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| John L. Hill |
Howlett’s body had been discovered in the Grand River in Kitchener, stuffed in a duffle bag and tossed into the water near the site where Ball’s father's construction company was headquartered. The second trial was delayed because Ball’s defence lawyer, Paul Burstein, had been appointed to the bench, and his new lawyer, Tony Bryant, needed time to prepare.
The second trial commenced in St. Catharines in 2019. It ended after four days of jury deliberation with a first-degree murder conviction and the imposition of a life sentence without eligibility for parole for 25 years.
During the trial, the prosecution’s star witness, Daniel Warwick, admitted he was a drug dealer at the time. Warwick testified that Ball confessed to killing Howlett by choking her inside Ball's apartment. Warwick also helped Ball dump the body in the river.
Before Howlett disappeared, Ball told friends he suspected Howlett was cheating on him and stealing drugs from his apartment. Ball told them he bought a duffle bag and thought about killing her.
A pathologist testified at trial that Howlett’s body was severely decomposed and it was impossible to
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A week after his May 5, 2019, conviction, Ball filed an inmate Notice of Appeal. Ball later retained appellate defence counsel. The appeal was heard on May 28, 2024, and the decision was handed down on July 19 (R. v. Ball, 2024 ONCA 574). My analysis of the appeal court reasoning was published in Law360 Canada on Aug. 2.
Yet I had a nagging question about why Ball never testified on his own behalf. Indeed, a jury would want to hear from an accused when the only evidence linking him to a murder was from an unsavoury witness.
Perhaps the answer lies in evidence uncovered in a Toronto Star investigation of over 100 cases where police seriously violated the rights of an accused. The investigation looked into cases where police breached Charter rights that make it unlawful to use brutality, random searches and arbitrary detention without good reason.
As a result of the Star’s bringing these violations to light, judges tossed charges, reduced sentences or excluded key evidence, like guns and drugs.
The Star found that Waterloo Regional police, while the Howlett murder investigation was underway, had taped an anonymous message to Ball’s front door, which read, “I KNOW YOU KILLED HER YOU A--HOLE!” Two weeks later, the police staged a break-in of his house, damaging his front door and stealing guns and drugs from his safe, again leaving a note reading, “I KNOW YOU DID IT AND NOW I HAVE PROOF!!”
Police knew Ball would call them to report the break-in, and when he did, homicide detective Richard Dorling and another officer who responded to the call used it as a chance to get him to answer questions about the murder. Ball’s remaining silent left police misfeasance undetected.
The Toronto Star investigation published June 13, 2022, with the assistance of Western University’s law school, identified more than 600 cases in the last decade in which judges across Canada found police seriously violated the accused’s Charter rights. Since 2017, these rulings have come down at a rate of two per week.
Even if the police misfeasance was not enough to see Ball acquitted, the raising of police misconduct by Ball’s trial counsel could have been used to negotiate a plea to a lesser charge and affect sentencing. Indeed, it could have been raised on appeal.
Courts often criticize the accused for being willfully blind when transgressions occur. Can we really say justice is served when the courts, both at the trial and appeal levels, are kept willfully blind to Charter violations impacting an arrest?
John L. Hill practised and taught prison law until his retirement. He holds a J.D. from Queen’s and an LL.M. in constitutional law from Osgoode Hall. He is also the author of Pine Box Parole: Terry Fitzsimmons and the Quest to End Solitary Confinement (Durvile & UpRoute Books) and The Rest of the (True Crime) Story (AOS Publishing). Contact him at johnlornehill@hotmail.com.
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