A nine-year legal odyssey has ended in one further day in jail for a Windsor man who said police beat him up after finding a loaded gun under his mattress.

Leke (Alex) Vushaj, 36, pleaded guilty Wednesday to possession of a restricted firearm. Superior Court Justice Kirk Munroe sentenced him to 14 months in jail, deemed already served.

Vushaj was led out of the Windsor courthouse in handcuffs to the South West Detention Centre where he was to be released later the same day.

Vushaj was arrested on Feb. 13, 2007, in a Lillian Avenue apartment. Windsor police, armed with a search warrant, busted down his door and threw in a smoke grenade. Vushaj said he was handcuffed, then tasered and beaten.

Three of the officers involved in Vushaj’s arrest, including the son of then police chief Gary Smith, were hauled before a disciplinary hearing, charged under the Police Act with using excessive force and discreditable conduct. They were cleared of the counts in 2010.

Vushaj, meanwhile, went to trial on charges related to the loaded P226 Sig Sauer semi-automatic handgun found between the top two of three mattresses stacked in his bedroom. The gun had its serial number removed. Superior Court Justice Steven Rogin convicted Vushaj and sentenced him to a year in jail in addition to the 34 days he had spent in custody after his arrest.

Vushaj was released after eight months.

The Ontario Court of Appeal reviewed Vushaj’s case and ordered a new trial. Having served the equivalent of a 14-month sentence with enhanced credit for time already served, Vushaj struck a deal with the Crown. He returned to Superior Court in Windsor Wednesday to plead guilty to one of eight charges he originally faced.

“The time has been served,” said defence lawyer Robert DiPietro, recapping for the court the history of the case. Neither DiPietro, nor assistant Crown attorney Scott Kerwin, mentioned Vushaj’s police brutality complaint in court.

While Vushaj has racked up a couple convictions since his gun arrest — refusing a breathalyzer and a bail breach, he had no prior criminal record at the time of his arrest for the gun.

Court heard Vushaj is now married and his wife is expecting a baby in July. He runs a construction business.

The judge asked Vushaj if he was pleading guilty of his own free will. Hearing Vushaj’s accent, Munroe confirmed the man is a Canadian citizen who won’t be deported or suffer any other “collateral consequences” as a result of his guilty plea.

Munroe also addressed the seriousness of illegal guns. “They are not something this country deals with kindly.”

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A LaSalle man accused of murdering a pregnant woman, then setting fire to her house with her mutilated body inside, will stand trial for the crime.

Ontario court Justice Micheline Rawlins ruled Friday that there is sufficient evidence for Matthew Brush, 27, to go to trial. The ruling came after a preliminary hearing that began in January.

The preliminary hearing was covered by a customary ban prohibiting publication of evidence heard in court.

Cassandra Kaake’s body was discovered Dec. 11, 2014 after firefighters extinguished a blaze at 1564 Benjamin Ave. Police say the fire did not kill her, but that she died from blood loss caused by severe trauma.

Kaake, 31, was seven months’ pregnant. Her killing has intensified a lobby campaign calling for criminal charges related to unborn children.

Brush is charged with first-degree murder, break and enter, indecent interference with a dead body, arson causing property damage, possession of incendiary material for arson and arson with disregard for human life.

Brush’s trial will be held in Superior Court. No trial date is set.

Brush remains in jail pending trial.

A convicted pedophile caught with a collection of child pornography on his computer has been sentenced to two years in a federal penitentiary.

Michael Patrick Gosselin, 38, pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and making child pornography available to others through file sharing websites.

Gosselin has a criminal record that includes a 2010 conviction for sexual interference.

Gosselin was nabbed as part of an investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police’s child exploitation unit that identifies people using file-sharing sites to exchange child pornography. They tracked down Gosselin to his parents’ LaSalle home where he lives.

Police seized Gosselin’s computer. On it they found more than 100 photographs and more than a dozen videos depicting child pornography.

The sentence handed down by Ontario court Justice Douglas Phillips came after negotiations between the prosecution and defence. Defence lawyer Dan Topp said it’s common for even first-time offenders to be jailed for 12 to 18 months for making child pornography available. Topp said, given Gosselin’s prior conviction for sexually exploiting a child, “two years was a fair sentence.”

Gosselin will serve his time in a federal penitentiary. “He will benefit from the penitentiary system because of the counselling that’s available,” Topp said.

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A former internal auditor who once triggered an investigation into harassment and a toxic workplace at city hall is before the courts, charged with defrauding taxpayers.

Angela Jacqueline Berry, 46, is accused of defrauding the City of Windsor of more than $36,000 between September 2014 and January 2015. Charged in December, her case was spoken to in court Tuesday.

“I’ve met with Ms. Berry and it is her intention to vigorously defend her reputation,” Berry’s lawyer, Dan Scott, said outside the courtroom.

“She is certainly devastated by this allegation.”

Windsor police began investigating Berry in late March 2015, said Const. Andrew Drouillard. Berry last worked for the city on April 1, 2015, city spokesman Jason Moore told the Windsor Star.

The city hasn’t said what position Berry last held, but the charges imply she had the authority to cut cheques. “She used her position to issue cheques she may have benefited from,” Drouillard said.

Berry was working as a parks operations asset analyst at the time, said Vincenza Mihalo, the city’s head of human resources. Berry had assumed the position in 2013 after being off work for two years.

Berry left her job after filing a complaint in March 2011 under what was then new provincial legislation enacted to address workplace harassment and violence. At the time, she was in the midst of auditing the WFCU Centre.

Berry claimed she had been subjected to the abuse for seven years and had suffered a workplace injury because of it.

The city hired a lawyer to investigate Berry’s claims. The eight-month investigation concluded there was no evidence to support Berry’s claims. Eddie Francis, the mayor at the time, said he believed Berry’s allegations were baseless from the start.

It’s unknown if Berry resigned from her job or was fired. “I really can’t say,” Mihalo said, citing confidentiality concerns.

