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| Michael Crowley |
But this wasn’t always the case. When I was first appointed to the parole board in 1996, I was made aware of a handful of outstanding lawyers who acted as assistants for offenders at parole hearings. John Hill was one of these individuals, and his reputation was that of a person who would not hesitate to not only appeal a negative decision to the board’s appeal division but would then take a case to Federal Court with few qualms.
I didn’t know if this reputation was well-deserved or not, but I assumed it to be true.
And I did not look forward to the first occasion when he was the assistant for a case. I’m not sure what I expected; probably he would be someone who interrupted hearings, would raise points of order and generally make my life difficult.
Instead, I faced a gentleman who took notes as the hearing occurred and then raised appropriate points that he felt the board should consider prior to making its decision. He certainly appealed decisions that I had made but did so without that becoming an impediment to how we conducted ourselves at future hearings.
However, this relationship changed, at least for me, in March 2006 when John acted as the assistant for Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person convicted of having an involvement in the Air India bombings that occurred in June 1985 and the deaths of more than 330 victims. The vast majority of those victims were in an Air India jet that exploded over the Irish Sea, killing everyone onboard. A second bomb killed baggage handlers on the ground at Narita Airport in Japan.
In his book Pine Box Parole, John devoted part of a chapter to Reyat’s case and provides a great deal of detail about the history of Sikh efforts at establishing a separate homeland in India that would be called Khalistan and the violence that took place in India, including the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi after she had initiated an operation that led to an armed takeover of the Golden Temple, a revered place in the Sikh religion that caused many deaths.
Reyat, a British citizen, had moved to Vancouver Island where he primarily worked on automobile electronics. He was considered to be a devout Sikh who became involved with a militant Sikh group in British Columbia, led by Talwinder Singh Parmar. Parmar was a violent individual who apparently was responsible for the deaths of a number of individuals. Parmar reached out to Reyat in order to obtain dynamite and an ignition device, which Reyat obtained.
As previously noted, two bombs were created, blowing up those Air India jets.
Without going through the convoluted and complex investigations and allegations, Reyat was eventually convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years, after the court had taken into account the amount of time that he had been held in custody pending his trial.
Federal inmates in Canada (other than those serving life or indeterminate sentences), if they are not granted parole, are released at the two-thirds point of their sentences. This is called statutory release. If the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) believes that an offender poses a significant risk of committing a violent offence, it may refer the case to the Parole Board of Canada (PBC) for a detention hearing.
The criteria for such a referral requires CSC to determine whether the commission of the current offence caused the death of or serious harm to another person and whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that the offender is likely to commit an offence causing death or serious harm to another person before the expiration of the current sentence. If the board agrees, it may order that the offender serve the entire sentence in custody, rather than being released statutorily.
In Reyat’s case, CSC referred the case for detention, and I was assigned to be the lead member for the hearing and to write the decision.
To put it mildly, the Reyat hearing was an unusual one from a number of perspectives. The board understood that there was significant interest in having observers attend the hearing. As a consequence, the decision was made to hold the hearing on the top floor of Collins Bay Institution, a large, open room that I didn’t know existed. It was certainly big enough to hold the anticipated crowd.
In the end, there were approximately 120 observers, divided between victims, media and Reyat’s supporters.
CSC determined, for security reasons, that the three groups needed to be kept separate from one another. Jointly, we agreed to delay the start of the hearing from the usual 8:30 to 10 so that all observers could be screened at the institution’s entrance. We also knew that the hearing would take more than a couple of hours and that lunch would need to be served to everyone — each group being led to a different location within the institution.
The board, also being concerned with security issues and clearly wanting to keep us away from the media, decided that the three board members plus our hearing assistant would be driven by van from our office to the institution, dropped off at the front door and that we would be driven back in the same manner at the end of the hearing.
Finally, in order to deal with the media, an area was set aside in a large building on the other side of the parking way, furthest away from the institution itself, for the board media staff to respond to media inquiries.
Actually, that was not the final aspect of this unusual day. When we finally returned to the office, the office manager asked us what the decision was so that he could telephone the Prime Minister’s Office, as they had been phoning him regularly during the day in order to know the result.
Clearly, we were no longer in Kansas!
An unusual day and, at the outset of the hearing, we had to deal with the submission made. John Hill took the position that the board did not have jurisdiction to hear the case and, further, went on at length to claim that because the parole board and the Correctional Service of Canada both reported to the same cabinet minister (Stockwell Day), we were not an independent tribunal and should not proceed.
He finally ended his submission by saying, “The fix was in.”
To me, this was inappropriate language as it implied we could not make a fair decision based on file information and the hearing. And while one can state many things about me, saying that I could not be fair was like waving a red cape in front of a bull.
We took a recess and left the hearing room in order to respond to Hill’s submission. Of course, the question of the independence of the board had been settled many years previous, so we knew that we would proceed. We also decided to note our concern regarding Mr. Hill’s statement about the “fix.” We then returned to the hearing room and very briefly stated that we had jurisdiction and that the legislation made it clear that the board was independent. I also said clearly that we were disturbed by the claim that the “fix” was in and the implication that we had already made the decision in advance of the hearing.
It was a difficult hearing for me — not because of the issues we had to assess for a detention decision, but because I had never conducted a hearing with more than a handful of observers previously and was acutely aware that our questions and Reyat’s responses would be carefully scrutinized by everyone in that room.
In the end, we found that Reyat was not truthful regarding some key aspects of the case, that he was aware of the potential impact of his actions and that he was unconcerned that innocent lives could be lost as a consequence. Finally, we determined that we could not be assured that he would not continue his involvement in what was clearly a violent organization in the future.
As a consequence, the board ordered that Reyat remain in custody until his Warrant Expiry Date.
Normally board members dictated their decisions to the hearing assistant who attended the hearing. But I knew that this decision would be scrutinized carefully by a number of individuals, including the press, and that it had to be carefully written. So I wrote the first draft when I returned to the office, made appropriate revisions and had it finalized.
The decision withstood the appropriate appeals that I had anticipated. And John Hill has remained a friend.
Michael Crowley has a BA from Syracuse University. He spent more than 40 years in various positions within the criminal justice system in Canada. Before retiring, Crowley had been a member of the Parole Board of Canada for 21 years. Contact him via CrowleyMichael167@gmail.com.
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