What the jury didn't hear: revealing articles about the accused

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Post articles here about "what the jury didn't get to hear" and discuss.

Faulty warrant shielded Internet activity

For three months leading to the murder of Victoria 'Tori' Stafford, Michael Rafferty searched the Internet for 'underage rape, real underage rape, real underage rape pictures, pre-teen nude, pre-teen model galleries and nude pre-teen.'
He also accessed a 'how-to-guide' on raping children and dozens of child *advertiser censored* videos, including some featuring incest and one purporting to be a "snuff movie" involving a child.
On March 28, 2009, 10 days before the kidnapping, Rafferty watched a movie about a man using a story about his lost dog to abduct a blonde, eight-year-old girl walking home alone after school. She is taken away in the man's car and forced later to perform sexual acts.
On April 23, 2009, after the kidnapping, he downloaded a movie about Karla Homolka.

http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/raffertytrial/2012/05/10/19741946.html
 
thank you matou... this will help keep the articles in one place!
 
What the Jury Didn't Hear: Shocking Details About Rafferty's Character
Data fragments on Rafferty's laptop indicate he had been downloading child *advertiser censored* since 2005. The Hollywood movie
``Gardens of the Night,'' about the abduction of a young, blond girl -- which deviates substantially from what allegedly happened to Tori after the abduction -- was downloaded 11 days before she disappeared.
The movie ``Karla,'' about Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, was downloaded two weeks later.
Investigators also said they found evidence on the laptop of videos ``depicting 'how-to' instructions for child sexual assault,'' and evidence ``of recent possession of 'snuff' films inclusive of one with a title suggestive of a child target.''
Most of the videos depicted ``a variety of graphic and coercive images of violent sexual abuse involving children between one and eighteen years of age,'' the Crown documents say.
http://www.am980.ca/channels/news/local/Story.aspx?ID=1702061
 
Christie Blatchford: The shocking child-*advertiser censored* evidence the Tori Stafford

There was plenty of other evidence about Mr. Rafferty, chiefly that he had a penchant for sexual choking, that the jurors never heard because prosecutors didn’t try to have it admitted.
They had lined up no fewer than 12 women — not counting Terri-Lynne McClintic herself — who would have testified about Mr. Rafferty’s fondness for choking out his partners.
Not all of these episodes were consensual, prosecutors said in a so-called “bad character” factum that was filed with the court but never argued in full.

Indeed, Mr. Rafferty actually had one of his reluctant partners sign a waiver, giving him consent to choke her. “I agree to what Mike and I are doing tonight, sexual choking and passing out and other things,” it read.
The sexual choking had some real significance given Ms. McClintic’s evidence — in her first version of the killing, when she claimed it was Mr. Rafferty who did it — that she had heard a “gurgling” sound coming from Tori in the moments before her death.

She interpreted that to mean the little girl was being choked, a practice with which she was not unfamiliar.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/05/10/tori-stafford-michael-rafferty-evidence/
 
Bizarrely, an enduring difficulty with the Google searches was that if all of them were introduced — Mr. Rafferty had also searched for “naked girl seizing,” “seizures girl,” and “epileptic naked” — Mr. Derstine worried that Mr. Rafferty would appear a deviant, and if only the child-rape ones were allowed, it would appear he was interested only in sex with children, when he was in fact interested in sex with epileptics too.
In any case, the judge found that because Ms. McClintic didn’t “adopt,” or agree with Mr. Derstine’s suggestions, they remained simply that. And because lawyers’ questions aren’t evidence, there was no evidence before the jurors, he said, to trigger any action on his part.
In the result, jurors heard none of it.
Mr. Rafferty didn’t testify.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/05/10/tori-stafford-michael-rafferty-evidence/

So did he know a little girl who had seizures or was epileptic? wow. JMO
 
guys.. it may not have been the warrant that was faulty after reading this!

Stripped to the core, the judge said that though the police had acted legally in getting search warrants for Mr. Rafferty’s home and car, and though they honestly believed that was sufficient to allow for a forensic examination of the hard drive, BlackBerry and laptop found therein, and though the law on such searches was then evolving, the police should have anticipated how it might change and sought another warrant to look at the devices.

