Another thing that is not discussed is that criminal defense lawyers also help move the process along in the court system. Trying to navigate all this from a defendant point of view can be gong show and really slow down justice.
There is going to be a lot more information that will come out here in this trial from both the accused and the alleged victim and it may not be pretty from either side.
I would be fascinated to know from a defense attorney perspective how the thinking goes when they ask a client if they did in fact commit the alleged crime. How does the conversation go about pleading guilty and minimizing jail time/charge risk? The crown won't always offer plea deal but I think a lot of times defendants and their lawyers try and fight the good fight when an outcome has a high likelihood of conviction when the smarter play may be to plead to a lesser charge.
I'm wondering if there's any actual evidence of what happened in that room other than the victim's statement. It seems that prosecutors have put together a pretty coherent picture of what happened but I'm unsure what that's based on.
For example, how do they know Dillon Dube did XYZ that night in that room other than just what she says?
If she was as drunk as she says she was, how is her statement considered part of actual evidence? Can't the lawyers say that her statements are not reliable because she has accepted that she was intoxicated well beyond her regular amounts during her testimony.
Hoping someone can clear up the law for me on this one.
After reading the CBC updates....it's just wow. Like Michael McLeod picked up the girl at a bar and she came back to the hotel and they had consensual relations which she was fine with.... but it wasnt enough for him? There are no words.
It strikes me that the video may support a bunch of what she says. Plus there will be witnesses who corroborate at least some of the other events. After that it’s a credibility test. But if she says AB and C happened and A and B are corroborated that helps the jury believe C happened as well.
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Another thing that is not discussed is that criminal defense lawyers also help move the process along in the court system. Trying to navigate all this from a defendant point of view can be gong show and really slow down justice.
There is going to be a lot more information that will come out here in this trial from both the accused and the alleged victim and it may not be pretty from either side.
I would be fascinated to know from a defense attorney perspective how the thinking goes when they ask a client if they did in fact commit the alleged crime. How does the conversation go about pleading guilty and minimizing jail time/charge risk? The crown won't always offer plea deal but I think a lot of times defendants and their lawyers try and fight the good fight when an outcome has a high likelihood of conviction when the smarter play may be to plead to a lesser charge.
MBates can answer better, but my Crim. Prof. said to never ask if they did it.
It can affect the defenses put forth.
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As one of the older guys in here who has seen a lot of messed up stuff over the years (including from hockey players) I'm appalled with the lack of respect todays youth have for women, I'm certain in my day McLeod would have been slapped silly for such invitations to take advantage of a drunk young girl, instead these idiots pulled their pants down.
As one of the older guys in here who has seen a lot of messed up stuff over the years (including from hockey players) I'm appalled with the lack of respect todays youth have for women, I'm certain in my day McLeod would have been slapped silly for such invitations to take advantage of a drunk young girl, instead these idiots pulled their pants down.
Come on.
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Gross. The spitting L, hitting, parading her around naked they not only sexually assaulted her, but physically and tried to humiliate her.
And although not a direct threat, openly talking about the clubs, and having however many guys in the room is additionally scary as #### and further supports being agreeable to survive.
I understand the angle, as rare as false accusations are, if one was to make a false accusation it could be in a case of cheating and you wanted to remove responsibility from yourself if your partner finds out. I personally know of a situation like that, however in that case, the police couldn't find enough evidence and the accuser eventually came clean.
In this this case though, the idea seems absurd. First, because by the sounds of it, her boyfriend didn't know and may never have found out. But also, who would go into the details she did for a simple false accusation? The spitting, slapping, golf club, a player doing the splits on her.... all that stuff seems too oddly specific if someone was trying to concoct a story on the fly. Why add all the humiliation factors? It wouldn't make sense.
All of the details of the acts were outlined in the statement of fact and were not contested by the defence. All that stuff happened. (Edit: I may have spoken out of turn. I thought that is how they had the names tied to each specific act, but I can’t find the info I thought I read to share)
I understand that the only thing that is being argued is if she wanted all of that to happen or not. It all happened.
