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Feb 12, 2015 4:29 AMVia AladdinSane: There seems to be some confusion on how to read the article from the Brandon Sun so here it is copy and pasted ... The Crown missed the point � literally � says a judge who acquitted a man who was accused of threatening a sheriff and police. In Brandon provincial court on Friday, Dean Christopher David Clifford was found not guilty of two counts of uttering threats. At trial, Crown attorney Deidre Badcock acknowledged that she didn�t ask her witnesses to point to Clifford, who sat in court in the prisoner�s box. Therefore, Judge Jean McBride said, it wasn�t proven that Clifford was the person heard making threats in recorded phone calls. �The central issue in the case against Mr. Clifford is identity,� McBride said. �It was incumbent on the Crown to prove this element of the offence � the Crown has not met their burden. Identification having not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, I must acquit the accused.� Media reports, and at least one interview posted on Clifford�s own website, refer to him as a �Freeman on the Land.� Courts consider that movement part of a group of �vexatious� Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument litigants. However, Clifford�s wife says he doesn�t claim to be a Freeman on the Land, a name she described as a label imposed on people by others. Clifford describes himself as part of a law movement and speaks in favour of common law, or natural law, and his website includes video from a number of seminars. The threat allegations stemmed from a pair of recorded phone calls placed from an inmate at the Brandon jail on May 27 and June 18, 2014. Those recordings were played at Clifford�s trial in December. In the first, an inmate says he�s upset because a Brandon sheriff had previously poked his wife and told her to get up when she wouldn�t stand for the judge who entered court, which is custom. He then threatens to assault the sheriff if he ever sees him on the street. In the second call, the inmate made comments which the Crown alleged to have been a threat to police officers in general. Clifford, who wasn�t represented by a lawyer, didn�t cross-examine any witnesses and didn�t call evidence. It was McBride � who reserved her decision and delivered her verdict on Friday � who identified a fatal weakness in the Crown�s case. She noted none of Badcock�s witnesses pointed to the accused in the prisoner�s dock as the person who made the threats. Badcock had previously said that a testifying police officer had gestured toward Clifford as he described his arrest at the Brandon jail. However, McBride said she didn�t see any gesture by the officer. Even if the officer had identified Clifford in court, it wouldn�t have established that the accused was the inmate heard in the calls. A jail staff member who�d listened to hundreds of phone calls she believed to be those of Clifford identified the recorded voice as his. But McBride said there was no evidence that witness had watched Clifford as he made phone calls, so she wouldn�t be able to identify him in court. The sheriff who was allegedly threatened and another witness who were present for the incident said to have sparked the threat against the sheriff � the courtroom poking of the wife on May 12 � said Clifford was in court at that time. McBride was satisfied that that was the incident referred to in the recorded call in which the sheriff was threatened. But, again, McBride said, neither witness indicated that the Clifford they testified to being in court during the reported poke was the same man on trial. Despite Friday�s not guilty verdict, Clifford remains in custody while pending on charges from another Manitoba jurisdiction. Like � Comment
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