Most days, there were a half-dozen, often more, lawyers from the Department of Justice arrayed behind Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, a physical reminder that what he was up against was the state, with its massive reach and awesome power.
The DOJ lawyers couldn’t begin to fit at the counsel tables, but spilled out onto the hard public benches.
Thus what Norman’s lead defence lawyer, Marie Henein, said at a press conference Wednesday after the Public Prosecution Service of Canada stayed the lone charge against her client: “No person should walk into a courtroom fighting their elected government or any sort of political factors.”
Yet that’s precisely what the 55-year-old Norman, until his suspension in January of 2017 the No. 2 man in the entire Canadian Forces, faced.
The PPSC and the Director of Public Prosecutions Kathleen Roussel, Henein said both in and outside court, did their job.
In late March, the defence team handed over its entire case — the fruits of months of defence investigation and witness interviews, some of whom neither the RCMP nor Crown lawyers had deigned to question — to prosecutors Barbara Mercier and John MacFarlane, who were open-minded enough to review and test what they saw.
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See Also:
(1) Prosecution of Mark Norman is over, but questions the affair raised remain
(2) Norman wants his Vice Chief job back but Sajjan says that won’t happen
(3) Vice-Admiral Mark Norman is owed an apology
(4) SNC-Lavalin is a sideshow to the real Wilson-Raybould issue
Deterrence and retribution.
Deterrence – suing their asses off. Retribution – October 2019.