In essence, Judge Heeney said, the police were good cops but bad lawyers.

As a “remedy” for what he called their carelessness, he deemed the search a violation of Mr. Rafferty’s Charter-guaranteed right against unreasonable search and seizure and threw the evidence out.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/05/10/tori-stafford-michael-rafferty-evidence/

another snip

In pre-trial arguments, Mr. Rafferty’s lawyer, Dirk Derstine, challenged almost everything about the search in trying to get the evidence tossed.

But Judge Heeney found the police had been honest and acted properly and legally — except that they sent the hard drive seized from Mr. Rafferty’s house and the BlackBerry and laptop found in his car to an OPP forensic examiner without getting a secondary warrant.

The law governing computer and electronic searches was then very much in a state of flux.

There had been judicial hints that without a secondary warrant, such searches might not survive a Charter challenge, but the matter simply wasn’t settled yet.

unbelievable... utterly
 
guys.. it may not have been the warrant that was faulty after reading this!

Stripped to the core, the judge said that though the police had acted legally in getting search warrants for Mr. Rafferty’s home and car, and though they honestly believed that was sufficient to allow for a forensic examination of the hard drive, BlackBerry and laptop found therein, and though the law on such searches was then evolving, the police should have anticipated how it might change and sought another warrant to look at the devices.

In essence, Judge Heeney said, the police were good cops but bad lawyers.

As a “remedy” for what he called their carelessness, he deemed the search a violation of Mr. Rafferty’s Charter-guaranteed right against unreasonable search and seizure and threw the evidence out.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/05/10/tori-stafford-michael-rafferty-evidence/

another snip

In pre-trial arguments, Mr. Rafferty’s lawyer, Dirk Derstine, challenged almost everything about the search in trying to get the evidence tossed.

But Judge Heeney found the police had been honest and acted properly and legally — except that they sent the hard drive seized from Mr. Rafferty’s house and the BlackBerry and laptop found in his car to an OPP forensic examiner without getting a secondary warrant.

The law governing computer and electronic searches was then very much in a state of flux.

There had been judicial hints that without a secondary warrant, such searches might not survive a Charter challenge, but the matter simply wasn’t settled yet.

unbelievable... utterly
 
The jury also did not know that in January 2009 a woman Rafferty met on dating website Plenty of Fish, where he met most of the other women he dated, invited Rafferty over to her house to watch a movie. According to a police complaint, he arrived with an already opened bottle of wine, poured her some, but did not drink any himself.

She told police she started to feel "fuzzy," the room started to spin and Rafferty climbed on top of her on the couch. He started choking her, removing her clothes and tying her hands behind her back, according to the police report, which was cited in court documents. She started vomiting, and Rafferty anally raped her while still choking her, she alleged.

http://www.680news.com/news/nationa...ng-details-about-michael-rafferty-s-character

Oh my ... it just keeps coming out.
 
From the article you linked:

When police legally searched Rafferty's car and found the two devices, they should have obtained another search warrant to examine their contents, Heeney ruled — even though at the time there was no binding authority upon them to do so.
The first court decision to spell out that a secondary search warrant is necessary under such circumstances wasn't released until several weeks after investigators began poring through Rafferty's laptop.

Based on this, article, I would say the judge erred in his decision.

Can the Crown appeal the verdict, based on this? ETA: If the verdict isn't 'guilty on all counts.'
 
Inal, but I would think that they would retry the case and try to get that evidence in again

(I do not think they can appeal a verdict)
 
From the article you linked:

When police legally searched Rafferty's car and found the two devices, they should have obtained another search warrant to examine their contents, Heeney ruled — even though at the time there was no binding authority upon them to do so.
The first court decision to spell out that a secondary search warrant is necessary under such circumstances wasn't released until several weeks after investigators began poring through Rafferty's laptop.

Based on this, article, I would say the judge erred in his decision.

Can the Crown appeal the verdict, based on this? ETA: If the verdict isn't 'guilty on all counts.'


I was wondering the opposite...As sick as the omission makes me feel, IF the Judge HAD allowed it, now that the laws have changed...would it have permitted the Defense to declare a mistrial??
 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...deo-found-on-raffertys-laptop/article2429175/

long Globe and Mail article
 

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