Mihalo also said she couldn’t say how much Berry made in her position.

Despite leaving the internal auditor’s job in early 2011, Berry’s name appeared on Ontario’s public salary disclosure documents, more commonly referred to as the sunshine list. She made about $108,000 in salary that year. Berry did not appear on the list in subsequent years, meaning her salary was less than $100,000, even after she returned to the city’s employ.

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A Windsor man who managed to travel to the Middle East without a Canadian passport despite being on the RCMP’s list of high-risk travellers won’t be going anywhere for awhile after being sentenced to a year in jail and two years probation.

Mohammed El Shaer, 28, was sentenced after pleading guilty Tuesday to three charges: possessing identification documents not in his name; applying for a passport without prior approval from the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship; and breaching his probation conditions related to a previous passport forgery conviction.

El Shaer is also banned from leaving Ontario without the court’s permission while on probation.

“In the post 9-11 world, these types of behaviours are more than criminal. It’s a dangerous undertaking,” Ontario court Justice Douglas Phillips said in his 10-minute tongue-lashing of El Shaer over his wasting of police and international security resources.

“These acts were carefully planned out to trick border and passport authorities. You sir, are a fraud. You sir, have no regard or respect for Canadian law,” the judge said.

El Shaer received a credit of 247 days for the time spent in jail prior to his guilty pleas Tuesday and will be jailed for another 118 days.

“I apologize for my actions,” was all El Shaer said before he was sentenced. Looking a typical 28-year-old in an open-collared dress shirt and dress pants, he closed his eyes and bowed his head during Phillips’ withering pronouncement.

Three other charges relating to forged documents and making misleading statements on a passport application were withdrawn.

El Shaer was ordered to provide a DNA sample and not to possess a passport or any other travel documents. He can only carry identification, which has his name and photo, such as a driver’s licence and health card.

He was ordered to pay a combined total of $1,000 in victim fine surcharges and must live at an address approved by his probation officer.

Assistant Crown attorney Eric Costaris said he was satisfied with the outcome, given that El Shaer pleaded guilty without seeking to be released on bail.

“He’s accepted responsibility,” Costaris said. “Apart from his last offence, he has no other criminal record.”

Phillips seemed prepared to deliver a harsher sentence, but went along with all of the prosecutor’s requests in what was essentially a joint submission with defence lawyer Ansar Farooq.

The judge dismissed El Shaer’s education, which includes a community college diploma and a university business degree with plans to pursue a master’s degree.

“From counsel’s description of your educational background and future preparations, you haven’t learned much,” Phillips said.

El Shaer’s latest adventure began in February 2015 when he was released on probation after serving the 90-day sentence he got for using false travel documents and associating with ISIS extremist Ahmad Waseem in 2014 in the Middle East.

Waseem, who was also from Windsor, is believed to have been killed a year ago.

El Shaer broke his probation in February 2015 by using a false passport and name to fly from Toronto to Istanbul with his wife and two children. The family was supposed to have continued from Turkey to Jordan, but never used that portion of their tickets.

El Shaer had planned the trip by using the name Mohamed Nour Hassan Moussa and forged what was believed to be a Syrian passport.

Police found an expired Canadian passport stripped of its photo in El Shaer’s Glengarry Avenue apartment in Windsor. They also found other materials, such as super glue and plastic sheets.

Police were able to trace El Shaer’s Feb. 13 payments for the plane tickets from accounts at the Toronto Dominion and Royal Bank branches in downtown Windsor.

Police picked up images of El Shaer with his family from airport video at the boarding areas for their Turkish Airlines flight on Feb. 15.

After seven months in the Middle East, El Shaer and his family decided to return to Canada last summer and he applied for emergency travel documents in Istanbul under his own name. He filled out and signed a passport application Aug. 26, 2015 in violation of his probation and failed to mention in the document all of the places he’d been in the past five years, which included Sudan.

“He didn’t try to sneak into the country,” said Farooq, who was arguing for a 18-month probation term. “He knew what he did was foolish. He contacted Canadian authorities for their help.”

His wife and children returned via Toronto on Sept. 29 and El Shaer was arrested upon arrival in Calgary on Oct. 9.

He was returned to Windsor and has been in jail since.

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Jacob Christopher Canty has built a successful drywall business, garnering a good reputation with the construction companies he subcontracts for. His employees say he’s a good guy, paying them promptly and even driving their kids to school in bad weather.

But Superior Court heard Monday the young entrepreneur was a different man in 2013 and 2014. Back then, he made his living as a drug dealer.

Canty, 29, was sentenced Monday to six months in jail for possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking. Police raided Canty’s Marion Avenue home in 2014, finding 29.6 grams of cocaine. They also found a digital scale, baggies for packaging the drug, $260 and a cellphone he used for his trade.

It was his second drug arrest.

Federal drug prosecutor Ed Posliff said Canty’s crime calls for a sentence of up to two years less a day in jail.

But after reading a background report on Canty prepared by a probation officer, Posliff’s position softened. “The Crown’s position is there has been significant rehabilitation.”

Canty’s lawyer, Paul Esco, asked for a sentence of five months.

Esco recounted for the court Canty’s troubled upbringing. Now, Canty is a single father. His 10-year-old son lives with him. The boy’s mother died after being hit by a bus.

“It’s an unusual case,” Esco told the court, painting Canty as a tragic character. Canty sold drugs out of necessity to support his son, but has “found a better way,” Esco said.

Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas noted how Canty has turned his life around. But, the judge said, “You know if you sell drugs, you are going to jail.”

Thomas offered Canty leniency. “Six months — you may not consider this a break, but it is.”

Thomas handed Canty a mandatory fine of $200 that goes into a fund to help victims of crime. He banned Canty from possessing firearms for 10 years and ordered him to give a blood sample for the national DNA databank police use to solve crime.

