Project Dismantle Bogiatzis, Christoldolou, Cusato and Churchill It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury and treachery. - Desmostthenes It was a wiretap case. The Crown prosecutors knew that a box of tape recordings sitting beside the Crown Attorney’s table in a Toronto Superior Courtroom would be enough to convict four men accused of a dozen weapons-related offences and conspiracy to traffic cocaine. Nothing else could be used to obtain a conviction without the tape recordings being admitted as evidence in the trial. Athanasios Bogiatzis, Thomas Christodoulou, Paul Cusato, and Reginald Churchill, among others, were apprehended and charged as part of the Ontario-wide investigation, Project Dismantle. During this investigation, a significant number of weapons were confiscated, including semi-automatic pistols, sawed-off shotguns, and an Israeli military rifle. The wiretaps, a crucial piece of evidence, were instrumental in establishing a direct link between the defendants and the various firearms. The legal challenges mounted by the defence were not to be underestimated. The Ontario Provincial Police, in collaboration with police forces from Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener, Sudbury and Thunder Bay, had been diligently investigating and hoping to dismantle the Satan's Choice motorcycle gang. The operation commenced with raids of clubhouses and dozens of arrests in 1997. Over the years, charges were dropped against all those arrested except Bogiatzis, Christodoulou, Cusato, and Churchill. Lawyers for the accused had used a series of legal manoeuvres to obtain disclosure, explicitly seeking the name of the police informer who was feeding information that led to the arrests. The police refused to release the name. This policy protected informers, but if the defence lawyers could have the courts recognize “Informant No. 1” as an agent and not an informer, then that person could be called upon to testify and potentially discredit the information that would be admitted from the wiretaps. It was a long shot as a defence strategy, but the four remaining men would face years of imprisonment if the wiretaps were revealed. The attempt to reclassify the informer as an agent delayed court proceedings for years while the challenges went through the Court of Appeal and eventually to the Supreme Court of Canada. The defence challenges were unsuccessful in the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court refused to grant leave and hear the case. The defence lawyers were growing pessimistic that their clients could be acquitted. One of the accused, Domingos Manuel Moura, initially hired me. The charges against him were eventually stayed in the Superior Court. However, the lawyer for Christodoulou could not continue, and since I was familiar with the case, he asked me to represent his client. Christodoulou agreed, and I took over representing him. The proceedings advanced to the trial stage before Justice John Macdonald. Several pre-trial motions were made before him. One of these motions related to obtaining the undisclosed evidence the prosecution hoped to advance. Lawyers refer to that material as disclosure. Forcing the prosecutor to disclose it is called a Stinchcombe application. This motion became unnecessary because prosecuting counsel voluntarily provided the disclosure sought. With this new disclosure, the defence counsel learned two critical pieces of information. We received new insight into how Detective John Cavanaugh persuaded judges to grant the wiretap authorizations. Cavanaugh was a twenty-eight-year veteran of the Ontario Provincial Police and their chief expert in writing wiretap applications. We learned that Detective Cavanaugh had destroyed the investigative file used to draft the affidavits he swore to obtain the authorizations. Based on this information, the appellant brought an application for a stay of proceedings using a Supreme Court precedent known as a Carosella application. The Carosella case could be used to argue that police destruction of evidence could be grounds for the stay of proceedings against the accused men. We also learned that Informant No.1 had been a police agent (not an informer) about matters relevant to the proceedings before the preliminary inquiry judge when the matter first came before a judge. This was revealed in a summary of those portions of his affidavits that had been edited (i.e., blacked out) when first disclosed to the defence. The Crown conceded that it contradicted the evidence on which the prosecution had argued that the informant was protected and was not required to give evidence. Based on the new information, the defence counsel brought another application for a stay of proceedings called the “Babes application” that relied upon an Ontario Court of Appeal decision. We argued that the defence was entitled to the disclosure of the identity of Informant No. 1.