Last edited by Scroopy Noopers; 05-06-2025 at 06:04 AM.
Reason: Fact check
All of the details of the acts were outlined in the statement of fact and were not contested by the defence. All that stuff happened.
I understand that the only thing that is being argued is if she wanted all of that to happen or not. It all happened.
I may have missed something, but I don’t think that the accepted statements of facts included the specifics of everything that happened. It was only some very general facts around the event, not all the specifics.
Raddysh has testified he had difficulty remembering specific moments from that night.
“So you were in there for a total of two minutes, maybe?” Cunningham said, reading from the 2018 interview transcript.
“Yeah… not a long time at all,” Raddysh said, reading the answers he gave in 2018.
“So when you saw her did you say anything at all to her?” Cunningham continued.
“Not that I remember,” Raddysh said. “I don’t think I even really looked at her.”
“Do you remember anything being said to her or by her?” Cunningham said.
“No, I was talking to Boris and Mikey the whole time,” Raddysh said “I never heard her say anything.”
Raddysh told the interviewer in 2018 that the woman he saw in McLeod’s hotel room “seemed fine” and “seemed quite normal.” He said she was lying on the bed, had the sheets pulled up covering most of her body. Raddysh said he could “see her traps [trapezius muscles, which are muscles in the upper back and neck]” and could not tell whether she was wearing clothes under the sheets. https://www.tsn.ca/hockey-canada/bor...rial-1.2299594
EM says:
NSFW!
She testifies the men — she isn’t sure who — put a bedsheet on the floor and wanted her to lie down on it and touch herself.
She says it likely happened because she told them she did not feel comfortable lying on the hotel floor.
She says they had golf clubs and “talked about putting golf balls in my vagina” or she could “take the whole golf club in me.”
Cunningham asks what was going through her mind when people other than McLeod came in the room.
“I was feeling scared. I didn't know where things were going and didn't know how to handle that kind of a situation," E.M. tells the court.
“I was scared and confused.”
She says “they were laughing at me… spitting on me at points.
“It seemed like a joke to them…. But I was feeling intimidated and not sure how to react.”
E.M. says she was 5-foot-4 and weighed 120 pounds in 2018.
The men “seemed a lot taller, a lot bigger.”
Other men started entering and she had a “weird feeling of just separating from my body,” E.M. says.
Raddysh has testified he had difficulty remembering specific moments from that night.
“So you were in there for a total of two minutes, maybe?” Cunningham said, reading from the 2018 interview transcript.
“Yeah… not a long time at all,” Raddysh said, reading the answers he gave in 2018.
“So when you saw her did you say anything at all to her?” Cunningham continued.
“Not that I remember,” Raddysh said. “I don’t think I even really looked at her.”
“Do you remember anything being said to her or by her?” Cunningham said.
“No, I was talking to Boris and Mikey the whole time,” Raddysh said “I never heard her say anything.”
Raddysh told the interviewer in 2018 that the woman he saw in McLeod’s hotel room “seemed fine” and “seemed quite normal.” He said she was lying on the bed, had the sheets pulled up covering most of her body. Raddysh said he could “see her traps [trapezius muscles, which are muscles in the upper back and neck]” and could not tell whether she was wearing clothes under the sheets. https://www.tsn.ca/hockey-canada/bor...rial-1.2299594
EM says:
NSFW!
She testifies the men — she isn’t sure who — put a bedsheet on the floor and wanted her to lie down on it and touch herself.
She says it likely happened because she told them she did not feel comfortable lying on the hotel floor.
She says they had golf clubs and “talked about putting golf balls in my vagina” or she could “take the whole golf club in me.”
Cunningham asks what was going through her mind when people other than McLeod came in the room.
“I was feeling scared. I didn't know where things were going and didn't know how to handle that kind of a situation," E.M. tells the court.
“I was scared and confused.”
She says “they were laughing at me… spitting on me at points.
“It seemed like a joke to them…. But I was feeling intimidated and not sure how to react.”
E.M. says she was 5-foot-4 and weighed 120 pounds in 2018.
