No new inquiry into Night case

Monday, 28 February 2005
Candis McLean

Lucille Matechuck can’t figure out why the government, the RCMP and the courts seem stuck on believing just one man’s version of events. When former Saskatoon cops Ken Munson and Dan Hatchen were on trial for dropping off Darrell Night, a native man they’d picked up for causing a disturbance, on a cold night in January 2000, they claimed Night had pleaded with them to let him walk to the Clancy Village apartment complex, a few kilometers from where they let him out. The judge didn’t believe them. He did believe Night--who admitted in court to 22 prior convictions on his record, including lying to police--when he testified that he had not agreed to be dropped off, and that he never mentioned Clancy Village to the cops. And no one bothered to ask Matechuck, who managed the apartment at the time, if she knew Night. Hatchen and Munson were eventually sentenced to eight months in jail for forcible confinement, and fired from the force.

Then, after Matechuck told the Western Standard last March that Night had friends and relatives at Clancy Village, was a regular visitor, and even lived there for a few weeks, Saskatchewan justice minister Frank Quennell decided even that wasn’t enough to reopen the investigation of the two officers. On Jan. 20, in a letter to Saskatoon MP Maurice Vellacott--who had been demanding a new investigation--Quennell wrote: “[T]he police investigation of your suggestion that Mr. Night had a relative living very close to where he was dropped off has conclusively shown that not to be the case.” And “even if that were the case, it makes no difference to the liability of the two former police officers.” Another former manager at Clancy Village has since backed up Matechuck’s claim that Night spent much time there.

Matechuck can’t believe that the fact police dropped Night off just a short walk from where he spent so much time is being dismissed as coincidence. “From the end of Dundonald Road [where Night got out] to Clancy, it was only a 15-minute walk, and Darrell was dressed warmer than tenants who walk the same distance to work every day in all weather,” she says.

Vellacott’s not satisfied either. He’s seen the evidence the RCMP gathered over the last few months in determining whether to reopen the case, and found it lacking. “It’s very clear this is inconclusive; the RCMP were not diligent,” he says. “In hindsight, I should have pushed to have the Ontario Provincial Police or some other law enforcement agency do the investigation, rather than have the RCMP investigating itself.”