Note on posting this article:

I found this article on the Vancouver Sun website. The article was written by Ian Mulgrew and the copyright appears to belong to the Vancouver Sun. To contact me about this posting send an e-mail to andrewREMOVETHISatREMOVEgormanDOTcc.

-issachar.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Who is Kelly Ellard? We can't tell you
Ian Mulgrew
Vancouver Sun

The sentencing hearing for convicted killer Kelly Ellard was covered by a pall Tuesday as B.C. Supreme Court Judge Robert Bauman imposed a publication ban on the proceedings.

Although the 22-year-old has been thrice tried and twice convicted, and although a judge cannot be compromised by published or broadcast accounts, Bauman agreed with the defence request to prevent the public from seeing and hearing about material the Crown wants to present in its argument that Ellard deserves the maximum sentence for callously murdering 14-year-old Reena Virk.

The Crown took no position on the ban and left Bauman to his own devices.

His unease was palpable as he agreed to what he termed an "interim ban" on the expectation lawyers from the media would soon be in front of him.

No kidding.

I cannot tell you what was debated Tuesday in the plush confines of courtroom 65 at the Vancouver Law Courts, inside that dazzling glass cathedral of justice designed to showcase the transparency supposedly at the heart of our legal system.

I cannot tell you what the defence doesn't want you to know -- because Ellard's lawyer Peter Wilson told the court she doesn't like how she's being portrayed in the media.

How sad.

The material is inflammatory. It's incendiary.

It'll make you think Ellard is just the kind of person who would boast of leaving Virk's broken and lifeless body floating in the moonlit Gorge inlet in Saanich back in November 1997.

Just the kind of person the jury found her to be.

Those six men and six women last month convicted Ellard of second-degree murder, which carries an automatic sentence of life imprisonment.

Bauman is seized only with the job of deciding whether she should serve five years or seven years before being eligible for parole for the swarming slaying that captured international attention because it involved a gang of girl wannabe toughies.

At her first trial, Ellard was given the minimum -- life with parole eligibility set at five years. She didn't attend Tuesday's proceedings.

Crown prosecutor Catherine Murray has told the court in its previous reportable session that she's going for the maximum -- no possibility for parole for at least seven years.

That's because she thinks the first judge went soft at the thought of an innocent 15-year-old who made a tragic mistake.

In her opinion, the judge was misled about Ellard's character and if Bauman takes into account the material she is putting forward, he can't help but agree.

Having heard what it is -- she's right, in my opinion.

But I can't tell you why yet.

The material that you cannot know about is before Bauman in a binder and he can freely consult it. Much of it has already been published.

Still, Bauman may yet decide he shouldn't consider it when he ponders Ellard's sentence and at that point he'll set it aside in his mind.

That's great, but the public still deserves to know what's going on and why. The public has a right to know in a timely fashion what's happening in court and that is being elbowed aside here.

I do not believe there is any justification for this publication ban -- a fiat that serves no purpose other than to stroke the sensitivities of a killer who beat and drowned an already injured, dazed and wounded adolescent.

The Vancouver Sun has applied to the court to have the ban lifted and the judge has agreed to hear submissions from the newspaper and other media Thursday.

I can understand why Ellard would want the material suppressed.

I can understand why her lawyer is arguing it is inadmissable.

I can't understand why the Crown and the judge said it was okay to keep the public in the dark.

Ellard already has had two trials aborted and her lawyer already has said he's appealing this latest one.

This is one of the most watched and most important trials to be conducted in this province this year.

To casually retreat behind the curtains is wrong.

I think Bauman should correct that.