The men “seemed a lot taller, a lot bigger.”
Other men started entering and she had a “weird feeling of just separating from my body,” E.M. says.
__________________ MMF is the tough as nails cop that "plays by his own rules". The force keeps suspending him when he crosses the line but he keeps coming back and then cracks a big case.
-JiriHrdina
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Raddysh has testified he had difficulty remembering specific moments from that night.
“So you were in there for a total of two minutes, maybe?” Cunningham said, reading from the 2018 interview transcript.
“Yeah… not a long time at all,” Raddysh said, reading the answers he gave in 2018.
“So when you saw her did you say anything at all to her?” Cunningham continued.
“Not that I remember,” Raddysh said. “I don’t think I even really looked at her.”
“Do you remember anything being said to her or by her?” Cunningham said.
“No, I was talking to Boris and Mikey the whole time,” Raddysh said “I never heard her say anything.”
Raddysh told the interviewer in 2018 that the woman he saw in McLeod’s hotel room “seemed fine” and “seemed quite normal.” He said she was lying on the bed, had the sheets pulled up covering most of her body. Raddysh said he could “see her traps [trapezius muscles, which are muscles in the upper back and neck]” and could not tell whether she was wearing clothes under the sheets. https://www.tsn.ca/hockey-canada/bor...rial-1.2299594
EM says:
NSFW!
She testifies the men — she isn’t sure who — put a bedsheet on the floor and wanted her to lie down on it and touch herself.
She says it likely happened because she told them she did not feel comfortable lying on the hotel floor.
She says they had golf clubs and “talked about putting golf balls in my vagina” or she could “take the whole golf club in me.”
Cunningham asks what was going through her mind when people other than McLeod came in the room.
“I was feeling scared. I didn't know where things were going and didn't know how to handle that kind of a situation," E.M. tells the court.
“I was scared and confused.”
She says “they were laughing at me… spitting on me at points.
“It seemed like a joke to them…. But I was feeling intimidated and not sure how to react.”
E.M. says she was 5-foot-4 and weighed 120 pounds in 2018.
The men “seemed a lot taller, a lot bigger.”
Other men started entering and she had a “weird feeling of just separating from my body,” E.M. says.
I would be fascinated to know from a defense attorney perspective how the thinking goes when they ask a client if they did in fact commit the alleged crime. How does the conversation go about pleading guilty and minimizing jail time/charge risk? The crown won't always offer plea deal but I think a lot of times defendants and their lawyers try and fight the good fight when an outcome has a high likelihood of conviction when the smarter play may be to plead to a lesser charge.
There truly is no one size fits all approach to preparing a criminal defence file and unfortunately this is one area where I will not reveal much about my practice.
That said, the generic response is it almost always depends on what we see in disclosure of the prosecution case that guides what we ask and when.
As to getting to the decision to plead guilty...sometimes there is 4K quality video of the accused committing the crime and no legal obstacle to it being admissible. Those cases tend to get very quickly to a guilty plea after we watch the video.
Sometimes we see major gaps and problems in the evidence and can see a high likelihood the Crown will fail to prove a case.
And there is everything between.
For sure there are times an accused exercises their right to a trial in spite of legal advice to resolve...and times where the opposite occurs as well.
And contrary to what is a common misconception, we often have to get our client's version of events...it really depends on the trial strategy / theory of the defence.
One thing to keep in mind though, is that the vast majority of cases do not go to trial and will be resolved (I think the percentage of criminal cases coming into the system resolved by way of trial has always been around 10%):
I think they're both telling the truth. Raddysh was the first one in and out before the gang raping started.
Yeah, the stories don't contradict each other. There is a reason why Raddysh isn't being charged. He was the first one that McLeod fetched and at that point it was only the three of them. Raddysh left before the bigger group showed up and didn't engage with the victim.
He probably knows more than what he is saying which isn't helpful, but he is off the hook for any of the criminal actions that took place.
__________________
"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
Last edited by FlamesAddiction; 05-05-2025 at 10:14 PM.
