by Greg Marquis
At the time, it was not clear if the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) would hear the appeal prior to October, the expected time of Dennis’s appeal to the New Brunswick Court of Appeal (NBCA). As it turned out, the Supreme Court hearing would be scheduled to take place two weeks after the appeal of the conviction would begin.
The question on everyone’s mind was: could the defence team overturn Oland’s conviction, or at least secure a new trial? At this point, the public did not know anything about how Dennis was holding up in prison. There were rumours that he had been assaulted or that he was on suicide watch. Many (including the author) assumed that the convicted murderer, awaiting his appeal, had left the Correctional Service of Canada classification centre at Springhill, Nova Scotia, after ninety days and was in the federal medium-security institution at Dorchester, New Brunswick.
As his appeal approached in the fall of 2016, it was revealed that Oland was actually in a maximum-security institution. Correctional Service of Canada policy is to place all convicted murderers in maximum security for at least the first two years of their sentence. For Oland, a middle-class man approaching middle age, the prospect of being placed in close proximity for years at a time with hardened repeat offenders, many of whom have anger and substance-abuse issues and have been conditioned to resent the wealthy, must have been extremely stressful.
In many ways, Richard Oland’s death was “just another murder,” and as the judge had explained to the jury, the trial had turned on one question: the identity of the killer. As noted in an earlier chapter, there were other homicides in the Saint John area, starting in 2011, but they never came to fascinate the public— and the media—to the same degree.
In 2015, the year of Dennis’s trial, Saint John, with three murders, had the seventh-highest homicide rate (relative to population) in Canada.
Early in 2016, nineteen-year-old Justin Bennett was convicted of manslaughter after he stabbed his uncle, a drug addict. In January of 2016, nineteen-year-old Brodie White was charged with fatally stabbing a younger man at a New Year’s Eve party. He eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to at least eight years in prison. Later that year, a forty three-year-old woman was found dead outside her home in East Saint John. The SJPF declared the death a homicide but released no details, and to date no arrest has been made.
In June, the SJPF announced that human remains found in May were those of Scott Arthur Taylor, a suspected drug dealer who had disappeared in late 2011. This young Rothesay man had gained notoriety in 2008 when four men staged a home invasion of his Saint John residence, presumably looking for money and drugs. At the time, Taylor and a youth (who was under eighteen and could not be named in the media) were being distracted by two exotic dancers who were in on the robbery. Taylor and the teenager grabbed swords hanging on the wall of the apartment and chased off the intruders. Darrell Upshaw of Nova Scotia died of his wounds and murder charges were laid. In 2008, a jury convicted the young offender of manslaughter but acquitted Taylor of second-degree murder. Before he disappeared, he served time for assaulting a girlfriend.
The public rarely gave a thought to these other homicide cases after a conviction or acquittal, but many remained obsessed with the Oland murder and trial. Even before an arrest had been made in 2013, the case had gained the status of a social drama.
Members of the Oland jury, no doubt, continued to feel pressure from the community for their verdict, all the more frustrating given that they are prohibited from explaining the basis of their deliberations. This is in contrast with trials by judge alone, where judges state their reasons. In early 2017, a Toronto lawyer pointed to the Oland appeal as an example of why juries should be compelled to provide reasons for their verdicts. For every legal practitioner in favour of jury disclosure, there are many more who not only oppose the idea but also see it as undermining the legal process.3 And the idea that the public, reading a newspaper story or online post, can be smarter than a trial jury is met by puzzlement by many lawyers. The jury, as it was constantly reminded during the Oland trial, hears the totality of evidence and assesses both the reliability and credibility of witnesses, sees experienced lawyers conduct cross-examination, and receives legal instruction from a judge. Determining innocence or guilt without this experience, according to David Lutz, QC, is like “skiing in the dark...as in wearing a blindfold.” Lutz, a seasoned defence lawyer, warns against forming an opinion of a criminal prosecution based on what is said in the media, in social media, or “on the street.”4
Business as usual appears to have continued at the Far End Corporation office on Canterbury Street, the site of the murder. Robert McFadden not only continued to run Richard Oland’s companies, but he also parked in the victim’s spot near the corner of Canterbury and Princess. Far End and Kingshurst Estates appear to have existed primarily to manage Richard Oland’s investments and land holdings. They have virtually no presence on the Internet and what has happened to these companies since 2011 is not clear. On hot days in the summer of 2016 the front door to the office was sometimes open. Around Halloween, pedestrians spotted a macabre temporary addition to 52 Canterbury, a skeleton that appeared in a third-floor window, with a ghoulish hand pointing downward to the second floor.
