Outrageous to grant early parole to police officer who killed Sammy Yatim

In my view, it was outrageous to grant early parole to James Forcillo, the Toronto police officer who killed 18-year-old Sammy Yatim.

A lot of people feel that many police officers have literally “gotten away with murder.” Officers who kill someone are rarely charged with any criminal offence. Of the officers charged, only a small percentage are found guilty. Moreover, in the few cases where they are convicted of anything, it is almost always of an offence much less serious than murder and the sentence imposed is lenient.

Of course, there are some situations in which officers are justified in killing someone to prevent serious injury to the officer or to some other person. Reasonable people can disagree about some particular cases. Sometimes there are disputes about the facts and other officers protect their colleagues by giving false versions of what happened.

In the case of James Forcillo, there was indisputable video evidence. The videos show beyond any doubt that he shot Yatim while Yatim was alone on a streetcar and Forcillo was standing outside. Yatim had a knife in his hand; Forcillo pointed his gun at Yatim.

After Yatim failed to respond to repeated orders by Forcillo and other officers to “drop the knife,” Forcillo fired three shots, all of which hit Yatim. Yatim fell to the floor of the streetcar. About five seconds later, Forcillo fired six more shots, five of which hit Yatim. The medical evidence established that one of the first three shots was the fatal one.

There was no justification for Forcillo to fire his pistol at all; it is unbelievable that he fired six more shots as Yatim lay dying from the first three.

At Forcillo’s trial, the jury was instructed that they could find him guilty of any of murder, manslaughter or attempted murder. Forcillo was acquitted of murder and convicted of attempted murder. This outcome seems strange; how could he not be guilty of murder when shots from his gun killed Yatim?

We do not know how the jury came to its verdict. (In Canadian law, it is a criminal offence for a juror to disclose any information about what transpired during the jury’s deliberations.) It is reasonable to conjecture that there was much negotiating among the jurors.

They might have concluded that there was reasonable doubt about whether the first three shots were justified but that the next volley of six shots was clearly unlawful. Some jurors may have felt Forcillo was guilty of murder but agreed to a compromise to avoid the mistrial that would have followed if the jury had been unable to arrive at a verdict.

The maximum penalty for attempting murder is life imprisonment. The judge sentenced Forcillo to six years in jail. That is a lenient sentence for someone who acted as shown in the videos.

While Forcillo was out on bail awaiting the appeal of his conviction, he broke his bail conditions and also committed perjury by lying in a sworn affidavit that his lawyers submitted to the Court of Appeal. He pled guilty to perjury; two other charges (of breach of his bail conditions and of obstruction of justice) were dismissed as part of the agreed resolution. He was sentenced to six months imprisonment for perjury, to be served concurrently with his sentence for attempted murder.

On Tuesday, Forcillo was granted full parole by the parole board, after having served only about 20 months of his six-year sentence.

Forcillo’s perjury should have been a serious obstacle to granting early parole. The parole board should have been skeptical of everything the perjurer communicated to them.

In the circumstances, it was outrageous to grant such early parole. It sends a message to police officers that even if videotapes prove they fired numerous shots into a person lying defenceless on the ground they will be treated leniently.

Originally published at https://www.thestar.com on January 22, 2020.