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Richard Turton took advantage of loose accounting practices and the unquestioning trust of his colleagues at CUPE Local 2974 to siphon $120,000 from the union’s bank accounts between 2011 and 2013.

Turton, 47, pleaded guilty Monday to fraud and falsifying records. Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas handed him a four-month sentence of house arrest followed by three years’ probation.

Thomas made special note that Turton has already paid back $80,000 of the money he embezzled.

“That is the only reason you escape jail,” Thomas told Turton.

The judge also ordered Turton to continue to make restitution at a rate of no less than $1,200 a month, and pay a $400 fine that goes into a provincial fund to help victims of crime.

Turton was the financial secretary of Local 2974, the union which represents about 400 County of Essex workers. Before taking over the post in October 2010, Turton was the local’s president.

Richard Turton leaves Superior Court in Windsor, Ont., on April 4, 2016. The former union boss embezzled $120,000 from CUPE Local 2974.

The union learned in early 2013 that Turton had failed to pay bills associated with arbitration. An audit triggered by a rank-and-file union member’s complaint to the Ontario Labour Relations Board led to the discovery that Turton had falsified financial records to hide the fact he had been writing cheques to himself.

Turton raised suspicion by refusing to comply with the audit, court heard. Turton eventually turned over some documents, but the auditor had already gone to the union’s banks and obtained the originals. The documents Turton supplied were discovered to be forgeries.

Turton altered returned cashed cheques and produced bogus bank statements.

Court heard Turton was able to get away with his crime for more than two years because of what the judge termed “loose accounting practices” at the local. Assistant Crown attorney Brian Manarin said, until the 2013 complaint, the local’s books had never been audited. Union executives admitted they would sign blank cheques for Turton, trusting he would use them to pay union bills.

His quarterly financial statements were never questioned.

What Turton did with the money remains a mystery. Defence lawyer Paul Esco alluded in court to Turton getting caught up in an investment scam. Esco said Turton made the investments to try to make money for the union. Local president Ian Nash, doubting the truth of that excuse, said that was the first time he’d heard that explanation.

Nash addressed the court on behalf of the union. He said Turton’s crime caused infighting and undermined faith in the leadership. It was so bad, the national union threatened to take over the local.

He said he is personally hurt and embarrassed by Turton’s breach of trust.

“This act will never be forgiven or forgotten. You will never be trusted again,” Nash said, addressing Turton directly.

Ian Nash, president CUPE Local 2974, discusses the guilty plea and sentencing of Richard Turton outside Superior Court on April 4, 2016.

Outside the court, Nash said the union is suing Turton in the civil courts. It claims Turton stole $141,600, and cost the union an additional $70,000 and counting in audit and legal fees.

Court heard Turton continues to work for the county full-time as a maintenance worker. He also works weekends at the Town of Essex’s arena, driving the Zamboni.

Court heard the real punishment Turton faces for his crime is being forever known as a fraudster.

“That is not only something you live with, but your family lives with,” the judge said.

Court heard Turton’s wife is a personal support worker in Essex. The couple has two sons, aged 29 and 19.

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Nearly four years after suffering brain damage and losing two of his children in a car crash with a train, Andrew Williams was handed a suspended sentence Wednesday for beating the family poodle so badly it lost an eye.

Williams, 31, also pleaded guilty to a raft of bail breaches. He was sentenced to time served, fined $780 and placed on probation for two years. 

Williams was the driver of a minivan that collided with a freight train on Strong Road in Lakeshore on June 10, 2012. Williams had his four young children in the vehicle. Wynter, 6, and Brooklyn, 3, died in the crash. Dryden, who was four at the time, and Jasmyn, 1½, were injured.

More than a year after the crash, police charged Williams with two counts of criminal negligence causing death and two counts of criminal negligence causing bodily harm.

Williams was released on bail with numerous conditions, including a driving prohibition.

On March 25, Williams was caught behind the wheel of a red Pontiac Grand Prix on Tecumseh Road East. A patrol office who happened to be stopped behind Williams at a red light ran the licence plate. He pulled Williams into a nearby parking lot and arrested him for a breach.

Andrew Williams is shown in front of the Ontario Court of Justice in Windsor, Ont., on April 6, 2016.

On Dec. 21, 2013, Williams abused his family’s five-pound poodle. Williams’s wife had left Williams in the car while she went to get her children at her parents’ home. When she came out, the dog’s eye was hanging from its socket.

Angie Williams told Ontario court Wednesday the dog now lives with an uncle. The one-eyed dog has been renamed Pickles and is doing fine, she said.

Angie Williams testified she became estranged from her husband after the incident. Williams was released on bail after maiming the dog and placed on conditions not to communicate with Angie.

But on Oct. 30, they were found together on the Chrysler Greenway in Essex. Police had spotted a Dodge Charger parked on the trail. When officers approached to investigate, they found Angie in the car and Williams hiding from them, lying on the ground outside the vehicle.

Williams was charged with a breach.

Just days earlier, on Oct. 19, Williams was spotted outside a home on Parkside Drive in Essex walking a dog. On conditions not to have any animals in his care or control, he was again charged with a breach.

As police arrested him, they could smell marijuana. Williams admitted to having just smoked a joint and pulled a fresh one out of his pocket. He was arrested for that, too.

With enhanced credit for time spent in jail for the animal cruelty charge and the various breaches, Williams has already served the equivalent of a two-month sentence, said defence lawyer Laura Joy.

Ontario court Justice Lloyd Dean agreed with assistant Crown attorney Jonathan Lall that Williams not own or live with pets for five years.

Dean said this is a “difficult case.” Dean expressed his condolences to both Williams and his family assembled in court.

Williams remains free on $30,000 bail. Neither he nor his family had to deposit money with the court but, because of the breaches, the Crown is now seeking payment.

Williams is scheduled to stand trial in December on the charges related to the train crash.

