Poison (41 page)

Sarabjit made one wish after her babies had died and Dhillon had fled. Just one. Let me see him one more time, let him look me in the eye and see that I am strong, stronger than him—and that I am taking revenge. On Thursday, July 5, Sarabjit had her chance, and she braced herself to once again face Jodha. She had traveled from Panj Grain to appear on the stand. She had never recovered from the deaths of her sons, still wept when she thought of them. As she gathered herself together and walked into the courtroom, she was afraid. All the people, for one thing. And there was Dhillon.
What might he do? Was she safe? Was her family safe back home? But she decided she would not show fear. Instead she would convey her anger to Dhillon. She would hide it no more.

No, she was not going to show what she really felt, call him a bastard. But simply showing her face in court, on the stand, openly confronting Dhillon, was for her like revealing her heart to the world. It felt wonderfully defiant. Here she was, a young Indian woman who had been told whom to marry, who had been brought up in a culture where women follow the male lead. She was standing up to a man—not just any man, but her husband. Sarabjit stepped into the witness box. She looked directly at Dhillon. He saw her, but his face was an expressionless mask, his eyes revealing nothing, looking as though he had never seen his second wife and mother of his deceased newborn children before.

Wedding portrait of Dhillon and Sarabjit

Sarabjit’s actual testimony was brief. Judge Glithero had ruled the Crown could not mention the twins, so the jury got only a glimpse of Sarabjit’s marriage to Dhillon. All Brent Bentham could do was show the jury an hour-long videotape of the wedding. In the video, Sarabjit looked radiant clad in traditional gold and red, but her expression was dour. On the stand, all she could talk about in her soft voice was how their arranged marriage came to be, and how they had wed shortly after Parvesh had died—a damning detail, but only a sliver of the whole ugly story. Still, Sarabjit felt triumphant. She had stood up to Jodha. She stepped down from the box, looked right at him, for the last time. Dhillon turned away from her stare.

Russell Silverstein needed to hammer home the notion that Parvesh could have killed herself by accident, using homeopathic medicine. He had to sow doubt in the minds of the jurors. Murder in a Canadian court must be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt,” a high threshold. Brent Bentham knew that homeopathics would be a powerful suggestion. He needed to use Dhillon’s own statements to counter it. Bentham’s key argument was that, in several exchanges with police prior to his arrest, Dhillon himself had never mentioned homeopathic treatments—what he called “
desi
medicine.” In fact, Kevin Dhinsa had directly asked Dhillon on several occasions whether Parvesh ever took homeopathic medicine, and he had denied it. The question was, could the Crown get Dhillon’s statements to police before the jury? The jury was dismissed on July 6 and the trial paused for a week while the lawyers argued the point.

The Crown tried to enter as evidence statements Dhillon made during four interviews: on November 17, 1996, at the first aborted polygraph interview; December 15 at his official polygraph test; March 17, 1997, in a conversation between Dhillon and Dhinsa; October 22, 1997, the day he was arrested. But in the end, nearly all of Dhillon’s statements were declared inadmissible. Glithero did allow them to use statements Dhillon made to Dhinsa in a brief conversation on March 17, 1997, outside Dhillon’s home as it was being searched. Dhillon had not mentioned homeopathics, or
desi
medicine, to Dhinsa—but then Dhinsa had not asked him about it directly, either. The judge ruled the detectives had overstepped their bounds or violated Dhillon’s rights in a variety of ways to obtain the other statements. Dhillon’s arrest-day statements were out of order, because police pressured Dhillon into speaking after the accused had said he had nothing more to say. The judge suggested that Dhinsa had erred in reminding Dhillon that he had once said Dhinsa was like his own brother, since they were from India. Dhinsa, Glithero opined, had tried to “undermine the resolve of the accused by appealing to their common ancestry and relationship.” Further, Glithero said Dhillon was very likely intimidated on the day of his arrest by the presence of Detective Sergeant Steve Hrab, whom Dhillon had last seen at the heated interrogation 10 months earlier.

The judge did not stop there. He made a point of singling out Hrab for his interrogation methods. The detective had never hurt Dhillon physically, nor did he threaten the suspect. But Glithero took Hrab to the woodshed in his ruling. “The interview conducted by Officer Hrab,” he wrote, “is in my opinion appalling and beyond anything I have seen in 30 years of close involvement with criminal litigation. I thought his performance to be disgusting and embarrassing to our system.” Hrab was not in court for the ruling, but later was unfazed by the verbal undressing, did not feel he had crossed the line with Dhillon. Glithero also excluded statements Dhillon made at the November 17, 1996, interview, because Korol and Dhinsa had not re-read Dhillon his rights when they started questioning him on both murders.

Korol shook his head. He knew the exclusion of Dhillon’s statements was a huge blow to the case. Dhillon could now say that Parvesh consumed unknown quantities of mystery homeopathic medicine, and the Crown had little to counter it.

The trial neared its conclusion. By mid-July, after some 90 witnesses had testified, the buzz among spectators in court was that Sukhwinder Dhillon stood an excellent chance of walking free. Family and friends of Parvesh who had witnessed her death had been inconsistent or hostile to the Crown. As for Dhillon’s motive, yes, he had a financial benefit to kill Parvesh, but no more than any husband would have to kill his wife for an insurance payout. Moreover, had Parvesh actually been murdered? The presence of strychnine in her tissues was not absolute proof that she had been murdered with it, or even that it was in her body at the time she died. To this point in the trial, as far as the jury knew, Parvesh regularly took strange homeopathic remedies. The tissue samples were more than four years old. In theory, they could have been contaminated in storage. Police never found a trace of strychnine in his house. Most of all, there was no smoking gun. No one saw Dhillon give Parvesh a pill.