Dennis remained an officer of his father’s companies and a trustee of his estate, which, according to one rumour, was being used to fund his ongoing legal battle, which by early 2017 may have cost $5 million. If the estate has been utilized to pay for the defence, this may be causing tensions within the family, particularly among Oland’s two sisters and their husbands. Jacqueline and Lisa, after all, stand to each inherit at least a third of Richard Oland’s fortune after their mother passes away and perhaps half if Dennis is convicted of murder a second time.
The blocks around the murder scene continued to slowly gentrify, with a Picaroons craft-beer brewtique, a locally sourced food store, and an art gallery opening up in a refurbished building next to 52 Canterbury, plus a whisky bar nearby. One street to the east, the former Bustin’s building was refurbished by Historica Developments, with the ground floor housing a trendy Italian restaurant and a bar spinning vinyl records by late 2016. The upper floors of the one-hundred-and-forty-year-old building were reserved for lofts. The area was becoming hip. The entrance to the back alley—the possible escape route of the defence team’s “real killer”—was also altered by a development that seemed somewhat out of place. A short walk from where Richard Oland had been bludgeoned to death, a Yuk Yuk’s comedy club opened early in 2017.
This was all good news for an uptown area—and a city—that badly needed some. The economic downturn had persisted, with large numbers of older properties in the North end and other neighbourhoods emptied of tenants and boarded up, resembling those in blighted areas of Detroit. On the negative side, Moosehead’s much-hyped plan for a small-batch brewery on the waterfront, near the Saint John cruise-ship terminals, was shelved in early 2017. President and CEO Andrew Oland, cousin of Dennis, explained that the company hoped to revisit the project in the future. Whether the company was suffering from falling consumption rates, the importation of cheaper beer from Quebec, or competition from craft breweries was not clear.
It was also business as usual, more or less, for the Saint John Police Force. Among its successes following the Oland conviction was the prosecution of two local men for drug trafficking, possession, conspiracy, and other charges in 2016. The sixty-five-day trial stemmed from a joint forces operation involving the RCMP and municipal police in three provinces. J-Tornado was a complex and costly effort aimed at disrupting the distribution of cocaine in the province. Nearly thirty people were arrested and many of them await trial. One of the investigation’s more controversial aspects, for defence lawyers, was the employment of an associate of the two defendants as a paid police agent. This former restaurant owner supplied the drug ring with supposedly encrypted BlackBerries for evading police surveillance. In reality, thousan
ds of messages ended up being sent directly to investigators.5
In a drug-ravaged community like Saint John, most citizens did not appear concerned that two cocaine traffickers were being sent to prison for several years. More controversial was a decision in January 2017 by the SJPF to raid six unlicensed marijuana shops. Cash and product were seized and a dozen people arrested. Given that the Trudeau government was planning to legalize marijuana sales sometime in the near future, and it was not clear if the Crown would endorse charges against the owners, the raids, in the opinion of many, seemed pointless, and it was reported that customers included terminally ill individuals. On the other hand, the SJPF was not the only police service in Canada to react to the proliferation of unlicensed cannabis retailers. A month later, four of the stores had reopened in defiance of the police. According to criminologist Michael Boudreau, the raids may have no lasting legal impact but they may have been an attempt by Chief John Bates, who is relatively new to the job, to make his mark on the department.6 In March of 2017, four of the shops were raided again.
