October 25, 1999

Professor Charles Nesson

Harvard Law School

Room 404 Hauser Hall

1575 Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, Massachusetts

U.S.A. 02138

Dear Professor Nesson:

I would appreciate if you would post this letter on the H.L.S. Gillian Guess site as reply to the letter written by Joseph Bellows, prosecutor of Regina v. Guess. The Guess case is an important historical case and accuracy of facts are paramount.

1. The statement that "The prosecution and the judge were aware during the trial of the relationship between Ms. Guess and Mr. Gill."

For Mr. Bellows to deny this well established fact is ludicrous and speaks clearly to his own level or lack of integrity. I can only think that he did not consider the publication of such a nonsensical statement on the H.L.S. Gillian Guess site. I will take this opportunity to remind anyone who was taken in by such dribble that the main grounds of appeal of that trial by the Crown (HIS CROWN) is that the judge erred in not removing Gillian Guess from the jury after several complaints about the Guess/Gill interaction AND an in-camera hearing (July 11, 1995) were launched.

2. That Ms. Guess was "a juror who was never told not to do something … ":

Semantics, semantics, semantics - the point is at NO time was there ever a "no contact" order put on the jury and that fact was testified to at trial by Marilyn Sandford who poured through 12,000 pages of transcripts. Mr. Bellows did not contest that point at trial.

3. The reference to "secret evidence":

Last week the Law Society of British Columbia filed for intervenor status at the upcoming Guess appeal specifically because of the "secret evidence". Contrary to Mr. Bellows assertion, Canadian lawyers and judges NEVER engage in this type of secrecy and there is absolutely no case law to indicate otherwise. The "secret courts" are the predominant point (as well as the judge's charge) in the Guess appeal.

4. Your students indicate that "At trial the Canadian government successfully refused the defendant access to its volumes of taped evidence. All Ms. Guess was allowed to review was a mere twenty hours (out of thousands recorded) of the government’s tapes. The government defended this decision on the ground that those twenty hours were all it would use at trial."

The assertion that the defence had total access to all the 18,000 tapes is completely and totally false. We were allowed approximately 50% disclosure (as per Josiah Wood - special prosecutor acting for the Crown in the Gillian Guess case). The crown divided the disclosure into three categories:

1.) disclosable
2.) possibly disclosable pending court argument
3.) absolutely not disclosable

5. In their analysis your students indicate "an unjustifiable standard to base the decision to prosecute on the gender of the potential defendant. And this is precisely the problem that could be posed in the Gillian Guess case. Why did the prosecution decide to indict Gillian Guess for obstructing the jury and not Peter GILL? What were the differences between these potential transgressors of Section 139(2) but their gender?"

Mr. Bellows forgot to mention that the cell phone evidence was direct evidence against Gill not Guess, Gill's diary was direct evidence against him as well, but all of this evidence was peculiarly allowed to be used against Guess only.

6. Your students indicate that the evidence of some of Ms. Guess’ fellow jurors giving evidence may have been improperly admitted.

Last week, here in Vancouver, a panel of five appellate court judges brought down a 4-1 decision against Gillian Guess being subpoenaed to testify against Peter Gill in his appeal. Even the dissenting judge said >that A JUROR COULD NOT BE QUESTIONED ABOUT THE DELIBERATIONS. Yet, in the Guess case her fellow jurors were all subpoenaed and questioned about their deliberations. You will not find another case of such an improper inquiry in Canadian history.

It is unfortunate that Mr. Bellows took this case so personally but he has a responsibility to his profession and Canadian jurisprudence to at least honour the facts. I'm sure he feels a measure of embarrassment about this case but that does not give him license to misrepresent the public records. The facts that your students were provided with were from an honourable person in good standing with the Canadian Bar Association and for Mr. Bellows to contradict the same serves to defame us all.

Yours very truly,

Gillian Guess B.A. M.A. (cand)

gillian@gillianguess.com

Vancouver, Canada