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It’s been four years since a female inmate was found unresponsive in her Windsor jail cell, a deadly cocktail of drugs in her system.

Thanks to a 2014 coroner’s inquest, the family of Kendra Blackbird has the answers it was looking for, lawyer Raymond Colautti said Thursday. Now, he says, “They are looking for justice.”

The Walpole Island First Nation woman’s family is suing the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services for nearly $2.8 million, plus interest and costs. It claims jail staff were negligent in not keeping drugs out of the facility and not realizing for 12 hours that Blackbird had overdosed.

The province, in a statement of defence filed with the court, denies the family’s claims. None of the claims have been tested in court.

Blackbird’s estate, her three children and seven siblings filed suit a month after the inquest ended. Despite the age of the lawsuit, “It’s still in the opening stages,” Colautti said.

Colautti says the province has bogged down the lawsuit with “procedural wrangling.” Even mandatory mediation has yet to take place.

“I don’t see any sign from the government’s side that they want to settle this,” Colautti said. “They’re not doing anything.”

A spokesman for the ministry declined to comment on the lawsuit saying, it would be inappropriate given the case is still before the courts.

The jury in the coroner’s inquest made 15 recommendations to avoid similar deaths in the future. The first recommendation was that inmates serving their sentences intermittently on weekends be housed separately from the regular inmate population.

At the old Windsor Jail, that was not always possible because of overcrowding, the inquest heard.

“It was a recipe for disaster,” Colautti said.

At the new South West Detention Centre, female inmates serving intermittent sentences are housed separately, said Brent Ross, spokesman for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services.

Men serving intermittent sentences must go to the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre in London.

Ross could not say Thursday whether any of the other 14 inquest recommendations had been implemented.

Blackbird was 34 and had a known history of substance abuse. She had been in jail for more than three months awaiting sentencing on an assault charge.

On Sept. 30, 2012, her cellmates discovered her without vital signs. She was transported to hospital where her family made the decision to withdraw life support a day later.

Her cause of death was determined to be an accidental drug overdose complicated by pneumonia.

The coroner’s inquest found not all jail staff knew how to recognize and treat drug overdoses. The inquest heard a drug called Narcan used to counter overdoses was on hand at the jail, but not all staff were familiar with it.

“It could have brought her back,” Colautti said.

Blackbird’s own prescription opiates, held by jail staff, were released to a friend, the inquest heard. That friend smuggled the drugs back into the jail and got them to Blackbird.

The inquest jury also recommended better programs and protocols for aboriginal inmates.

Inquests are mandatory when an inmate dies in custody.

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A woman who ran over two men with her car during a drunken rage in 2014 should spend the next decade of her life behind bars, says the prosecution in the case.

Deanna Anne Gamblin had been drinking at a downtown bar when she got into a physical altercation with a stranger after closing time. As the man and his friend walked away, she got behind the wheel of her green Honda Civic and drove the wrong way down Pelissier Street, aiming straight for them. The friend suffered such severe brain injuries, he died four days later.

Gamblin, 26, was to stand trial on charges of second-degree murder for killing Rafiu Kadean Rashad Azeez, 31, and attempted murder for maiming Clint Odian Russell, now 32.

She pleaded guilty in January to the lesser charges of manslaughter and impaired driving causing bodily harm.

At her sentencing hearing Friday, Gamblin addressed Azeez’s father.

“I am really, truly sorry I have hurt your family,” a sobbing Gamblin told the man. “As a mother myself, I could not possibly understand what I have done, taking your loved one away from you…There’s never enough sorrys in the world.”

Gamblin’s remorse is a mitigating factor in the case, said assistant Crown attorney Elizabeth Brown. But Gamblin’s “moral culpability” is so high in the case, she deserves a sentence of seven to 10 years in a federal penitentiary for her crime, Brown said.

Because Gamblin is Native, the court is required to prepare a report on Gamblin that takes into account her aboriginal background. The report says Gamblin’s grandparents were in residential schools as children. What followed were generations of alcoholism and dysfunction.

Gamblin grew up in a household marred by violence and addiction. Her family didn’t live on a reserve, but were part of a Cree community on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The family moved often between the two provinces.

Gamblin started drinking when she was eight. She left home at 15 to live with a boyfriend. At an age when most young people are finishing their schooling, Gamblin was already the mother of two daughters.

Gamblin’s case has shone a rare light on plea negotiations. Brown told the court the Crown “took the plea” in the case because proving murder would have been a challenge.

Gamblin had nearly three times the legal limit of alcohol in her system when a breathalyser was administered two hours after the Aug. 3, 2014, crash. When she ran over the men, her blood alcohol levels would have been even higher.

“It would be hard to prove intent with a reading that high,” Brown told the court.

At the same time, however, the high alcohol reading was an aggravating factor the judge must consider in the case, Brown said.

Brown read from statements written by the man who survived the crash and the family members of the man who did not.

The two men had been friends since childhood. Azeez, the dead man, was described as “a truly genuine, kind soul” and was “the peacemaker” on the night of his death. When his friend had knocked Gamblin to the ground, Azeez pulled the man off her.

The man who survived is wrought with guilt. He battles depression, thinking it should have been him and not Azeez who died, Brown said.

Gamblin’s lawyer, John Getliffe, did not dispute any of Brown’s submission’s to the judge. He said the sentence “should be at the lower end — six to seven years.” Any sentence she receives should be reduced by the 12 months she has already spent in jail, Getliffe said.

The judge is expected to pass sentence next week.

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A Windsor judge mused aloud Monday about whether he should be lenient with a drug trafficker given “changing public opinion” on marijuana.

“Let me poke the elephant in the room,” Superior Court Justice Thomas Carey said at the sentencing hearing of a man caught with 10 kilograms of marijuana in his car and another 1.5 kg hidden above a ceiling tile in his home.

Our current federal government was elected on a platform that included the decriminalization of marijuana, and it’s already legal in some countries and U.S. states, Carey said.

