“The court needs to make it abundantly clear that sharing of proceedings is dangerous and it absolutely cannot happen.” Saying he doesn’t believe the three men will ever be back before the courts, the Crown attorney also asked the judge to consider the potential their conduct could have on other witnesses who may fear their testimony will be shared online. Once posted on Instagram is out there forever.” Once it’s out there it’s out there, you can’t take it back. “It wasn’t simply sending a text to another friend. ![]() “This was a murder prosecution,” Fried said. The remaining accused, Afrah Mohamed, has elected to have a trial this summer.ĭuring sentencing submissions Thursday - held via Zoom - Crown attorney Rob Fried asked the judge to impose a suspended sentence, arguing a conditional discharge was not in the public interest. Three of the four men pleaded guilty only to obstruct justice while the other charges were dropped. 4, police raided several addresses in the GTA and four men were charged with intimidating justice system participants, obstructing justice and failing to comply with a publication ban. “The last thing the administration of justice system needs is any other disincentive for witnesses to serious crimes to come forward,” Downes said Thursday.Īfter the witness complained, police investigated and found it was not just video and audio of her testimony that had been shared, but also images of the accused, the judge who was presiding over the preliminary hearing, and other evidence that had been heard in court.Įventually, police identified several Instagram accounts, which featured news and entertainment posts with a focus on gang culture and Toronto’s underground rap music scene. The pretrial hearing brought intense public interest due to the notoriety of the accused there were as many as 200 log-ins to the Zoom proceedings, during which disruptive and threatening comments were made referencing “gang conflicts in Toronto,” according to the outline. Posts on the social media network have been cited in several recent incidents, including other instances of shared jailhouse images, alleged threats against a Toronto neighbourhood, and over how escalating online feuds have led to cases of real-world violence. Instagram states on its website that it will disable accounts that have a certain percentage of violating content. The accounts appear either to have been taken down or are now private. Meta, the company that owns Instagram, did not respond to the Star’s request for comment on whether the accounts violated the network’s guidelines. “She believed these posts to be impeding her from testifying against the accused.” (The witness did, in fact, go on to testify at the murder trial.) “This made the witness fear for her personal safety,” according to an outline of the case presented in court. ![]() The case first came to light after the witness told police her image was circulating on Instagram, specifically on the pages thehood6ix and thewarinda6ix. Saying he “struggled” with the appropriate sentence, Downes placed the trio on two years of probation and ordered them to each perform 75 hours of community service. Those proceedings - held to determine if there’s enough evidence to commit the accused to trial - were subject to a standard publication ban.Īlthough Downes found the men had no “concerted desire” to intimidate the witness or prevent her from testifying, their actions were a “stupid, reckless, interference with the administration of justice.” Kyle Stephens, 22, Ryan Taylor, 34, and Mohammed Abdalla, 26, all pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice last fall and apologized Thursday for posting the images and audio of the witness, who was testifying via Zoom at a preliminary hearing in a first-degree murder case. “These are not simple, mischievous pranks that will go unpunished,” Ontario Court Judge Phil Downes said, describing the case as an opportunity to send a strong message of deterrence that, as the courts embrace online video conferencing, “this type of abuse will not be tolerated.” In a case that appears unprecedented in Canada, three men have been sentenced for posting the image and audio of a key Crown witness in a Toronto murder case to a series of Instagram accounts with a total of more than 500,000 followers.
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