trial

“Where is your honour?”

Under interrogation, Mohammad Shafia insisted that he loved his three dead daughters—but not the cellphone bills

Will anything stick to this guy?

Will anything stick to Berlusconi?

As the Italian PM’s sex trial begins, the masses are sharply split

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Judging the judge in Conrad Black’s appeal

Richard Posner is considered brilliant—and ‘callous’

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What on earth will my husband think?

Barbara Amiel on Conrad Black’s release

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Conrad Black’s final battle

A stunning U.S. Supreme Court ruling has cast his conviction into doubt. Can Black’s lawyers turn it into a vindication that would see him walk free?

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The absurd trial of Geert Wilders

The Dutch state is prosecuting the platform of the country’s most popular opposition party

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Jacob Zuma: not so rotten after all

South Africa’s new president is proving his critics wrong

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Accused bomb plotter went to his father for advice: informant

“If civilians were to be there, that was their destiny”

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Seeking a nation’s forgiveness

Does a Khmer Rouge leader, even a penitent one, deserve mercy?

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‘The last great Nazi trial’

John Demjanjuk’s trial in Munich may mark the end of an era

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Liveblogging the David Frost trial (II)

Final submissions today, and there are huge questions hanging over the Crown’s case. Bear in mind that the players are supposed to be the victims here: Frost was in a position of trust over them. The girls are presumed to be participants in consensual sex.

Yet the one player we watched on Thursday was testifying for the defence, not the Crown. The gist of his story? That Frost, though deeply involved in his players’ lives, had nothing to do with group sex in which these young men appeared to be regularly engaged from the time they were, oh, 16 years old, and living in Deseronto, Ont., while playing for Frost’s team, the Quinte Hawks. There was a discernible sense of incredulity in the room toward this testimony. If Frost was not engaged in group sex involving with the players, a cynic might have thought, he was the only one within five miles who can say so.

The Crown was able to convey the sense that Frost’s former players are protecting him for some reason. He was clearly a strong presence in their careers and personal lives, at times driving wedges between them and their families. He even wrote them a kind of manifesto, which our witness last Thursday claimed he filed away and forgot about.

Still, the “reasonable doubt” hurdle looks awfully high. When your victims are testifying for the defence …

P.S. I hope to be a little more expansive in my own submissions today. I’m working off my lap-top keyboard, thanks to a high-speed internet “stick” supplied by the folks at Rogers. Wireless reception is a bit spotty in the court, but it should be a vast improvement over my BlackBerry.

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Sorry for the delay everyone. Turns out reception in the court isn’t good enough to support computer transmission. Here’s what’s happened so far:

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10:40 a.m. — Under way at last, with a surprise final witness for the defence: Dr. Hubert Manning. This is the long-awaited “third-testicle evidence.” It turns out Dr. Manning is Frost’s GP. Recall, this was raised by the defence as potentially exculpatory evidence, as one of the women who testified to participating in group sex with Frost and his players did not recall seeing it.

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The Frost Trial

Former NHL-certified player agent David Frost is on trial in Napanee, Ont., charged with four counts of sexually exploiting two young hockey players on the now-defunct Quinte Hawks, a Junior-A club of which he was head coach. Frost is perhaps best known as the ex-coach and agent of Mike Danton, né Jefferson, a former St. Louis Blues forward who’s currently serving seven-and-a-half years in a federal prison in Minnesota for trying to have Frost murdered. Frost denies Danton tried to kill him, even though he pled guilty to the charges. And, similarly, both alleged victims in the ongoing trial deny any sexual abuse took place. The prosecution’s case relies on several women-teenagers at the time-who have already testified that Frost participated in three- and four-way sex with them and the alleged victims, and that he controlled his players’ sex lives down to the minutest detail. Frost faces no charges for having sex with the women, even though they were under 18, because prosecutors determined he wasn’t in a “position of trust or authority” over them.