Yet Another Unitarian*Universalist Day In Court
Well today was the first day of the court hearing arising out of Rev. Diane Rollert's deeply misguided decision to seek a restraining order against me based on highly questionable claims of having "reasonable grounds" to fear that I will commit a "serious personal injury offence" against her. The hearing was scheduled to begin at 9:30 am but the court didn't actually open until the judge showed up a bit before 10:00 am. There were a few other cases to be dealt with so my case did not come up until some time later. When my case did come up the prosecutor only presented one single prosecution witness that being Rev. Diane Rollert. I found it quite interesting that the police detective who had handled the "investigation" was not called as a prosecution witness by the prosecutor, nor was there a single other prosecution witness, even though it later became apparent that the prosecution had collected a small pile of declarations from other members of the Unitarian Church of Montreal, including a quite revealing one from my good friend U*U COP who is no longer quite so anonymous as he was when I shot this and other U*U Tube videos of him in late September 2007.
I don't want to go into too much detail about what happened today because the hearing is not over yet and it may be several weeks, or even a few months, before a judgement is handed down in this matter, but suffice it to say that Rev. Diane Rollert's testimony as a prosecution witness, particularly when being personally cross-examined by the dreaded Emerson Avenger after the prosecutor had questioned her, contained a fair bit of U*U BS. Rev. Diane Rollert's testimony was highly misleading if not outright false at times. She was also somewhat evasive and even claimed to have no memory of certain things that she really should have remembered when asked certain questions.
I completed my fairly thorough cross-examination of Rev. Diane Rollert by about 12:30 pm under some pressure from the judge to wrap things up. In 20/20 hindsight there were a few other pertinent, and even somewhat important, questions that I could have and I should have asked Rev. Rollert but I am quite satisfied with the overall results of my relatively thorough cross-examination. The prosecution phase of the hearing ended with the termination of my cross-examination of Rev. Diane Rollert and the judge called for a recess for lunch until 2:15 pm.
I should mention that it had become clear earlier in today's hearing that the Crown prosecutors had failed to provide me with all of the police evidence against me as they should have on July 4th, 2007 when I was in court to "plead" that I was contesting Rev. Diane Rollert's dubious demand for a restraining order. I had thought that the evidence dossier was rather slim, with virtually no evidence other than some police reports and Rev. Diane Rollert's declarations to the police, and I had made a point of asking the Crown prosecutors at that time if they had provided all of the prosecution evidence against me. The Crown prosecutors had insisted that I had been given all of the prosecution's evidence against me and it was only today that it became clear that, for one reason or another. . . they had actually failed to provide much of the police evidence to me, even though the detective handling Rev. Diane Rollert's complaint was quite adamant that he had provided the complete police evidence file to the prosecutors to give to me on July 4th, 2007. I made this problem clear to the judge and requested that copies of all of the police evidence against me should be provided to me for my "full and complete" defence.
The judge called for a recess for lunch around 12:30 pm and said that the hearing would resume at 2:15 pm for the defence phase of the hearing. I reminded the judge that I had not yet seen all of the police evidence and she rather ungenerously suggested that I should obtain it from the Crown prosecutor and read it during my lunch break. When I asked the Crown prosecutor to provide me with a complete copy of the police evidence upon leaving the courtroom he replied that he did not have time to make photocopies of everything and black out the information that I was not supposed to see. He suggested that I obtain the complete evidence file from him after lunch. Needless to say this would leave very little time for me to review the police evidence before the defence phase of the hearing commenced at 2:15 pm. . .
I decided to go to my favorite Chinese restaurant in Montreal's minimalist ChinaTown for their excellent Kung Pao Chicken lunch special. After enjoying my meal of spicy Szechuan chicken accompanied by Won Ton soup, Jasmine tea and a fortune cookie who's "fortune" said, "You have a yearning for perfection" I wandered back to Montreal's Palais de Justice by about 1:50 pm or so. I was on a public phone in the Palais de Justice discussing how my day in court had gone so far with a retired police officer who is a long time supportive friend when the Crown prosecutor came down the stairs from the level above me carrying a stack of documents. He saw me talking on the phone and came over and handed me a fairly thick wad of police evidence.
