Glass Prisoner Chambers Added to Courtroom for Coutts Two Trial Ominous and Ridiculous
Or as writer and colleague Gord Magill puts it... The Theatre of the Absurd.
In one of my more recent pieces on my Substack I took note of a court ruling in BC wherein a BC Supreme Court judge found that a change of venue for the trial of an accused murderer was appropriate. Why? Because of the hardships the defendant would face if he was made to leave his rather posh jail facilities in Kamloops to spend the duration of his trial in a windowless basement cell at the RCMP detachment in Cranbrook BC, not far from Creston BC where the murder occurred. The judge in making his ruling agreed with the defence’s arguments that such hardships could also impact the fairness of his trial. That ruling caused me to compare this man’s circumstances in receiving a venue change over simply the prospective hardships he might face, to the two years worth of extreme hardships endured by the Coutts Four. The men arrested and charged, on very thin evidence, of conspiracy to murder police, at the border blockade protest that occurred in Coutts, Alberta in February of 2022 in support of the Freedom Convoy.
Now as the pretrial for the remaining two* of the Coutts Four reconvened on May 24th, there are even more bizarre arrangements that have been made that will surely increase their hardships and could certainly affect the fairness of their trial. A newly built metal and glass enclosure has been installed in the courtroom where the two men will be required to sit, while shackled, segregated from the rest of the courtroom, for the duration of the trial. Freelance writer, commentator and Substacker, Gord Magill, has been following this matter very closely. In his Substack, Autonomous Truckers, he provides a very detailed account of the additional hardships and humiliation and demonization these men will endure when their trial before a jury begins… in his article…. Theatre of the Absurd… a Kangaroo Court is about to get underway in the Maple Gulag.
*Two of the Coutts four were released in February when the conspiracy to murder police charges were dropped and they plead guilty to minor charges that weren’t even in the original indictment.
This is happening in Canada. Two men with no criminal records to speak of; hardworking ordinary guys, being treated like the most notorious of serial killers. Paul Bernardo, a ruthless killer and rapist who was found guilty of torturing, raping and killing two teenage girls, Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, wasn’t subjected to this kind of treatment during the course of his trial. Yet, this is happening to these men and not a peep from the media, legal authorities, justices, politicians…. the list goes on. This is actually even more absurd than the new metal and glass courtroom cages built for the Coutts 2.
Could jurors see this for what it is and respond accordingly?
They’ve watched political show trials in other countries with real envy: how can they get those optics in play in Canada?