A Toronto police officer has accused a Crown attorney of encouraging him to lie in court
The attorney is alleged to have told the officer, “We protect our own”
A Crown attorney is being accused of suggesting a police witness should have provided false evidence while testifying in court.
According to the Toronto Star, a heated interaction occurred in the hallway of a Toronto courthouse earlier this year, between Crown attorney Marnie Goldenberg and Constable Edin Hasanbasic of the Toronto Police Service.
Hasanbasic had been called as a witness in the case of a man accused of hitting a different officer with his motorcycle, with the intent of causing harm.
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Surveillance footage obtained by the Star, recorded without audio, shows the hostile exchange.
Hasanbasic had just told the court that the officer who was struck by the motorcycle “seemed like he was fine” after the incident.
Goldenberg, according to Hasanbasic’s notes about the encounter, allegedly got angry about his testimony, because it went against the Crown’s case.
“What am I supposed to do? Lie?” Hasanbasic recalls saying.
The attorney allegedly responded by saying, “We protect our own.”
Goldenberg disputes the allegation. “I would never tell a witness to lie. Ever,” she said, according to documents reviewed by the Star.
Ontario Court Justice Mara Greene is presiding over the conflicting statements, which are being used in an application to have charges against the motorcycle driver thrown out, citing abuse of due process.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
