Murder at McDonald's (45 page)

This was not the only point of disagreement among the relatives. Another incident of friction arose when one of Neil Burroughs's sisters called out to Greg Lawrence as he was led from the courtroom after his testimony. Concerned for Lawrence's safety, the RCMP took Francine Fortune to a back room and kept her there until Lawrence was safely away from the court building. This infuriated the Burroughs family. They could not believe that the diminutive Francine was being detained, while the man who knew in advance that the McDonald's robbery would occur was being protected. As I walked out of the courtroom that day, I was confronted by several angry members of the family—most notably Francine herself. “Where the hell were you?” she demanded. “You're out here every day with that camera, taking pictures of us. Why weren't you chasing after him and asking him why he didn't call the police?” Her father was also upset: “Goddamn it, they shouldn't treat us like this! Why can't you show how they're treating us?” It was pointless to explain that I had no idea a confrontation was occurring outside, because I had been talking with the prosecutors. All I could do was stand and listen as they vented their frustrations. Finally, as they left for lunch, I asked Joey and Brian Burroughs to return in an hour and talk on camera about what had happened. I glanced over at the cameraman assigned to work with me for the day and wondered why he had missed all the activity in the hall. Meanwhile, members of the Fagan family were also upset about the confrontation—but for entirely different reasons. They were afraid the outburst might have an impact on the trial and somehow allow Jimmy's killer to go free. The clash of opinions led to cross words between members of the two families that demonstrated the pressure the victims' relatives were under. Even within the Burroughs family, the incident caused acrimony; Neil Burroughs's widow did not care for the public outbursts of some of her in-laws. It seemed the strain of the trial and the isolation of life away from home was driving people apart—people who had once hugged each other and cried together as though they belonged to the same family.

Later in the trial, I had an entirely different kind of experience with the Burroughs family. Cathy Sellars, who had stayed in court during Derek Wood's trial to see the crime-scene video, found herself recalling that haunting image as the pathologist detailed the wounds her brother Neil had suffered. She felt her whole body weaken, and she rushed towards the exit, where she collapsed. Brian Burroughs lifted his sister in his arms and ran out of the courtroom, not at all certain where he was going. The ATV camera recorded the panicked Brian carrying Cathy, her arms and legs dangling at his side, and I used the shot in that evening's wrap on the trial. Later, as I walked to my car, I remembered the judge's lecture. Maybe he was right; maybe I had no sense of human decency. I could have filed a report without showing the tape of the unconscious Cathy Sellars, but I used it anyway. The image powerfully demonstrated the emotional turmoil these families were undergoing, but now I wondered if it would only serve to heighten their anguish. It was too late to change my mind—the report had already been aired—and I knew I would have to face Cathy and Brian in the morning. I had developed a pretty good relationship with them, but the lambasting I had taken a few days earlier made it clear that they would feel free to tear a strip off me if they were upset about the report.

The following morning, as I arrived at court, I saw Brian and Joey Burroughs standing outside, talking with Ernie Sellars, Cathy's husband. Well, here it comes, I thought, as Joey approached. “Look, we just want to thank you for last night,” he said. It was not the greeting I had been expecting. “It's about time people saw what this trial is doing to us,” Joey continued. “We gotta sit here and listen to this bullshit every day, while he sits there with his lawyer, making sure his rights are protected. Nobody gives a damn about our rights.”

I turned to Ernie Sellars: “How'd Cathy feel about seeing it?”

“She thinks it was good, too. But she was happy you couldn't see her face.”

I thanked them and hurried into the court building, wondering why I had been so worried. My instincts had been correct: the shot showed what the families were going through. But once again, I was concerned about getting too close to the people involved in this story. Many of them were beginning to treat me like a close family friend; Olive Warren had even invited me to sit in the section of the courtroom reserved for the families; she felt I belonged there. I knew it was important to develop a relationship with them in order to tell their story effectively—and this was definitely their story, not just an account of perpetrators and deceased victims. Their presence in court every day had given this trial an entirely different dynamic; most murder trials are dry, routine events, with legal issues argued by robed attorneys in front of jurors who do not know the people involved. But the McDonald's trials brought home to everyone involved that the victims were real people, who were loved and missed, and that no amount of legal debate could ease the pain felt by those left behind.

