Federal prison officials want to keep hidden all reports and videos describing teen inmate Ashley Smith until the inquest into her jail cell death is over, an Ontario coroner was told Monday.
Lawyers for the family and media representatives, including the Toronto Star, called this ban “unprecedented” and “Orwellian.”
“The acronym CSC (for Correctional Service of Canada) should properly stand for Conceal, Suppress and Contain,” Smith family lawyer Julian Falconer told the court.
A jury will begin hearing evidence Tuesday. More than 30,000 pages of documents and numerous prison videos will be entered as evidence during the inquest, which is expected to last into the fall.
The groups gathered at coroner’s court in Toronto on Monday for what was supposed to be a routine hearing to discuss how the media and public would access these court exhibits.
But the eleventh-hour motion from the prison service complicated matters.
Presiding Coroner Dr. Bonita Porter told the court she would hear the prison service’s arguments next Tuesday. She also deferred her decision on a request to blur the faces of all correctional staff in prison videos that may be copied for the media and the public. The request came from Travis McDonald, a guard at Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener who was on duty when Smith, 19, tied a ligature around her neck and choked to death while staff watched on Oct. 19, 2007.
Smith was punted to the federal system at age 18 to serve out the remainder of her youth sentence. Labeled a difficult inmate, she served most of her time in segregation cells across the country, wearing little more than what the prison service calls a tear-proof suicide smock. The native of Moncton, N.B., was first jailed at 15 after throwing crab apples at a mailman.
The inquest jury will hear its first witness on Tuesday.
Acting detective Patrick Colagiovanni is expected to take most of the day describing Smith’s life story before her federal incarceration.
Five videos depicting Smith’s interactions with staff at Grand Valley Institution are also expected to be shown this week.
While Porter decides whether to allow the prison service’s request to bar the media from getting copies of any reports and videos filed in court until after the jury delivers its verdict, she instructed reporters to fill out a court form requesting materials.
The Smith family is still awaiting a Divisional Court decision after challenging Porter’s earlier ruling on graphic videos showing the young inmate forcibly injected with tranquilizers and strapped to a metal gurney for nearly 12 hours without food, water or a clean tampon at Joliette Institution in Quebec. Additional videos, which the Smith family wanted the jury to see but Porter excluded, show Smith duct-taped to the seat of a plane by a pilot during one of more than a dozen prison transfers between institutions across the country.
The Divisional Court will determine whether the coroner erred in failing to compel the prison service to turn over these videos.