“How does the changing attitude toward marijuana affect what I do here today?”

Benjamin Herta, 28, was arrested on Nov. 14, 2012, after backing his BMW into a ditch along a rural property on Concession Road 8 in Amherstburg. In the backseat were bins of pot totalling more than 10 kg.

Tracks in the frost led police to a horse barn on the property where police found another 212 kilos of marijuana.

Herta’s passenger, Edward Seery, 36, confessed to the pot in the barn and was sentenced in 2013 to 3 1/3 years in a federal penitentiary.

Police then raided Herta’s Lincoln Road home and found 1.5 kg of marijuana hidden above a ceiling tile, $2,800 under his mattress and a debt list in his bedroom drawer.

After trial, Carey convicted Herta of possessing the marijuana found in the car and at his home for the purpose of trafficking.

On Monday, Carey likened marijuana to alcohol at the tail end of prohibition.

“Was it relevant in 1932 in the sentencing of a bootlegger that prohibition was coming to an end?”

Herta’s own lawyer, Ken Marley, said, “as an officer of the court,” he needed to point out that his client had been convicted of a crime that was on the books at the time of his arrest and continues to be a crime today.

“Take the law as it is,” Marley told the judge.

Federal drug prosecutor Richard Pollock said he was taken aback by the judge’s musings.

The federal government still prosecutes drug traffickers, Pollock said, because drug trafficking is illegal and possessing drugs for the purpose of trafficking is illegal.

“If the prime minister were here, that would be his position,” Pollock said.

“You might even get your picture taken,” was the judge’s reply.

Pollock did not crack a smile.

One of Carey’s fellow judges just last week dealt with a marijuana case, declaring the possible decriminalization of the drug irrelevant in current cases. Superior Court Justice George King sentenced Anthony Roy Caporale, 39, to 21 months on house arrest for operating a 600-plant grow operation in a rented house on Rankin Avenue.

“I am aware of the federal government’s stated intention to decriminalize cannabis marijuana,” King said in his written decision. “However it is not a relevant factor for me to consider in determining the appropriate sentence. On April 26, 2013 it was, and remains to this day (to be) illegal to grow cannabis marijuana in Canada without proper legal authority. My responsibility is to fashion a sentence based on the law in existence at the time of the offence, not on what might someday become the law of the land.”

Carey is to sentence Herta on Friday.

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At the Crossroads

Is Windsor’s historic Sandwich neighbourhood poised for a revival or will the proposed expansion of the Ambassador Bridge be a hurdle too high to overcome? In this series leading up to a Supreme Court of Canada hearing, the Star takes the pulse of new investors, long-time residents, politicians and bridge officials.

OTTAWA — Just because the Ambassador Bridge company has federal authority to operate an international crossing, does it have the right to do whatever it wants in Windsor?

Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, the highest court in the land, repeatedly hammered on that point Thursday at a hearing that may have the collateral effect of determining the fate of dilapidated houses in Windsor’s west end and affecting the bridge company’s plans for a second span.

The Canadian Transit Company or CTC, which operates the bridge, argues it is a federal entity and therefore immune to city bylaws. The city disagrees.

All nine judges of the Supreme Court heard the case Thursday. But their ruling will have less to do with the state of the houses and more to do with which court has jurisdiction to hear what should be done with them.

In what Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens said he cautiously hoped was a sign of a ruling in the city’s favour, the court interrupted the bridge company lawyer’s submissions with question after question.

Supreme Court Justice Michael Moldaver said he has “some trouble” understanding the CTC’s argument since its decaying homes could “potentially put people’s lives at risk.”

Mayor Drew Dilkens is pictured on Indian Road in West Windsor in this 2015 file photo.

Moldaver pointed out that the homes the bridge company has purchased are not “necessary” for its operations now, so why shouldn’t the city be able to enforce property standards.

After remaining silent during the city lawyer’s submissions, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin asked: “Could CTC take over broader areas of Windsor and say the municipality has no jurisdiction?”

Admitting she was being “facetious,” McLachlin asked the bridge company, “You can buy houses and nobody can do anything about it?”

Thursday’s showdown before the Supreme Court has been years in the making. The CTC, owned by American billionaire Matty Moroun, has been buying up properties on and around Indian Road since the 1990s. The company boarded up the houses and left them to rot.

The city tried to force the company to fix up 114 of the houses by slapping it with work orders under its property standards bylaws. The issue ended up before Superior Court, but the bridge company went to Federal Court instead.

The city got the Federal Court to agree it didn’t have jurisdiction to hear the case. The bridge company appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal which ruled the Federal Court could indeed deal with it. The city appealed, which brought the issue before the Supreme Court Thursday.

The Supreme Court will decide where the jurisdiction lies, setting precedent on the powers of the Federal Court and the kinds of cases it can hear. It will revisit the legal test on jurisdiction set out in a 1986 case and it will decide whether the Canadian Constitution allows the Federal Court to rule in matters of an inherently local nature, like municipal bylaws.

The Ambassador Bridge is seen in west Windsor, Ont. on April 20, 2016. Abandoned homes remain on Indian Road and several west end streets near the bridge.

The issue “is of great importance to the City of Windsor,” Christopher Williams, the Toronto lawyer hired by the city to argue its case, told the court. He said the bridge company’s homes are not only an eyesore, they expose Windsorites to vermin, vandalism and other health and safety risks.

Williams accused the bridge company of “forum shopping,” sidestepping Superior Court where he said the case properly should be heard. He called the bridge company’s argument to Federal Court “crafty draftsmanship.”

“CTC is asking the Federal Court to oversee how the City of Windsor administers its bylaws… Certainly the court needs to referee conflicts, but that court is the Superior Court of Justice, not the Federal Court,” he said.

“This application, at its pith and substance, is a defence to property standard bylaws… This is a Superior Court matter through and through and that’s where we should be.”