Still, the challenge was to remember that although the victims' relatives were an important part of the story, my responsibility was to cover the court cases in a balanced way. I made a point of interviewing Kevin Coady regularly and asking how MacNeil was handling the pressure. And I tried to show in my reports that MacNeil's mother was as distraught as the relatives of the victims. This was hard to accomplish, because Mrs. MacNeil tended to avoid our camera, spending most of her time in a private room, where she stayed until the court was called to order. There wasn't even much of a photo opportunity when she entered the courtroom; she was not stopped and searched at the door, because court officers logically assumed the accused's mother was not about to do him any harm. When we finally managed to record a shot of Freeman's mother and sister entering the court, it was really too brief a moment to portray much of the emotion she must have been feeling. MacNeil himself was holding up well, according to his lawyer. Coady said he was amazed at the character of the young man and his ability to deal with the trial and what it meant to his future.

Late on Thursday, September 30, Brian Williston wrapped up his case with the testimony of Kevin Cleary. The defence case began the following Monday, and it quickly became clear why Coady had asked all those questions about his client's state of mind after the crime. He hoped to convince the jury that Freeman MacNeil could not have intended to kill Neil Burroughs or James Fagan, because he was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. First diagnosed in soldiers after battle, this condition can cause mental numbness and shock in a person exposed to a cataclysmic experience—extreme violence, for example, or a serious car accident. The symptoms apparently become more extreme when the sufferer is not in control of what is happening. Post-traumatic stress syndrome has been used successfully in a number of court cases as an argument for diminished capacity—a reduction in one's ability to think about an action while it is being carried out. If proved, it makes for a solid argument against a murder conviction, because to commit murder a person must form the intent to kill or to inflict severe injury that is likely to kill.

To prove his theory, Coady called Ottawa-based forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Bradford, who had visited Freeman MacNeil at the Cape Breton County Correctional Centre on August 13 and interviewed him for three to four hours. Dr. Bradford said he examined MacNeil's family background to see if he exhibited any early signs of mental illness, and although there were no such indications, he pointed out that MacNeil's father had committed suicide by shooting himself, which the psychiatrist considered significant. Dr. Bradford had been called as an expert witness in many trials, and he testified in a clear and confident tone, and made every effort to explain post-traumatic stress syndrome in an understandable way. It was his opinion that MacNeil suffered from symptoms of this condition, including vivid dreams and flashbacks related to the killings. In particular, he had told the doctor about a recurring image of Neil Burroughs after he was stabbed by Darren Muise. Apparently, the condition set in immediately after Derek Wood shot Arlene MacNeil, an act MacNeil had no control over. During his interview with the psychiatrist, MacNeil described feeling numb and confused after Arlene was shot, adding that he felt emotionally numb when he hit Neil Burroughs with the shovel handle. The doctor concluded MacNeil did not have a normal, functioning mind when he hit Burroughs or when he shot James Fagan.

Brian Williston listened attentively, taking extensive notes, then launched into a lengthy cross-examination focused on the fact that the psychiatrist had based his diagnosis on what the suspect told him; in other words, if Freeman MacNeil lied to him, the diagnosis was faulty. Couldn't the doctor have conducted tests to determine the accuracy of MacNeil's claims? Apparently so, but those tests were not administered. And Dr. Bradford had to concede that it would have been helpful for him to see the video-taped re-enactment MacNeil had conducted for police on May 15, 1992, to see how the young man had behaved at that time. As far as the victims' families could see, Williston had successively discredited the doctor's testimony. But Williston was not so confident; he intended to call psychiatric evidence on his own, on rebuttal, but first he had to wait for the defence to finish its case.

