Fredericton blogger urges Crown to drop assault charge against him!!!

Courts Fredericton blogger urges Crown to drop assault charge against him DON MACPHERSON Fredericton Daily Gleaner



Activist and blogger Charles LeBlanc emerges from the Justice Building in downtown Fredericton on Monday morning following a brief court appearance on an assault charge. He told the court if the Crown drops the case, he'll forget all about it.

Photo: Don MacPherson/The Daily Gleaner

Activist blogger Charles Joseph LeBlanc told a court on Monday he needs additional disclosure of the Crown file before he can enter a plea to a summary charge of assault.

LeBlanc, 55, of 1-145 Westmorland St. faces a charge alleging he assaulted Andrew Spencer in downtown Fredericton on July 3.

The blogger made his first appearance on the charge last month, when the case was adjourned to Monday for plea.

LeBlanc told provincial court Judge Mary Jane Richards he wasn’t prepared to enter a plea Monday, though.

Duty counsel Richard Cove noted the defendant hasn’t received full disclosure from the Crown in the case.

“The Crown’s position is all disclosure has been provided to Mr. LeBlanc,” said prosecutor Cory Roberts, appearing on behalf of Sebastien Michaud, the Crown prosecutor who’s handling the case.

LeBlanc said there were many unanswered questions in the case, though he didn’t elaborate before the judge on what they were.

Then he suggested Roberts was in a position to resolve the matter on Monday.

“If he’s ready to drop the case, I’m ready to forget this and go home,” LeBlanc said.

But the charge stood, and Richards adjourned the matter to March 2 before provincial court Judge Julian Dickson.

She said if the disclosure issue isn’t resolved by then, Dickson would likely schedule a date for a disclosure hearing.

LeBlanc has some long-standing beefs with the Fredericton Police Force, and he has alleged the charge was trumped up as a vendetta against him.

However, due to its past conflicts with LeBlanc, the city police force outsourced the investigation to the Miramichi Police Force.

While LeBlanc has in the past demanded outside agencies deal with his matters in Fredericton, he claimed last month the Fredericton Police Force had its hands in the assault investigation.

Outside the courthouse on Monday, LeBlanc said some of the additional information he’s seeking is communication between the Fredericton police and their counterparts in Miramichi. He said he wants copies of any phone conversations, faxes, emails or texts between the two policing agencies.

It wasn’t clear if any such communication exists.

The blogger also noted the documents he was provided were incomplete.

“There’s 38 pages that was supposed to be given to me. I was only given five,” he said.

“There’s many, many, many other issues.”

He also claimed a witness statement was missing from the disclosure package.

LeBlanc has come into conflict with members of the Fredericton Police Force for several years now.

His solo bullhorn protest in front of the city police station in the summer of 2011 led the Fredericton force to charge him with causing a disturbance, to which he pleaded guilty in January 2012. He was sentenced to probation.

The same week as that guilty plea and sentence, the city police raided LeBlanc’s apartment and seized his computer as part of a criminal libel investigation.

On his previous blog, LeBlanc had been calling a city police officer a sexual pervert and had claimed the officer had touched him inappropriately.

That libel investigation went nowhere because the Crown noted the relevant section of the Criminal Code of Canada had been deemed unconstitutional in other jurisdictions.

LeBlanc later started suggesting the city police force was a haven for pedophiles and steroid users.

The former unfounded allegation stemmed in part from his discovery that a document used by the city police force to get information from his Internet service provider referred to it being part of a child exploitation investigation.

The document in question also referred to the libel investigation, and the city police force explained the child-exploitation reference was a clerical error because those sorts of requests of Internet service providers are typically for child-pornography cases, not libel.

LeBlanc has rejected that explanation.

The blogger has maintained his problems with Fredericton police began with a recording he made of a July 2009 arrest in the city’s downtown bar district.

That video was used as evidence in the trial of Const. Stephen Stafford, a city police officer who was charged with assault as a result of his actions during that encounter.

Stafford was acquitted at trial, but LeBlanc has stated he feels the police turned on him as a result of his evidence in the trial.

LeBlanc has also blamed the Fredericton police for the removal of his previous blog from a free hosting service.

City of Fredericton chief administrative officer Chris MacPherson filed a complaint with Google about posts LeBlanc made referring to city police officers as pedophiles, asking for those posts to be removed.

Instead, Google removed blog in its entirety last summer. LeBlanc has since launched a new blog on the same free hosting service.