The biggest weakness in the Crown’s case was that jurors didn’t know the real Dhillon. They were not permitted to hear the extent of his abuse of Parvesh and her family, that he engaged in insurance fraud, married three women in India, allegedly killed
one of them, as well as his newborn twins. All the jury needed was “reasonable doubt” to acquit him. There seemed plenty of it in late July 2001 in that Kitchener courtroom. Still, Warren Korol refused to believe Dhillon would get off. The system had given their case body blows but, paradoxically, Korol’s faith in the system remained. Dhillon had to be convicted. Had to.

Russell Silverstein still had a crucial decision to make, his biggest of the trial. Should he put his client on the stand? The defense lawyer’s ethic says you put your client in the witness box if the client wants to speak—and Dhillon wanted to. At the same time, the lawyer is obligated to provide the best defense possible—and if that means the client should not testify, lobby hard against it. There was risk in letting Dhillon testify. He was unpredictable. But perhaps the risk of not putting him on was too great, Silverstein thought. He weighed the pros and cons. In a circumstantial murder case, the lawyer’s rule of thumb is you put the accused on the stand or else the jury will not believe his claim to innocence. The juror wants the accused to be able to get up there and say without blinking, “I could never kill my beloved wife, and I did not do it.”

On the other hand, Silverstein could have made an argument to the jury that his client, while innocent, would not testify because of his problems with the English language, and his emotion over the case. O.J. Simpson had been kept from the stand by his lawyers, even though he reportedly wanted to address the jury to proclaim his innocence. Silverstein felt the odds favored putting the accused man on the stand. Dhillon would testify.

On Wednesday, July 18, Dhillon entered the witness box and swore to tell the truth.

“Mr. Dhillon,” Silverstein began, “how old are you, sir?” (“
Tuhaadi umar kinnie hey?
”)

“Nineteen fifty-nine.”

“You were born in 1959?”

“Yes.”

“And you were born in India?”

“Yes.”

Silverstein walked Dhillon through his arrival in Canada in 1981, the early years with Parvesh. Dhillon testified that the money
paid out for her life insurance went to his daughters and to the local Sikh temple. As a matter of necessity—because the Crown might bring it up—Silverstein promptly introduced Dhillon’s one criminal conviction.

“I understand, sir, that in November of 1992 you were convicted of assault and received a fine of $300?”

“Yes.”

The details of the conviction—his assault on Parvesh—were ruled inadmissible. Silverstein did not let his mention of it hang in the air. Assault? Against whom? The jury would have no time to think about it. But it wasn’t the end of the issue. Tony Leitch saw an opening. With the jury out of the room, he asked Judge Glithero to allow the Crown to tell the jury about the assault. The defense had introduced the issue of Dhillon’s character, Leitch argued, when citing the accused’s good deeds with Parvesh’s life insurance money. It was fair game for the Crown to respond. Let the Crown introduce the assault on Parvesh to disabuse the jury of the notion that Dhillon has redeemable qualities. Glithero denied the request. It would be prejudicial to Dhillon, he ruled, to allow the jury to know that Dhillon beat the woman he was accused of killing.

The trial resumed before the jury.

“What were your and Parvesh’s plans with respect to having more children?” Silverstein asked, leading Dhillon to the theory of accidental poisoning.

“She wanted a boy.”

“How about you? How did you feel?”

“It’s always with hers and my consent. Yes, I wanted too.”

“Okay. Well, first of all, did you want to have more children? You personally?”

“Yes. But she wanted a boy.”

“Okay. But did you have a preference as between having a boy or having another girl? You personally?”

“To me, girl and a boy, it’s God’s gift.”

“How did Parvesh feel?”

“She was saying, ‘If I am carrying a girl, I’ll go for an abortion.’”

They went through Parvesh’s reproductive history. Harpreet was born. Then Parvesh had a miscarriage or abortion. Then Aman
was born. Then Parvesh had an abortion in India. Dhillon said his wife took prescription medication to help with headaches. And in order to conceive a boy, she prayed and fasted.

“Now, Mr. Dhillon,” Silverstein continued, “did you ever see Parvesh eat anything with a view to having a boy?”

“Yes. Once or twice, I saw her eating
desi
medication.”

“What does
desi
medication mean?”

“I don’t know. There was some plants, and I don’t believe in that stuff. It’s some herbal stuff.”

“Did you ask her why she was taking it?”

“Yeah. And then she said, ‘It’s female stuff.’ Women know all about the female stuff.”

“Did you ask her where she was getting it?”

“Yes, she said: ‘It is none of your business. It’s female stuff.’ She has a container and she has something, grinder—a grinder thing in that, and she used to take that teaspoon with hot water.”

“And what was she using to grind this material, whatever it was?”

“We have a marble mortar and pestle. She was using that.”

In his usual seat, front right, Warren Korol felt his stomach churn. Just like that, the jury now had reason to believe that Parvesh accidentally poisoned herself using homeopathics. It wasn’t fair; Dhillon had never mentioned homeopathics or “
desi
medicine.” He was lying. But the Crown could not use Dhillon’s contradictory statements on the issue because the judge had declared large portions of the evidence from police questioning out of order. Korol was furious. He felt an urge to stand up in court and blurt out the truth. But maybe there was another way. He thought back to the interview Dhillon did with Ben Chin with Toronto’s CityTV; Korol had urged Chin to ask Dhillon about homeopathics, get him denying it on the record. He resolved to review the tape and edit the relevant portion for the Crown.