TORONTO - Steven Foster travelled from Kemptville to Toronto yesterday hoping to turn the final page on his father's botched murder trial. Instead, he left a rare hearing into the fitness of the man who presided over that trial, Justice Paul Cosgrove, with doubts about the system's ability to fix itself.

He is upset that a last-minute apology by Justice Cosgrove will likely allow him to continue sitting as a judge for the final 18 months of his career. The apology was "too little, too late," he says.

"For 10 years, my dad's body parts were in a (morgue) refrigerator," he said yesterday following the hearing. "That was a long 10 years. I hold Justice Cosgrove responsible for that delay."

In a measured tone and with carefully chosen words, Mr. Foster, 47, told a five-member panel about his experience as a witness in the trial.

He was "stunned," he said, to find himself facing an "acrimonious assault" by the accused killer's lawyer, Kevin Murphy.

The judge did nothing to rein in Mr. Murphy's verbal attacks and wild behaviour, said Mr. Foster, an airplane mechanic.

"Justice Cosgrove was abandoning me on the stand," said Mr. Foster.

Mr. Foster was one of several witnesses who described the nightmarish scenario that unfolded first in a Brockville and, later, Ottawa court room a decade ago as Julia Yvonne Elliott, a native of Barbados, was charged with the murder of Lawrence Foster.

Two lawyers and a police officer yesterday painted a picture of Justice Cosgrove as a rogue operator who repeatedly turned ordinary principles of justice on their head.

Det.-Insp. Glen Bowmaster suppressed a rush of emotion as he remembered telling his wife he had been cited for contempt for having had a brief conversation with another officer. Justice Cosgrove had taken the unusual step of banning virtually all communication between police officers.

"Ultimately, if you get convicted of contempt, you could end up in jail," he explained to his wife. The experience tarnished his reputation among both subordinates and his superiors, he said. "It had a devastating effect."

The Brockville Crown attorney who led the case says Justice Cosgrove bought into an imagined conspiracy hatched without proof by Ms. Elliott's defence lawyer, Kevin Murphy. Curt Flanagan said he and his colleagues were "hamstrung" by the judge's bad decisions, as they were forbidden to talk to potential witnesses or police officers.

Justice Cosgrove's ultimate decision, in September 1999, to throw out the charges against Ms. Elliott, was a blow that damaged him personally and professionally.

The judge cited over 150 breaches of Ms. Elliott's constitutional rights in that decision, generally accusing Crown attorneys and police of deceit and misconduct.

Mr. Flanagan said the experience did irreparable harm to his colleague, Alan Findlay, a junior Crown who at the time was trying his first murder case.

"That man changed after that trial," he said.

An appeal court decision ultimately ordered a new trial for Ms. Elliott, excoriating Justice Cosgrove's decision as baseless, misguided and reflecting a fundamental misunderstanding of the Charter.

But a last-minute apology by Mr. Cosgrove, who spent 31/2 years arguing the constitutionality of that complaint, on Wednesday, changed the outcome of the inquiry.

Earl Cherniak, the lawyer presenting the case against him, interpreted the apology as an admission of judicial misconduct and agreed to recommend a strongly-worded admonition rather than removal from the bench.

"I appreciate that there will be those who think the apology does not go far enough," said Mr. Earl Cherniak.

Mr. Foster, who received some measure of relief when Ms. Elliott pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2005, receiving a nearly 19-year sentence, was disappointed by that decision.

"I don't see how anything is going to change unless they remove him from the bench and show that as an example to other judges -- that it's possible," he said yesterday, noting Justice Cosgrove didn't once meet his eyes during the hearing. "Otherwise, this is just a show."

© The Ottawa Citizen 2008