The federal legislation that created the CTC in 1921 gives the bridge the authority to “hold land as it deems necessary in its discretion,” bridge lawyer John B. Laskin told the court.

“No one should minimize the importance of that statute and the rights it confers.”

But the court referred repeatedly to the “true nature” of the dispute between the city and bridge company. Is it truly a federal matter or a municipal matter that in the words of Justice Rosalie Abella has “been derailed to another forum?”

Trucks travel on the Ambassador Bridge in west Windsor on April 20, 2016.

Dilkens and three other city representatives who travelled to Ottawa to watch their hired guns perform, left the courthouse optimistic. “Within two minutes of the bridge lawyer starting his submissions, the justices started grilling him,” Dilkens said. While he wouldn’t hazard to guess how the Supreme Court will rule, Dilkens said he took the aggressive questioning as a good sign.

The bridge company representatives left the courthouse without commenting. “We’re not going to make any comment. The court’s taking it under advisement,” Ambassador Bridge president Dan Stamper said.

Both the bridge company and the city representatives said they’d never been to a Supreme Court hearing before. Both took group photos in the courtroom after the justices left the bench.

The court has reserved judgment. The Supreme Court usually takes months to release decisions.

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Buying into history: there’s a buzz in Sandwich

A microbrewery becomes a catalyst

Irreplaceable Sandwich post office getting a $1-million makeover

The Ambassador Bridge casts a long shadow

A preliminary hearing began Monday for a driver accused of first-degree murder for a Leamington crash that killed his friend.

Andrew Cowan, 44, launched his black pickup truck over a ramp-shaped flowerbed and into a building at the intersection of Talbot Street, Fraser Road and Oak Street on Oct. 21, 2012. Cowan’s passenger, Edward Witt, 53, died from the injuries he sustained in the crash.

Cowan was also severely injured. He was charged two years after the crash.

A charge of first-degree murder means police believe Witt’s death was planned and deliberate.

After being charged, Cowan and his family filed a $10-million lawsuit naming the Town of Leamington, the County of Essex, the Leamington Horticultural Society, two of the horticultural society’s members and a local landscaping company. Cowan is also suing Caesars Windsor for serving him and Witt with alcohol before the crash.

The claims in Cowan’s lawsuit have yet to be tested in court.

Cowan’s preliminary hearing is scheduled for 10 days before Ontario court Justice Lloyd Dean. Dean has ordered a standard ban prohibiting publication of evidence heard at the preliminary hearing.

If Dean orders Cowan to stand trial for murder, Cowan’s case will be transferred to Superior Court.

Cowan remains free on bail.

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A Lakeshore man busted with a large collection of child pornography was sentenced Wednesday morning to three years in jail. 

Mark Alexander Poehlman, 32, pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and making child pornography available to others through online peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

Poehlman’s collection of porn was described in court as “above average for collectors within the child pornography subculture”

Poehlman was arrested in July 2014 after an investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police Child Sexual Exploitation Unit. Officers with the OPP and Windsor Police Service executed a search warrant at Poehlman’s Belle River apartment and discovered more than 15,000 files containing child pornography, the Ontario Court of Justice heard Wednesday.

A forensic examination was conducted on 13 devices seized from Poehlman’s apartment which uncovered 2.6 million images and more than 65,000 movies, said Assistant Crown attorney Eric Costaris.

Of those files, Costaris said 15,356 unique images and 417 unique videos were of child pornography.

“The (investigating) officer described this amount as above average for collectors within the child pornography subculture,” Costaris said. 

The joint submission was accepted by Ontario court justice Lloyd Dean.

Dean said an offence of this nature demands a serious sentence to act as a deterrence and denunciation.

“It’s an appropriate sentence given the amount of images involved in this particular case,” Dean said. 

Along with three years served in jail, Poehlman will be prohibited from owning any firearm in his lifetime, will be registered under the sex offender information registration act, prohibited from attending a public park or swimming area where children under the age of 14 are expected to be present and will be prohibited from using the Internet or other digital networks except for the purpose of employment or education.

Dean said Poehlman will be allowed to own a cellphone because “it is becoming increasingly, if not already, impossible to be in this world without a cellphone.”

The lawyer for a former internal auditor charged with defrauding taxpayers is accusing the City of Windsor of withholding information that could be used in her defence.

Angela Jacqueline Berry, 46, is charged with fraud over $5,000. She is accused of defrauding the city of more than $36,000 between September 2014 and January 2015.

Her case was spoken to in Ontario court Tuesday. Defence lawyer Dan Scott had the case adjourned to next month so he can get more disclosure from the Crown. It’s the second time the case has been adjourned for that reason.

Windsor police charged Berry after an investigation by the City of Windsor, Scott explained after the court appearance. “I believe we’re only receiving what the city wants us to have.”

By law, Berry is entitled to all information gathered during the investigation.

Scott said he believes there is information in the city’s possession that would exonerate Berry.

Berry last worked for the city on April 1, 2015. Her last position was as a parks operations asset analyst.

Berry, who had been the city’s auditor, was off work for two years before joining the parks department.

While an auditor under Mayor Eddie Francis, Berry claimed she was harassed and subjected to a toxic work environment. She filed a complaint in 2011 under newly enacted provincial legislation to address workplace harassment and violence.

The city hired an outside investigator who reported there was no evidence to support Berry’s claims.

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A Tory operative arrested two weeks ago for drunk driving in Tecumseh quickly and quietly pleaded guilty in a Windsor courtroom this week.

Nectarios (Nick) Kouvalis, 40, pleaded guilty to driving with a blood-alcohol level exceeding 80 mg of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood. He was fined $1,690 — $1,300 for the offence and $390 in a mandatory court surcharge that goes into a fund to help victims of crime.

As part of the plea bargain, a charge of impaired driving was withdrawn.

Kouvalis, who is credited with getting Rob Ford elected as Toronto’s mayor in 2010, was to make his first court appearance on the charge Wednesday. Instead, he went before an Ontario court judge Monday and entered his guilty plea early, avoiding media scrutiny.

