A former Hamilton police officer currently serving a 13-year prison sentence for corruption won’t be prosecuted for a slew of other charges, including bribing officers, perjury, obstructing justice, and trafficking weapons and drugs.
The Crown’s request to stay proceedings for 12 charges against Craig Ruthowsky was granted by Ontario Superior Court Justice Harrison Arrell on Tuesday.
The stay ends a decade-long legal saga involving “extremely serious” allegations but that aren’t in the public’s best interest to take to trial, assistant Crown Attorney John Pollard told the court.
“In the Crown’s view, it is unwise to use precious court time to try Mr. Ruthowsky again when he has been punished in the strictest terms possible for offences that significantly overlap with those that would have been adjudicated during the second trial,” Pollard said.
Ruthowsky’s sentence is believed to be the longest ever imposed in Canada for police corruption, and even if he were found guilty of the 12 other charges, it’s unlikely he’d get more prison time, Pollard said.
In exchange for the Crown staying the remaining charges, Ruthowsky has agreed to not try to appeal his current sentence to the Supreme Court, said Pollard.
Ruthowsky, who is at the federal Bath Institute in Millhaven, did not attend the hearing in person or virtually.
The Crown isn’t required to give reasons for the stay, but decided to as the case has “rightly attracted significant media attention and public scrutiny,” Pollard said.
“The allegations are serious and have the potential to affect public confidence in the administration of justice,” he said. “Consequently, the public should know why the Crown has exercised its discretion in this way.”
Suspended from police service after arrest
Ruthowsky, who served on Hamilton police’s guns and gangs unit, was already suspended from the force when he was first arrested in 2015.
Toronto police had caught him on wiretaps giving advice to a drug dealer. The calls were intercepted as part of Project Pharaoh, a massive Toronto police investigation into gang activity.
Ruthowsky’s trial took place in 2018, when he was 44. A jury found him guilty of providing protection to criminals for cash and selling police secrets.
Justice Robert Clark sentenced him to 12½ years in prison, with six months already served, more than was originally requested by the Crown and defence, and to pay $250,000 — the amount he took in bribes.
“The conduct for which [Ruthowsky] must now answer was motivated by sheer, unbridled greed,” Clark said at the time.
Ruthowsky appealed his conviction while facing a slew of other charges from a parallel Hamilton police investigation into events that took place between 2009 and 2012.
Those charges, which were stayed Tuesday, included one count each of bribery of officers, perjury and obstructing justice, two counts of breach of trust of a public officer, three counts of drug trafficking and four counts of weapons trafficking.
Judge agrees with stay
The Crown decided to hold off on a trial for those charges until after Ruthowsky’s appeal, said Pollard. If he had won and a new trial was ordered, the Crown would prosecute both sets of charges at once in a “much larger trial.”
But the appeal was delayed, in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Pollard. It wasn’t until earlier this year that the court upheld Ruthowsky’s conviction and sentence.
In that time, the Crown’s case hasn’t collapsed, but parts of it have “naturally eroded,” said Pollard.
“The dynamics of the litigation would be different now than they were back in 2019.”
Ruthowsky also “strongly disputes” the allegations, and the trial would have had to deal with complex legal issues and be at least two months long, Pollard said.
Defence lawyer Kelsey Flanagan supported the Crown’s decision. She told the court Ruthowsky has suffered “significant collateral consequences.”
The proceedings have impacted his family, including two children, Flanagan said.
He resigned from the Hamilton Police Service in 2018.
The trial on the second set of charges would have been “hotly contested” and the outcome “far from certain,” she said.
The judge agreed, saying a stay “makes great sense to me.”
