Charges should never have been laid in Henoche custody death case, says defence lawyer

A St. John's attorney who represents one of nine prison guards formerly accused of killing an inmate says the charges laid against her client will have a lasting impact.

Rosellen Sullivan — who represents David Constantine, who had been charged with manslaughter —said the ordeal could hurt the correctional officer's career, noting that a "cloud of suspicion" has hung over his head for over two years.

"It's cold comfort to him that it's not going any further," Sullivan said, reached by phone Thursday, a day after CBC News reported the Crown had ended its pursuit of a trial for good.

But the effects will be felt for some time, she said, on things like background checks.

"It's going to show up that my client was charged with manslaughter," she said. "There is no little asterisk on those records checks that say, 'Oh, by the way, he shouldn't have been charged.'"

Sullivan is one of a slate of attorneys who defended the nine correctional officers at Her Majesty's Penitentiary, where 33-year-old Jonathan Henoche died while in custody.

Police investigated Henoche's sudden death, on Nov. 6, 2019, for over a year before announcing they had arrested 10 penitentiary employees. Charges against one of the guards were later dropped.

"The public perception is that 10 correctional officers beat Mr. Henoche to death. That is false, and it absolutely needs to be corrected, for Mr. Henoche's family as well as these 10 individuals," Sullivan said.

For the nine remaining guards, another full year would pass before a provincial court judge would examine the evidence — consisting of an autopsy, a re-enactment of the use of force against Henoche and surveillance video from inside the prison — and dismiss nearly all charges against the accused.

Jason Anthony, Chris Coady, David Constantine, Stefan Cumby, Daniel Dalton, Scott Dwyer, Jenine Rickert, Riley Ricks and Lori Williams have been cleared of criminal wrongdoing. A charge of failure to provide the necessaries of life remains against Jeff Thistle.

Judge Pamela Goulding, who all but shut the book on the case in December following a preliminary inquiry, said the video footage pointed to the guards acting in a "professional and dutiful manner," their movements while restraining Henoche "calm and orderly."

To take the case to trial would "elevate the great prospect of wrongful conviction," she said at the time.

Sullivan says the evidence she viewed wasn't sufficient to justify charges in the first place.

"I don't know if it was public pressure or what," she said. "It obviously warranted an investigation, without a doubt — there's no question about that. But how it ended up in a courtroom? I don't know."