The court handed him a one-year driving ban, but he can apply to the Ministry of Transportation to get his licence back after three months.

Kouvalis was arrested April 17 after the grey Lexus he was driving crashed into a cement culvert in front of a house in the 6700 block of Holden Road. According to an OPP news release at the time, no one was injured in the crash.

After the news release went out, Kouvalis quickly took to social media. “Since 2011, I’ve been struggling with alcohol addiction,” Kouvalis told his followers on Twitter. He said it was a “difficult addiction” for which he had sought counselling, including a “stint in rehab.” He called his arrest a “wakeup call” and said he was grateful no one was hurt in the crash.

Contacted Tuesday, Kouvalis declined to comment on his guilty plea. “Listen, I’m not going to discuss it with you,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Rob Ford appointed Kouvalis, his campaign manager, as his chief of staff after his 2010 election win. He was also the pollster and chief strategist for Ford’s successor, John Tory.

Last year, Toronto Life named him as one of the city’s most influential people, ranking him No. 17 on a list of 50.

Locally, Kouvalis was best known as the Tory insider who was accused of threatening to kill former MP Jeff Watson. Watson pursued criminal charges against Kouvalis, who was charged in July 2005 with uttering a death threat. Kouvalis, who was the campaign manager for the Conservative candidate in the neighbouring riding of Windsor-Tecumseh, was acquitted after trial.

Ironically, Kouvalis first made headlines in Windsor in 2002 when he launched a business to combat drunk driving. Called Cruise Control, it was designated-driver service where a customer who had been out drinking could call for a ride home. The service would send a second employee to drive the customer’s vehicle home.

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An Amherstburg senior suing the town after being banned from municipal buildings has repeatedly harassed town hall employees, according to a statement of defence filed with the court.

The Town of Amherstburg claims Graham Hobbs, 75, has “engaged in harassing behaviour” in encounters with town staff dating back to September 2014. That’s why he was banned from attending municipal properties in November and threatened with being charged with trespassing if he ignores the notice, the town says.

Hobbs, a retiree, is a municipal watchdog and fixture at town council meetings. He is suing the town for $100,000, saying the town has not only deprived him of his constitutional freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly, but it has also damaged his reputation.

Employees who have complained about Hobbs on five separate occasions include the executive assistant to the chief administrative officer, the town clerk, treasurer, a worker at the kiosk in town hall’s main foyer and another unspecified member of the town’s management team, the statement of defence says.

Hobbs, in his lawsuit, says he went to town hall on Nov. 20 to follow up on a freedom of information request he had filed.

A kiosk employee who filed a written complaint about Hobbs after the encounter, reported Hobbs had come in that day requesting copies of the 2016 budget. According to the town’s statement of claim, Hobbs “made a number of comments to the worker, the nature of which were such as to make the worker feel uncomfortable, and constituted harassment as defined by the Occupational Health and Safety Act.”

Amherstburg Chief Administrative Officer John Miceli is pictured in this June 2015 file photo.

Four days after the encounter, the town had police serve Hobbs with a notice of trespass, barring him from all municipal property for one year. The notice was signed by chief administrative officer John Miceli.

The town says Miceli had no choice but to ban Hobbs. “Miceli owed a positive duty of care to the town’s workers to ensure that they were free from harassment,” the town said in the statement filed with the court.

Nowhere in the statement does it detail what Hobbs said to the worker or the other town employees he allegedly harassed.

“The particulars will be dealt with in the course of litigation,” town lawyer Ed Posliff told the Star Wednesday.

The town claims Miceli offered to meet with Hobbs and his lawyer. The meeting never took place.

Hobbs is asking a Superior Court judge to quash the trespass notice he received and award him damages.

While Hobbs claims he has suffered public embarrassment, the town claims he himself is responsible for that because he “sought out publicity… by communicating directly with the news media.”

None of the claims in Hobbs’s lawsuit or the town’s statement of defence have been tested in court.

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Two Windsor police officers will not have to stand trial on assault charges after the disappearance of the man they allegedly brutalized.

Const. Daniel Merlo and Const. Aaron Naklie were charged in relation to the Oct. 26, 2014 arrest of Matthew Jonsson. Jonsson, who reportedly was handcuffed, uncuffed, then tasered during his arrest, suffered a broken elbow joint. The officers’ trial was expected to hear that Jonsson’s injury, described as a non-displaced fracture of the elbow, likely occurred when he fell forward, landing on his hands.

Merlo was charged with assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm. Naklie was charged with assault causing bodily harm and aiding and abetting an assault with a weapon.

The charges came more than eight months after the incident, following a probe by the Special Investigations Unit, an independent agency that investigates deaths, serious injury and sexual assaults involving police officers.

Monday, after Jonsson failed to attend court to testify, the charges against the two officers were withdrawn. A prosecutor brought in from Toronto to handle the case told the court Jonsson had stopped returning his calls.

Jonsson, who has a long criminal record and is currently wanted in relation to a fraud ring involving bogus online postings for cottage rentals, is the subject of an arrest warrant out of London.

If he had turned up to testify in Windsor, he likely would have been arrested and returned to London to stand trial.

Naklie and Merlo were relieved the charges against them were withdrawn, said their lawyers.

“It couldn’t have turned out any better for them,” said defence lawyer Andrew Bradie, who represents Merlo.

Merlo, who has been a police officer for eight years, has remained on the job since being charged in June 2015.

Naklie, who has been a police officer for 11 years, had also remained on the job but was later suspended in December, said his lawyer, Maria Carroccia.

“He is still on suspension,” Carroccia said.

Deputy Chief Vince Power said Monday he is prohibited by the Police Act from discussing whether there is an internal investigation into the officers’ conduct.

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A Windsor man who once abducted a 14-year-old girl he’d met over the Internet is on trial again for luring, as well as dozens of other charges involving sexual offences against children.