A more worrisome development came in early 2017 when an investigative journalist revealed that of all the Census Metropolitan Areas in Canada, police in Saint John were less likely to believe women who reported incidents of sexual assault (the “unfounded” rate was 51 percent).7 In terms of residue from the Oland case, one piece of welcome news for the SJPF was the Halifax Regional Police’s conclusion that there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Deputy Chief McCloskey. The SJPF chief had asked the Halifax police to investigate the allegation made during the Oland trial that McCloskey had asked a colleague in 2011 to not reveal that he had entered the inner crime scene to view the victim’s body.8 Despite this, the handling of the scene by the police in 2011 was still the subject of much controversy in the community. Michael Boudreau believes that the mistakes were “serious” and negatively affected the force’s reputation.9 The SJPF in the opinion of many would have been wise to follow the maxim of the RCMP on crime-scene integrity: “Only God gets in that room.”
Oland in Custody
In early October, interest began to build in the appeal of Oland’s conviction, to be argued before the New Brunswick Court of Appeal in Fredericton. Just before the start of proceedings, the media revealed that Oland, who many assumed was being held in the Dorchester penitentiary, was actually at the Atlantic Institution at Renous in northeastern New Brunswick. The maximum-security facility is designed to house more than two hundred inmates in protective custody and secure-custody units. This prison, which opened in 1987, contains murderers, sex offenders, robbers, and drug offenders, most of whom have prior records and histories of violence. It was originally planned for the Saint John area but citizens had objected. Renous first gained notoriety in 1989 when its most famous inmate, murderer Allan Legere, escaped while on a medical day pass in Moncton. The focus is on security; correctional officers are equipped with firearms and there are fewer privileges for inmates than in medium-and minimum-security prisons. The cost to taxpayers for housing a prisoner at the Atlantic Institution in 2014 was $151,000 a year. It is assumed that Oland was visited by family and friends during his stay at Renous. The trip from Rothesay to the institution takes two and a half hours. The facility has a weight room, gym, tennis courts, a track and field area, and a baseball diamond.
During the orientation stage, a convicted murderer like Dennis Oland spends most of his time in his cell, then gradually is given more freedom. After a prisoner does two years in maximum security, a placement board, advised by a parole officer and using a custody-rating scale and a security-classification review, decides the next custodial setting. Slightly dated statistics indicate that half of all Canadian homicide offenders are in maximum security at any given moment; the remainder are housed in medium and minimum-security institutions and psychiatric and treatment centres. Although services have lagged and conditions deteriorated over the past decade, Canada is still considered to have one of the most professional federal corrections systems in the world, with an emphasis on not only security but also rehabilitation.10
As a “fish” or new inmate at the Atlantic Institution, Dennis was exposed to a much more hardened and dangerous class of offender than those at the provincial jail on Black River Road on the outskirts of Saint John. Many were career criminals, some with gang affiliations. In 2004, following the stabbing death of an inmate released from solitary confinement, the union representing correctional officers called Renous one of Canada’s most dangerous prisons. Although housed in his own cell and under close supervision, Oland shared the facility with inmates such as accused murderer and notorious criminal Jimmy Melvin Jr. of Nova Scotia and Tyler Keizer, a young prisoner serving a term for assault and robbery. Two and a half months after his statutory release on August 30, 2016, Keizer was shot to death while sitting in a SUV with a female friend in Halifax. The hardened criminal element in Renous would have regarded Oland as a target or a “sucker.” The staff would have regarded a prisoner like Oland as a potential target and a security risk. Security and safety are paramount and legally mandated in federal correctional facilities. At Renous, specialized intelligence officers rely on surveillance and informants to try to head off problems like assaults before they happen. Although some inmates are kept in protective isolation, at some point most become part of the general population and mix in with other prisoners at meal times and when on work detail, attending classes or programs, taking part in recreation such as team sports and weight training, and enjoying daily outdoor yard time.11
