Tori Stafford: Evidence

Superior Court Justice Thomas Heeney Dept: Yet, in the end, the jurors tasked with trying him in the brutal death of 8-year-old Tori Stafford cut right to the chase. After just one long day of considering the mounds of evidence from a harrowing 10-week trial, they came to the obvious and common-sense conclusion. Rafferty, they decided, is thrice guilty. Guilty of kidnapping. Guilty of sexual assault. And, most importantly, guilty of first-degree murder, according to The Star. The verdicts also redeemed a series of decisions by the presiding judge, Superior Court Justice Thomas Heeney, that would have attracted much more criticism if the outcome had been different. Heeney would not let jurors see evidence that Rafferty had spent a lot of time on the Internet in the weeks before Tori s disappearance googling terms like underage rape and real underage rape pictures and the legal system bent over backwards to make sure that Michael Rafferty received the fullest measure of justice possible. He benefited from a robust defence that raised every possible doubt about his guilt. The most damning evidence about his character and sexual proclivities was kept from the jury. The judge trying his case gave him every benefit of the doubt and every protection the Charter of Rights could provide. The unambiguous verdicts provide some justice for Tori, three years after she was abducted and so brutally murdered near Woodstock, Ont., and some comfort for her family. Her father, Rodney Stafford, proclaimed We got justice after the verdicts were read out late on Friday evening. In truth, of course, there is no real justice on earth in a case that involved such unexplained and perhaps unexplainable senseless destruction of young life. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.