Most of the evidence consisted of things that I was already quite familiar with, such as the few emails that I had sent to Rev. Diane Rollert seeking dialogue with her in the fall of 2006, and the TEA blog post titled 'The Emerson Avenger Has A Synchroni-City With Rev. Diane Rollert' that described my brief personal encounter with her on the way to the Unitarian Church of Montreal of Sunday November 19th, 2006 which prompted her to file a complaint with the police and seek the restraining order. Or perhaps I should say which served as an excuse to file a complaint with the police and to seek a restraining order. The police evidence that I had not actually seen before was a series of written declarations by various members of the Unitarian Church of Montreal that stated how terribly distressed they are by my "alternative spiritual practice" of protesting against various U*U injustices, abuses and hypocrisy in front of the Unitarian Church of Montreal and how some of them fear that I will commit a "serious personal injury offence" against them or other members of the so-called Unitarian Church of Montreal. There were also a couple of pages of photocopies of black&white thumbnails of digital photographs of my public protest activities that had been taken by Montreal photographer Joshua Radu.
I returned to the courtroom and waited for the judge to show up. When the hearing resumed I explained to the judge that I had only received the full dossier of police evidence at around 2:00 pm and had not completed reading it. She ordered another short recess of 15 minutes to allow me to complete my initial review of the police evidence. Upon her return the judge asked me about how much more could be completed in the afternoon. I made it clear that I really needed more time to properly review the police evidence, especially since there was written testimony from several other people and I might want to call some of them as witnesses to cross-examine their rather dubious, if not outright perjurious, testimony.
I had previously stated that I wanted to cross-examine the police detective handling the case and we agreed to put aside the other evidence for now and at least deal with what could be done today. Following my examination of the police detective, as a defence witness rather than a prosecution witness. . . it was agreed that not much more could be accomplished today and a date for resuming the hearing and continuing my defence against Rev. Diane Rollert's demand for a restraining order would need to be set. A court date for determining the date for continuing, and hopefully completing, my defence against Rev. Rollert's and other Montreal Unitarian U*Us' paranoid fantasies was set for later this week but I have no idea what the actual date of the resumption of the hearing will be. If past experience with criminal prosecution in Quebec Court is any indication the date for the resumption of the hearing may well be a few months down the road.
That is all for now but I may be posting more about the hearing later this week. For now I will continue the moratorium on comments since I still have a lot on my plate, not just this hearing/trial by any means, and I really do have much better things to do with my time than endlessly rebutting more U*U BS spouted by a small handful of U*U trolls that is often just a repetative rehash of things that have been said many times before. If anyone has something pertinent that they want to say I would ask them to send it to me by email for now. You can always post it as a comment here later, once the moratorium on comments is ended, or post it to your own blog if you have one.
I don't want to go into too much detail about what happened today because the hearing is not over yet and it may be several weeks, or even a few months, before a judgement is handed down in this matter, but suffice it to say that Rev. Diane Rollert's testimony as a prosecution witness, particularly when being personally cross-examined by the dreaded Emerson Avenger after the prosecutor had questioned her, contained a fair bit of U*U BS. Rev. Diane Rollert's testimony was highly misleading if not outright false at times. She was also somewhat evasive and even claimed to have no memory of certain things that she really should have remembered when asked certain questions.
I completed my fairly thorough cross-examination of Rev. Diane Rollert by about 12:30 pm under some pressure from the judge to wrap things up. In 20/20 hindsight there were a few other pertinent, and even somewhat important, questions that I could have and I should have asked Rev. Rollert but I am quite satisfied with the overall results of my relatively thorough cross-examination. The prosecution phase of the hearing ended with the termination of my cross-examination of Rev. Diane Rollert and the judge called for a recess for lunch until 2:15 pm.
I should mention that it had become clear earlier in today's hearing that the Crown prosecutors had failed to provide me with all of the police evidence against me as they should have on July 4th, 2007 when I was in court to "plead" that I was contesting Rev. Diane Rollert's dubious demand for a restraining order. I had thought that the evidence dossier was rather slim, with virtually no evidence other than some police reports and Rev. Diane Rollert's declarations to the police, and I had made a point of asking the Crown prosecutors at that time if they had provided all of the prosecution evidence against me. The Crown prosecutors had insisted that I had been given all of the prosecution's evidence against me and it was only today that it became clear that, for one reason or another. . . they had actually failed to provide much of the police evidence to me, even though the detective handling Rev. Diane Rollert's complaint was quite adamant that he had provided the complete police evidence file to the prosecutors to give to me on July 4th, 2007. I made this problem clear to the judge and requested that copies of all of the police evidence against me should be provided to me for my "full and complete" defence.