A rumour that Oland had been attacked while in custody (with years to go in his sentence) was confirmed in a news report in early 2017. Two prisoners originally from Nova Scotia were being charged with having assaulted Dennis on July 31, 2016. The RCMP had laid the charges. The accused were considerably younger than Oland and had a troubling history of violence. Aaron Gregory Marriott, twenty-six, was serving a fifteen-year sentence for attempted murder. When only eighteen, he had been arrested for firing a pistol at Jason Hallett outside the IWK Health Centre in Halifax. Hallett, who had been visiting his newborn child, was wounded while sitting in a Jeep Cherokee. He was associated with the Melvin family, with whom the Marriotts had been feuding. The brazen 2008 attack was shocking even by the standards of Halifax’s ongoing gun violence as it took place near the entrance of a hospital for children and close to Dalhousie University. Marriott, identified as the shooter, was apprehended in December and more arrests followed as part of Operation Intruder, a major drug investigation. When sentenced in 2011 for three counts of conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder, Marriott told reporters: “Hopefully, when I get out I’ll be a better person.” 12
The Marriotts, a notorious family from Spryfield, a community now part of Halifax, have been dubbed Nova Scotia’s “real-life Trailer Park Boys”—a reference to the comic characters from the well-known television show.13 Starting in 1998, over a two-year period eight people, including two women, were murdered or disappeared in the Halifax area because of violence involving the Marriotts and their enemies14 By 2008, with the older Marriotts either killed by rivals or in jail, Aaron was part of new generation involved in the hazardous drug-trafficking scene of greater Halifax. The day prior to the shooting at the hospital, Jimmy Melvin Sr. had survived a similar attack at a Spryfield pizza business. In 2009, Aaron Marriott was charged for taking part in a riot in the provincial jail in Dartmouth.
Cody Alexander Muise, twenty-seven, is serving life for first-degree murder; his other offences were armed robbery, forcible confinement, and possession of drugs for purposes of trafficking. In late 2010, accompanied by two teen males, he had proceeded through woods to the rear of the Spryfield residence of twenty-year-old Brandon Hatcher, a rival petty criminal. Earlier that day, another local man had been wounded by unknown parties, and police later suspected that Muise and the teens, who carried an automatic rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol, had been on a revenge mission. Text and
cellphone records indicated a degree of prior planning, a challenge to the victim, and evidence of an attempt to elude responding police units. Following a one-sided exchange of gunfire outside Hatcher’s residence, the victim bled to death after being shot in the back. Muise and other members of the so-called “Spryfield M.O.B.,” in addition to being violent, seem to be extremely erratic. Rather than lying low, ten days after the murder of Hatcher, Muise was involved, with a female friend and two adolescents, in an incident involving robbery, assault, and forcible confinement. One teen turned Crown witness and Muise (who had fired the automatic rifle) and the other youth were put on trial for first-degree murder. Muise argued in court that he had shot in self-defence but was convicted and sentenced to a minimum of twenty-five years before parole eligibility.
On February 9, 2017, the Marriott and Muise assault matter was considered by the provincial court in Miramichi. The two accused, who had no legal representation and did not enter a plea, took part by video link. The Crown was proceeding by way of indictment, which meant a maximum penalty for assault of five years—on one level, not really an issue for the accused who were already serving lengthy terms. Oland family lawyer Bill Teed explained to the CBC: “We just want to make it abundantly clear that he has not been involved in any way, shape, or form with respect to the laying of charges against these two individuals.” Teed wanted the public to know that despite rumours to the contrary: “Dennis at no time has laid any complaint with respect to any alleged assault.” He continued: “He has not been involved in any investigation of any alleged assault, and he has not had any discussions with the Crown prosecutor’s office with respect to the laying of any charges with respect to an alleged assault.” Why Oland, an alleged victim of assault, had not pressed charges, and why the public needed to know this, was not explained. Perhaps, he was concerned about being labelled a “rat,” one of the worst transgressions of the inmate code. The judge decided that Marriott and Muise would be afforded time to apply for legal aid and the matter was held over until March 9. The two accused appeared that day in Miramichi provincial court before Judge Kenneth Oliver. Each now had a lawyer but they were not ready to enter a plea. They were scheduled to return to court in late April.15
