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OTTAWA – The Crown’s case against Sen. Mike Duffy relies on stitching together snippets from days of testimony and thousands of pages of evidence, all of which actually prove the controversial senator committed no crime, Duffy’s lawyer said Tuesday.
Over the 10 months of Duffy’s trial on 31 charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery, Donald Bayne has argued again and again that the manner in which Duffy handled his travel and living expenses was in keeping with an arcane and complex system of Senate rules.
“It is one thing not to like the Senate rules, which is really at the heart of the Crown’s submissions ” he told Judge Charles Vaillancourt on Tuesday. “Then change them. But don’t criminally prosecute or seek to prosecute someone for living under them.”
The majority of charges Duffy is facing relate to living, travel and expense claims he filed after being appointed a Conservative senator for P.E.I in 2008 by former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.
The final three counts relate to a $90,000 payment he accepted from Harper’s former chief of staff in order to repay those expenses amid intense scrutiny that ultimately led to the court case.
Duffy, who has been in court throughout, with his wife and a few supporters only an arms-length away, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
On Tuesday, in what was expected to be the final day of arguments in the case, he sat in the front row of the courtroom set aside to handle the trial’s final days.
Nearly all available seats were taken up by media, but public interest in the proceedings has waned to the point that the overflow room once set up to accommodate spectators has returned to its former life as a jury selection site.
With dozens of witnesses, weeks of testimony and all the printed evidence now before the judge and with the change of government that’s taken away some of the political intrigue, the Crown and the defence are down to the basics — did or didn’t Duffy commit a crime and how.
Both sides submitted lengthy written final arguments to make those points, but were also given time before the judge to make their cases in person.
On Monday, the Crown used much of its time to focus on what it called a $65,000 “slush fund” allegedly set up to skirt Senate rules.
But Bayne argued there was no proof Duffy had any criminal motive in setting up the fund or that there was any crime committed in its use. If it were truly a slush fund, Duffy would have personally benefited from it and he didn’t, the lawyer said.
The Crown attorneys also went after Duffy’s credibility, but Bayne noted they never bothered to test many of the issues they raised with Duffy while he was on the stand. Besides, Bayne argued, “trials aren’t credibility contests.”
While the Crown accuses Duffy of using the money to get around Senate rules, there’s nothing in those rules that bars him from paying for the services in question like makeup, consulting or compensating volunteers, Bayne argued.
In fact, the evidence was that senators have broad discretion over their office budgets, Bayne said.
“It’s a stitched-together collection of snippets in an effort to manufacture a case,” he said of the Crown’s efforts. “… Reasonable doubt arises on all of the evidence.”
Vaillancourt is expected to reserve judgment; outside the courthouse, he said it will likely be “mid-April” before he delivers a verdict, a date that will be set in consultation with the lawyers.
