of his access to his lawyers was enough, on its own, to warrant the exclusion.
Porter, a fisherman, truck driver and father of two, died in his driveway after having been stabbed close to 20 times.
Leonard’s co-accused, Allan Potter, 56, was convicted of first-degree murder in March 2019 and is appealing the verdict.
