BURST
A federal prosecutor closed the Crown’s case against former RCMP officer William Majcher on Wednesday just as another former Mountie was expected to take the stand.
Charles Hough told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Martha Devlin that he was concluding the prosecution case just six minutes after court convened, shocking some in the packed public gallery.
The judge-alone trial, which began Monday, is testing the prosecution theory that Majcher violated Canada’s Security of Information Act by planning to help the Chinese government repatriate Hongwei (Kevin) Sun, who has lived in Canada as a permanent resident since 2001.
Beijing had flagged Sun as a suspect in Chinese fraud crimes that it alleged amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars and said he had invested heavily in Vancouver real estate. China, through Interpol, had issued a “red notice” to other countries for his arrest.
Majcher has pleaded not guilty to the one count he faces.
Majcher’s lawyer, Ian Donaldson, also expressed surprise at the Crown’s decision and told Devlin he needed time to figure out his next steps. Devlin adjourned the trial until Thursday morning.
Kenneth (Kim) Marsh was at the courthouse and expected to testify as the next Crown witness when Hough made his announcement.
Last week, Devlin ruled that Majcher’s arrest had been premature and illegal and in violation of his Charter rights.
She also ruled that a warranted search of Marsh’s home office should not have happened. Marsh, a B.C.-based private investigator and former commander of an RCMP international organized crime unit, had communicated with Majcher about Sun.
Donaldson said in court Wednesday that the Crown’s decision on Day 3 of the trial meant “it’s a very different case now than I was expecting.”
He said he might have asked more questions for Tuesday’s Crown witness, Supt. Peter Tsui, the RCMP’s former liaison officer in Beijing, had he known Marsh would not be called.
“I have to think about what the case is when I’ve been expecting the case to be something different for 18 months, and then assess,” Donaldson said in asking for an adjournment. “I had believed that through Marsh, certain things would occur, certain documents might make their way in.”
Donaldson and Hough declined to comment after court Wednesday.
But retired Vancouver police detective Paul McNamara, a close friend of Majcher’s, called the Crown’s surprise move “a shock.”
“I think, like everybody else that was here, I was lost for words. It just doesn’t make sense in the scheme of things,” said McNamara, who has attended every pretrial hearing in the case for almost three years.
McNamara has an ongoing civil suit against the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, along with RCMP Sgt. Peter Merrifield. Both allege their livelihoods were impacted by false CSIS reports created because of their friendship with Majcher.
McNamara said that Majcher has done nothing wrong, but has been kept away from his work and home in Hong Kong, where his two young daughters remain “on a bogus charge.”
“He’s missed his kids’ birthdays. He’s missed his girls growing up,” McNamara said.
With files from Susan Lazaruk