Two Saskatoon police officers and their union have failed in their final attempt to defeat the damning conclusions
of a 2004 inquiry into the freezing death of Neil Stonechild, a 17 year-old aboriginal youth.
The Supreme Court of Canada declined yesterday to hear an appeal by Constables Larry Hartwig and Brad Senger
and the Saskatoon City Police Association, who accused the inquiry of treading on forbidden ground.
the appellants had hoped to make the case that Mr. Justice d. H. Wright, the inquiry commissioner, violated
his proper role by naming names and broadly hinting at criminal responsibility in the case.
Mr. Stonechild disappeared Nov. 24, 1990-a bitterly cold evening. Five days later, his body was found in
a field outside Saskatoon. An autopsy showed he died of hypothermia.
The inquiry concluded the youth was in Constable Hartwig's and Constable Senger's patrol car the last night
he was seen alive, and that injuries and marks on his body were likely caused by handcuffs.
While the report did not conclusively find that the former constables were responsible for dropping off
Mr. Stonechild in the field where he died, they were cited for failing to follow proper procedures and for failing to tell
investigators into his death that he had been in their custody.
Despite their consistent denials that they had never so much as seen Mr. Stonechild on the night he died-let
alone confined or abondoned him outside the city-the two officers were dismissed from their jobs within a day of
the report being released.
Last year, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal rejected a bid by the officers and their association to overturn
the findings. The court ruled that the commissioner did not exceed the scope of his authority by naming individuals, nor did
he violate the Constitution by making findings of civil or criminal liability.
"Findings of fact, of course, will frequently indicate that the specific individuals are at fault in some
way," Mr. Justice Robert Richards wrote in the ruling. "However, this in itself is not sufficient to warrant circumscribing
the work of inquiries. The efforts of most commissions would be largely pointless if they could not involve findings about
what went wrong and why."
Neither officer has ever faced criminal charges in the matter.
The report condemned the Saskatoon Police Service for not conducting a proper investigation. It said senior
officers were defensive and attempted to protect their reputations to the detriment of the inquiry.
In September, 2007, the case took a bizarre turn when a career criminal testified during a police commission
hearing that Mr. Stonechild was murdered to prevent him from testifying at a gun trial.
However, after hearing the evidence, a three-person panel of the Saskatchewan Police Commission ruled it
was too unreliable to be used as evidence at Constable Hartwig and Constable Senger's appeal of their dismissal from the force.
The decision to deny leave to appeal was made by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, Mr. Justice Morris Fish
and Mr. Justice Marshall Rothstein.
This article was written by Kirk Makin and published in the Globe and Mail.