The judge called for a recess for lunch around 12:30 pm and said that the hearing would resume at 2:15 pm for the defence phase of the hearing. I reminded the judge that I had not yet seen all of the police evidence and she rather ungenerously suggested that I should obtain it from the Crown prosecutor and read it during my lunch break. When I asked the Crown prosecutor to provide me with a complete copy of the police evidence upon leaving the courtroom he replied that he did not have time to make photocopies of everything and black out the information that I was not supposed to see. He suggested that I obtain the complete evidence file from him after lunch. Needless to say this would leave very little time for me to review the police evidence before the defence phase of the hearing commenced at 2:15 pm. . .
I decided to go to my favorite Chinese restaurant in Montreal's minimalist ChinaTown for their excellent Kung Pao Chicken lunch special. After enjoying my meal of spicy Szechuan chicken accompanied by Won Ton soup, Jasmine tea and a fortune cookie who's "fortune" said, "You have a yearning for perfection" I wandered back to Montreal's Palais de Justice by about 1:50 pm or so. I was on a public phone in the Palais de Justice discussing how my day in court had gone so far with a retired police officer who is a long time supportive friend when the Crown prosecutor came down the stairs from the level above me carrying a stack of documents. He saw me talking on the phone and came over and handed me a fairly thick wad of police evidence.
Most of the evidence consisted of things that I was already quite familiar with, such as the few emails that I had sent to Rev. Diane Rollert seeking dialogue with her in the fall of 2006, and the TEA blog post titled 'The Emerson Avenger Has A Synchroni-City With Rev. Diane Rollert' that described my brief personal encounter with her on the way to the Unitarian Church of Montreal of Sunday November 19th, 2006 which prompted her to file a complaint with the police and seek the restraining order. Or perhaps I should say which served as an excuse to file a complaint with the police and to seek a restraining order. The police evidence that I had not actually seen before was a series of written declarations by various members of the Unitarian Church of Montreal that stated how terribly distressed they are by my "alternative spiritual practice" of protesting against various U*U injustices, abuses and hypocrisy in front of the Unitarian Church of Montreal and how some of them fear that I will commit a "serious personal injury offence" against them or other members of the so-called Unitarian Church of Montreal. There were also a couple of pages of photocopies of black&white thumbnails of digital photographs of my public protest activities that had been taken by Montreal photographer Joshua Radu.
I returned to the courtroom and waited for the judge to show up. When the hearing resumed I explained to the judge that I had only received the full dossier of police evidence at around 2:00 pm and had not completed reading it. She ordered another short recess of 15 minutes to allow me to complete my initial review of the police evidence. Upon her return the judge asked me about how much more could be completed in the afternoon. I made it clear that I really needed more time to properly review the police evidence, especially since there was written testimony from several other people and I might want to call some of them as witnesses to cross-examine their rather dubious, if not outright perjurious, testimony.
I had previously stated that I wanted to cross-examine the police detective handling the case and we agreed to put aside the other evidence for now and at least deal with what could be done today. Following my examination of the police detective, as a defence witness rather than a prosecution witness. . . it was agreed that not much more could be accomplished today and a date for resuming the hearing and continuing my defence against Rev. Diane Rollert's demand for a restraining order would need to be set. A court date for determining the date for continuing, and hopefully completing, my defence against Rev. Rollert's and other Montreal Unitarian U*Us' paranoid fantasies was set for later this week but I have no idea what the actual date of the resumption of the hearing will be. If past experience with criminal prosecution in Quebec Court is any indication the date for the resumption of the hearing may well be a few months down the road.
That is all for now but I may be posting more about the hearing later this week. For now I will continue the moratorium on comments since I still have a lot on my plate, not just this hearing/trial by any means, and I really do have much better things to do with my time than endlessly rebutting more U*U BS spouted by a small handful of U*U trolls that is often just a repetative rehash of things that have been said many times before. If anyone has something pertinent that they want to say I would ask them to send it to me by email for now. You can always post it as a comment here later, once the moratorium on comments is ended, or post it to your own blog if you have one.
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