Long wearing day

Hearings for the day wrapped up about 5:50 pm.  Helen Daley (Citizens for Community Renewal) had finished her cross-examination. An earlier decision to run to 6 pm today was put on hold.

Hearings resume at 0930 hours (9:30 am) tomorrow morning, Friday, 19 December 2008.  Cornwall Crown Murray MacDonald will be back on the stand.  Either  Frank Horn (Coalition) or Dallas Lee (Victims Group) will start cross-examination.

A  long wearing day 🙁

A few quick notes before I call it a day.  The first two floored me.

(1)  According to Murray MacDonald, Perry Dunlop’s  premise of connecting Murray M to the conspiracy rests on guilt by association ( his father is a paedophile) and, believe it or not, homophobia!!!

Where pray tell did that come from?

(2)  According to Murray M, he was not put into the conspiracy allegations at first, and, according to him he was later added because “conspiracies grow exponentially” and at some a point Perry realized he needed to have the Crown involved to make the theory work, and when Perry realized that he said, ‘oh yes, Murray MacDonald, his father is a paedophile, I’ll throw him in.’

Believe it or not, Murray M said this all of this with a relatively straight face!

(3)  Any questions put to Murray MacDonald regarding his interactions with Heidi Sebalj or anything to do with the CPS “investigation” of David Silmser’s sex abuse allegations evokes great discomfort for Murray and endless confusion for us;

(4) Murray MacDonald’s testimony is frequently evasive, contradictory, accusatory, and at times I would even say condescending;

(5)  Heidi Sebalj seems to have become a convenient scape goat.  As much as he says he doesn’t want to be critical of her work Murray M seems to be doing a good job of doing just that;

(6)  Less than a day for Murray’s examination in chief!  Less than a day.

I will scan the transcripts in the morning.  There is also an area form yesterday’s testimony I hope to look at a little more closely regarding Murray M’s changed testimony as to when Malcolm MacDonald contacted him, the first time to say there were negotiations with David Silmser regarding a civil settlement, and the second around end August or early September to say they had settled.  According to his 1994 statements Murray M said the first Malcolm contact was a month to six weeks before the pay-off (my word). He agreed that would put it around July 1994.

Yesterday Murray M had changed his mind.  He now wants to say the first contact with Malcolm saying civil negotiations were going was three months earlier, back around March or April 1993!

I want to check that out.  Seems to me it’s a key change in testimony with significant ramifications.

A storm scheduled to sweep through tonight.  Yes, another one. Hopefully bad enough to cancel.

And, of course, tomorrow is it – last day before Christmas break.  Hallelujah 🙂

Enough for now,

Sylvia

(cornwall@theinquiry.ca)