RCMP officer pleads guilty at new assault trial
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Monthly Digital Subscription
$19 $0 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*No charge for 4 weeks then billed as $19 every four weeks (new subscribers and qualified returning subscribers only). Cancel anytime.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/12/2014 (3389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A veteran Manitoba RCMP officer has admitted to beating a handcuffed man he wrongfully arrested more than six years ago.
Cpl. Jeffrey Thomas Moyse, 44, entered a surprise guilty plea to assault today, ending a lengthy legal saga. He will be sentenced next June, and the conviction likely spells the end of his policing career.
The Crown agreed today to drop a similar assault charge against Moyse’s former partner, Const. Trevor Ens. He faces no further legal sanctions.
Moyse and Ens had both maintained their innocence during a 2011 trial which ended with Queen’s Bench Justice Perry Schulman rejecting their version of events and finding both guilty.
Moyse was then given a four-month jail sentence, while Ens received a four-month conditional sentence. Both officers immediately filed appeals, which put their penalties on pause. It also allowed them to hang on to their careers, as RCMP said they would await the final outcome of the case before making a decision.
In a decision released in 2013, the Manitoba Court of Appeal cited numerous errors made by the judge as grounds to overturn the guilty verdicts and order a new trial. That won’t be necessary now with today’s developments.
Moyse and Ens had testified in their own defence and denied the October 2008 incident in Traverse Bay, about 120 km northeast of Winnipeg.
The victim, Conley Papineau, told court he was punched in the face and stomach, kicked in the head and repeatedly thrown around by the accused after being confronted in a bar parking lot. Papineau said Moyse and Ens then threw him in the back of their police car, stopped on the side of a remote highway and continued the attack. Papineau said he didn’t go to a hospital for any treatment because he didn’t want to spend “12 hours in a waiting room.”
Moyse and Ens previously admitted they questioned Papineau in the parking lot of the Birchwood Motor Hotel because they believed he might have been attempting to drive while drunk. They described Papineau as appearing “grossly intoxicated” and staggering as he made his way over to a parked vehicle where a friend of his was sitting inside. Papineau, who was not convicted of any crime, admitted he had about three drinks that night on an empty stomach.
At the original trial, Schulman said the evidence didn’t support the claims made by the officers. He said surveillance video of the parking lot showed Papineau displayed no signs of intoxication and appeared respectful of police.
Schulman concluded the officers had no grounds to arrest Papineau, and said the officers committed a serious breach of trust.
www.mikeoncrime.com
Mike McIntyre
Sports reporter
Mike McIntyre grew up wanting to be a professional wrestler. But when that dream fizzled, he put all his brawn into becoming a professional writer.