Bail Gone Very Wrong

By all accounts Rahim and Nazifa Shahghasy, who fled war-ravaged Afghanistan, and were murdered last week outside a Brampton shopping mall, were model Canadians.

Hard working, they built a life here after arriving with literally nothing. They raised two kids who went to Catholic schools and are (or were until last week) well on the way to a typical middle class Canadian adulthood.

But then Rahim and Nazifa were both stabbed to death by an apparently deranged Dwayne Palmer.

Mr Palmer's behaviour is so odd that it may bespeak madness rather than criminality. He may be not guilty by reason of insanity.

But criminal guilt or innocence is not really the issue -- the issue is why was Mr Palmer on the street?

He was, it seems, on bail from last December on weapons and drugs charges - the latest in a series of brushes with the law which include prior convictions for assault and drug offences.

It's easy to blame the Justice of the Peace, or Ontario Court of Justice Judge, who released Mr Palmer but the rules of bail are intended to allow release (and even the Constitution provides for easy release). The JP or OCJ Judge work within the statutes and the statutes say, except in extreme cases, "let 'em out".

What's more, bail hearings are fast and often important facts are just are not before the Court. It is common for bail lists to have dozens of cases to be heard in a single morning. King Solomon would have trouble deciding rightly in such a situation.

So what is to be done? The easy answer is to say "lock 'em all up" but that ignores the fact that the accused are not necessarily guilty and also overlooks societal costs (prisoners can't pay child support). That said, the legislation should provide that, where serious violence is alleged or where there is a history of convictions, bail is harder, much harder, to get.

Bail also should be treated more seriously by the system. Police should release everyone, albeit on terms, who will properly get bail -- there are lots of people in bail court who shouldn't be there -- but the remaining cases should be given the time and attention appropriate to one of the most serious parts of the criminal process.

Perhaps such changes would not have saved Rahim and Nazifa but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make the system work.

jcm

See Globe story below:
CRIME
Requiem for two immigrant dreams
In the 1980s, an Afghan couple and a Jamaican boy began new lives in Brampton. Now two are dead and one is a murder suspect

TIMOTHY APPLEBY AND KATE HAMMER

With a report from Susan Krashinsky

May 3, 2008

BRAMPTON, ONT. -- The two families came from opposite corners of the world: Afghanistan and Jamaica. Both reached Canada more than 20 years ago, leaving their homelands in pursuit of better futures. Both lived northwest of Toronto in Brampton, where immigrants comprise close to a third of the population.

As the families' twin trajectories intersected at a shopping plaza on Wednesday, their story culminated in a horrific and apparently meaningless homicide.

In Toronto yesterday, autopsies were being conducted on Rahim and Nazifa Shahghasy, 53 and 52, who fled war-ravaged Afghanistan in the late 1980s and staked out new lives that were cut brutally short in a stabbing frenzy with no apparent motive.

An hour's drive away, their alleged killer was under police guard in Brampton Civic Hospital's intensive-care unit. He, too, had sustained knife wounds, after stabbing himself in the neck with one of the two long-bladed knives he used to kill the Shahghasys, Peel police said.

Born in Jamaica in 1980, Dwayne Robert Palmer was a child when he came to Canada. His father, Max Robert Palmer, who turned 65 this week, purchased a family home on Brampton's Hinchley Wood Grove in 1989 for just $30,000.

When Dwayne Palmer was granted bail last December on weapons and drugs charges - the latest in a series of brushes with the law, according to a police source - he listed the house as his home address, shared with his father, his younger brother and a tenant, according to neighbours and property records.

Just why he was at the Red Maple Plaza early Wednesday afternoon is unclear. Also a mystery is why he might have attacked the Shahghasys.

Was it a robbery? A carjacking? Inspector Norm English of the Peel homicide squad has so far described the attack only as completely unprovoked.

Some light may be shed when police are able to interview Mr. Palmer, at which point it is expected that he will be charged with two counts of second-degree murder.

Police did not release Mr. Palmer's name, which was being withheld until he is formally charged. Nor did they describe his criminal record, beyond saying that he was well known to them and was free on bail at the time of Wednesday's killings.

Police sources and court records, however, confirm that Dwayne Palmer is the suspected killer, and that on Dec. 31 he was charged with drug possession, carrying a concealed weapon and dangerous use of a weapon. Before that, he was convicted of assault and of shoplifting.

The Shahghasys, by contrast, led exemplary lives. Without exception, friends and neighbours who knew them described the couple as hardworking, generous role models.

Sarah Futia, a close friend of the couple's 22-year-old son, Qaiss, recounted speaking to Mr. Shahghasy last week.

It turned into a lecture about how I should better myself and how he thinks that I have great potential, she said. He was always trying to encourage us. He was a very encouraging man, a very beautiful person.

Hosain Anishwar, president of the Afghan Association of Ontario, had known the Shahghasys ever since they fled Afghanistan's Soviet-backed regime more than 20 years ago.

They came here as refugees - there was not any friend, any family members or anybody to sponsor them - and then they [became] landed immigrants and later Canadian citizens, he said.

Mr. Shahghasy worked as a car detailer at Brampton's Planet Ford dealership. His wife ran a clothing store, also in Brampton. The couple purchased their brick-clad, two-storey, Siesta Court home in 2006 for $415,000.

When they were slain at the strip mall on Wednesday, they were making rounds that could hardly have been more routine: Ms. Shahghasy had a dental appointment; while waiting for her, her husband was picking up a few groceries.

As Mr. Shahghasy exited the store, he saw his wife being stabbed, tried to intervene and was himself fatally stabbed, police said Thursday. Police arrived a few minutes later, subdued the attacker with a taser and took him to hospital.

Mr. Anishwar called the couple's deaths a tragedy ... they were innocent people.

About six kilometres from the Shahghasys' tidy home is the more run-down Palmer residence. When a reporter visited yesterday the garden was overgrown, a back window was broken and a car parked directly in front was filled with debris.

As the visitor approached, a man shouted through the door, Go away, it's none of your business.

A neighbour, whose son attended Notre Dame Secondary School with Dwayne Palmer, said Mr. Palmer was expelled after a stabbing incident.

It's an unfortunate thing what happened, but I'm not surprised; he was a troubled kid, the man said.

Mr. Palmer's parents are separated and he divided his time between Brampton and Toronto, where his mother lives, said the neighbour, who described the father as a nice guy.

Another neighbour, Andrew Hall, 22, said that he would often see Mr. Palmer smoking cigarettes in the driveway of the family's home, and described him as quiet and withdrawn. He seemed like a nice guy; a little off though, Mr. Hall said. He just had a little bit of a weird look.

James Morton
1100 - 5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4