Gadhia’s client acquitted of manslaughter after complex trial
By Peter Small, AdvocateDaily.com Contributor
A young man has been acquitted of manslaughter after Toronto criminal lawyer Roots Gadhia argued that the death of a co-worker was the result of group horseplay gone wrong.
“It’s one of those cases that you will always remember because it encapsulates what we do as lawyers — the protection of an individual who truly isn’t guilty,” says Gadhia, principal of R. Roots Gadhia Criminal Defence Law.
“It was the ultimate David and Goliath story.”
A jury found Gadhia’s client and his two co-accused not guilty of manslaughter after a two-and-a-half-month trial in Ontario Superior Court in Brampton.
The three defendants, all friends in their early twenties who had come from Punjabi villages in India to study computer programming in Ontario, spent 10 months in custody after being charged in the death of their chum, Gadhia says.
They were freed on bail shortly after Gadhia’s client retained her as counsel.
The three accused and the 22-year-old deceased man worked as casual, overnight cleaners at a Mississauga food processing plant.
The victim died of internal injuries after one of the three defendants aimed an air hose at his posterior while the other two held him down at the factory in the early hours of March 6, 2015, court heard.
The entire incident was captured by a high-definition security camera at the plant. But the case was anything but straightforward, Gadhia says.
The lawyers encountered a host of thorny legal questions both before and during the trial, she says.
“In my 21 years as a lawyer, I’ve never done a jury trial that had so many legal hurdles and jumps to get through in order to narrowly deliberate on what was the equivalent of eight seconds on the video,” she tells AdvocateDaily.com.
Ultimately, the fate of the three accused turned on whose interpretation of the fatal incident would prevail, Gadhia says.
The Crown alleged that the tussle was a brutal assault in which the three defendants ganged up on the fourth in a bullying, hazing ritual, she says.
The defence countered that it was innocent horseplay that ended in an unexpected tragedy.
The three defendants testified that they frequently joked around with the air hose, aiming it at each other during their overnight shifts at the plant, and that no one warned them to stop. Neither did they receive safety training on the hose, although they used it to clean machinery, court heard.
The soundless video of the incident was played in court.
You can see them laughing and then when they realize something’s gone wrong with the air hose, their expressions change — ‘Oh, oh, what happened?’ And they have a confused look on their faces. Then they rushed their friend to a hospital,” Gadhia says.
For the Crown to prove manslaughter, it had to establish that the three accused were guilty of an unlawful act, in this case assault, Gadhia says. The prosecution also had to show that the deceased’s serious injury or death was objectively foreseeable by the three men.
In Gadhia’s address to the jury, however, she stressed that the three defendants could not possibly know — because they were never told — that applying an air hose through four layers of clothing for a few seconds could be fatal. They could not have objectively foreseen the serious bodily harm, she argued.
“They were all horsing around in a factory in the middle of the night shift,” she says. “They believed they had consent from the victim, the deceased.”
“But they got it. They didn’t need to understand the legal arguments per se. They got the common-sense arguments that these boys certainly didn’t mean to do this,” she says. “The jury didn’t buy the Crown’s version of events of a bullying, aggressive, angry violent act.”
“But they got it. They didn’t need to understand the legal arguments per se. They got the common-sense arguments that these boys certainly didn’t mean to do this,” she says. “The jury didn’t buy the Crown’s version of events of a bullying, aggressive, angry violent act.”
Judging by a question the jurors asked of the judge during deliberations, they quickly rejected a verdict of manslaughter and were wrestling with whether the defendants were guilty of assault, Gadhia says. Their question focused on whether the three defendants may have had an honest but mistaken belief that they had their friend’s consent to engage in the roughhousing that led to his death, she says.
The acquittals are particularly satisfying because the three accused, decent young men, were also morally innocent, she says.
Gadhia’s client was relieved at regaining his freedom, she says, but was also in tears. “It was a bittersweet victory for him because they lost a good friend that they cared about and never intended to hurt.”
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