EDMONTON JOURNAL
EDMONTON – The Edmonton Police Service has dropped all internal disciplinary charges against Const. Joe Slemko, a blood-spatter expert who defied orders not to testify for the defence as a private consultant in criminal cases and fatality inquiries.
It would be unfair to proceed with the charges, Chief Mike Boyd said in an interview on Monday.
“This issue has been confused or blurred and it needs to be clarified or straightened out,” he said. “I just don’t think it would be proper to proceed (with internal disciplinary charges) at this point.”
Boyd called Slemko on Monday to give him the news.
“I am very happy, but it still angers me that I had to go through all this trouble and stress for so many years,” Slemko said.
“I told (Boyd) it was an eight-year battle for me, and it saddened me that it had to come to this point. I said I had done everything I could to deal with this internally, but nothing happened until (The Journal) came along and made it into a big public issue.”
In July, The Journal revealed Slemko had twice been convicted of insubordination for defying an order not to testify for the defence, and faced a third internal disciplinary hearing this fall.
A short time later, Boyd was called before the police commission to explain the policy. He told the commission that Slemko and other officers with expert credentials were free to testify for whomever they wished as long as they told the EPS in advance.
Until then, the EPS had for years contended Slemko placed himself in a conflict every time he testified for the defence. Police officers must clear all outside work with the service and are barred from any business activity that “might reasonably be expected to impair their judgment, independence or unbiased performance of police duty.”
A senior officer had decided Slemko was in a conflict because of a belief that the Crown and police are “indivisible” in a prosecution. Slemko said he defied the policy because he believes a police officer has a duty to tell the truth whether it benefits the prosecution or defence.
He said he does not accept fees in cases where he believes a person has been wrongfully convicted or where there is a possibility of a miscarriage of justice.
Boyd’s decision means Slemko will not face an internal disciplinary hearing this fall for defying an order not to assist the defence in two cases in which he contradicted RCMP evidence.
One case involved a murder in Drayton Valley. After reports by Slemko and the medical examiner both refuted the police theory of the murder, the Crown stayed the charges against the accused.
In the second case, an appeal of a murder conviction in British Columbia, Slemko’s report was accepted without challenge by the RCMP and the Crown. The case is still before the court.
Despite Slemko’s success in both cases, the RCMP still filed complaints with Edmonton police.
The Edmonton Police Association has formally requested that Boyd vacate Slemko’s previous two disciplinary convictions and grant him his 20-year exemplary service medal, which has so far been denied. Boyd said that matter is still under consideration.
Contrary to published reports in other media, Slemko is not facing charges for his controversial testimony at a fatality inquiry into the shooting of a young Houston, B.C., man while in police custody. Slemko testified that the blood-spatter evidence revealed the shooting could not possibly have happened the way the RCMP officer claimed.
An RCMP lawyer attacked Slemko’s credibility with information that Slemko said could only have been obtained from a source inside the Edmonton service.
The controversy surrounding Slemko apparently has not damaged his international reputation. In the past two months, he has received several requests to review cases, including one in Singapore.
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