Daniel George Nickolson, 50, is facing 85 charges for crimes alleged to have occurred in 2013 and 2014. Nickolson is accused of meeting girls through Internet chat rooms and getting them to strip for him. He is accused of counselling the girls to perform sex acts, including sex acts with their fathers. If the girls tried to stop communicating with Nickolson, he’d threaten to harm their families, get them in trouble by sharing their sexually explicit chats with their parents or make Internet posts of the nude images he’d captured of them.

He is accused of making child pornography, possessing it, accessing it and distributing it.

It took almost an hour for all the charges to be read aloud in court Monday. Nickolson, sitting in the prisoner’s box in a jail-issued grey T-shirt that matched his hair and facial stubble, entered a plea of not-guilty as each charge was read out. His mother sat behind him in the body of the court, her arms folded in front of her and her face emotionless.

At the time of the alleged crimes, Nickolson was bound by a court order not to use a computer to communicate with anyone under the age of 14.

That order was the result of 2009 convictions for distributing child pornography, child abduction and Internet luring.

In 2009, Nickolson was sentenced to four years in prison for convincing a girl in Saskatchewan to run away from home to live with him. Nickolson was arrested on a bus in Winnipeg as he returned to Ontario with the 14-year-old girl.

Nickolson’s trial in Superior Court began Monday with his lawyer challenging the constitutionality of the search warrants that led to the latest charges. Defence lawyer Andrew Telford-Keogh argued the Windsor police officer who got court authorization to search Nickolson’s apartment and analyze his computer misled the justice of the peace who granted the permission.

A LaSalle police office said a computer repairman he knew called him one day to say he’d found child pornography involving children as young as four on a client’s laptop he had been working on. The police officer testified the repairman gave him a disc with files on it. Since Nickolson lived in Windsor and the computer repair shop was in Windsor, the disc was turned over to Windsor police.

Court heard U.S. authorities and the RCMP also investigated Nickolson. An RCMP officer testified she was contacted by National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States. Court heard police traced accounts to Nickolson.

The constitutional challenge is scheduled for three days, with testimony from trial witnesses expected to begin Friday.

The trial is scheduled for four weeks before Justice Bruce Thomas.

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Were former Windsor Spitfire Ben Johnson’s constitutional rights violated when police made him strip naked and swab his own penis for a woman’s DNA after arresting him in March 2013?

The growing police practice of collecting penile swabs are a contentious area of law, the hockey player’s Superior Court trial heard Monday. “There is a waterfront of cases on this issue,” defence lawyer Patrick Ducharme said.

Johnson is charged with sexual assault in connection with an incident alleged to have occurred in the women’s washroom of Mynt, a now-defunct nightclub in downtown Windsor. Johnson’s trial is expected to hear the New Jersey Devils prospect was at the club with teammates for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration. Johnson was 18 at the time.

The constitutionality of penile swabs and the protocol police should follow when collecting them is currently before the Supreme Court of Canada. The nation’s highest court has granted leave to appeal to an Alberta man convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl, in part, after police found the girl’s DNA on the man’s penis.

The trial judge in the Alberta case found the penile swab without a search warrant to have been unconstitutional, but admitted the evidence nonetheless. The Alberta Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge’s decision.

Ducharme is challenging Johnson’s penile swab on three constitutional grounds — that it violated his right to security of the person, that it constituted an illegal search and that it was conducted without Johnson getting legal advice first.

Assistant Crown attorney Scott Kerwin argued the penile swab was part of a “search incidental to arrest,” which the courts have found does not require a search warrant.

Superior Court Justice Kirk Munroe, who is presiding over Johnson’s case, reserved a decision. He wondered aloud in court Monday whether he should put off Johnson’s trial until after the Supreme Court rules.

Ducharme said that would be an efficient use of court time. Kerwin opposed the idea, saying the case is already more than three years old.

Court heard police took Johnson to a room outfitted with a camera. Johnson had no idea if he was being videotaped or who else might be watching. Two officers were in the room directing him what to do.

Johnson said he was naked for 15 minutes. Police say he was naked for, perhaps, two minutes, before being allowed to put on a paper suit.

Ducharme called the penile swab “more intrusive” than a body cavity search.

“As highly degrading as strip searches have been found to be, penile swabs are worse.”

Ducharme says forcing someone to strip naked and touch himself is “a humiliating affront to human dignity.”

Kerwin said police were sensitive to Johnson’s dignity. The two officers were male and “they didn’t exert any force” to get Johnson to comply. No one but them was watching and no recording was made.

The room was in an area of the police headquarters Kerwin described as “restricted access.” Even if the door were left open, no one would be walking by, Kerwin argued.

Upon his arrest, Johnson was given the opportunity to call a lawyer. Johnson instead asked to call Spitfires coach Bob Boughner. Ducharme explained Monday that Johnson wanted Boughner to contact the Spitfires’ lawyer for him.

But Kerwin argued Johnson didn’t tell police that. He said there is case law that supports police not allowing calls to anyone but lawyers. Detainees can’t call family members, much less coaches, Kerwin said.

Regardless, Ducharme said, the option of calling a lawyer should have been offered to Johnson again before making him submit to a penile swab.

Ducharme pointed out Johnson was 18 years old at the time and in a foreign country. Johnson hails from Calumet, Mich., and was being billeted in Windsor while he played OHL hockey here.

Johnson’s case proceeds to trial next month. The judge hearing his case said he will rule on the penile swab issue before the prosecution begins calling witnesses.

Johnson has already tried to get a mistrial in the case, which the judge denied.

This is Johnson’s second trial on a sexual assault allegation. In November, Johnson was acquitted in Ontario court of forcing a woman’s hand onto his exposed penis in the washroom of the Krooked Kilt, a bar on Wyandotte Street West. That incident was alleged to have occurred two months before the accusation at Mynt.

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