The only other defence witnesses were the mother and sister of Freeman MacNeil's girlfriend. They testified about seeing the silver gun—the gun used in the murders—and showing it to a girl who was dating Derek Wood. Margaret Chiasson said she found the gun in her husband's dresser and thought it was pretty, so she showed it to her daughter and Wood's girlfriend. That incident occurred some time before the robbery and raised the possibility that Wood might have taken the gun. If the jury would not accept the post-traumatic stress theory, they might believe MacNeil didn't know that Derek Wood had the gun that night. On cross-examination, Mrs. Chiasson said that Freeman MacNeil slept at her home on the night of the murders and that he was surprised when she woke him and told him about radio reports of the shootings. She smiled at MacNeil as she left the witness stand.

With the defence case concluded, Marc Chisholm called Dr. Syed Akhtar, the psychiatrist in charge of the Nova Scotia Hospital's forensic services unit. The prosecuting team had had a bit of a debate over calling the psychiatrist to the stand. Haley believed Williston had successfully discredited Dr. Bradford's evidence, and wondered if the rebuttal might give jurors the impression that the doctor's evidence was so important that it required countering. But the prosecutors finally agreed that a second opinion was just what the jury needed. He was right. The small, fragile-looking Dr. Akhtar not only criticized Dr. Bradford's methods, but also strongly disagreed with the other psychiatrist's findings. Dr. Bradford should have done much more than interview Freeman MacNeil if he wanted to make a proper assessment of the young man's condition during the crime, he said, then went on to mention factors which, he felt, pointed away from a finding of post-traumatic stress; the detail of the confession, for example, and MacNeil's actions after the crime.

In his cross-examination, Kevin Coady only succeeded in further discrediting his own star witness and getting himself in a tangle. He tried to persuade Dr. Akhtar to admit that, had he examined Freeman MacNeil, he might have come to the same conclusion as Dr. Bradford. Much to the displeasure of Justice Gruchey, the witness pointed out that he had wanted to talk to MacNeil, but that Coady would not allow it. Coady then tried to set up a hypothetical scenario for the doctor—let's say he talked to MacNeil, and was given the same answers, and was convinced MacNeil was being truthful. Could he have come to the same conclusions? But Dr. Akhtar knocked that theory on the floor. “It's highly unlikely I would come to the same conclusion that Dr. Bradford did,” he said. “I don't agree with his diagnosis. It must be post-traumatic. You need time to develop this syndrome. At the time of the crime, he would not have had it. He may have it now, but not then.” Brian Williston smiled as his final witness stepped down. At 4:20 p.m. on October 4, 1993, the last of the evidence in the three McDonald's murder trials was in. All that remained was for the jury to hear arguments from the lawyers and the charge from Justice Gruchey. They were told to get a good night's sleep and return in the morning.

In his closing arguments, Kevin Coady told the jury that things were not always what they seemed to be. Members of the victims' families cringed when he described the murders as a robbery gone bad, a characterization they were tired of hearing. The defence attorney went on to point the finger of blame at Derek Wood: “It happened because Derek went nuts,” he said. “Derek Wood was the author of the carnage that took place inside that restaurant, [and there was] no question Darren also caused injury to Burroughs.” Coady struggled to ignore the muffled reactions of the victims' relatives as he tried to downplay the role his client played in the murders, in particular the murder of Neil Burroughs. “Wood or Muise caused his death. The only thing he did was hit him with a stick. The stick did not kill Mr. Burroughs, [and it is] questionable if this hit would even knock him out. The responsibility for Burroughs's death lies with Muise and Wood.” And he asked the jurors to consider Freeman MacNeil's state of mind at the time of the murders, to think about what Dr. Bradford had to say. “What made Mr. MacNeil shoot Mr. Fagan? He had not become involved in the shootings to that point. He was not able to resist the orders of the other two. He was not of an operating mind at the time.” Kevin Coady finished his difficult task in thirty-seven minutes, his quiet, sombre tone perhaps disguising the anxiety he was experiencing, aware as he was that his job was to properly represent his client, but equally aware that he was the subject of the intense dislike of some of the people sitting behind him.