Jury room secrets offered to press at start of Badgerow trial

The start of Robert Badgerow's historic fourth trial on the same murder charge was delayed for days because someone contacted a member of the press offering behind the scene secrets from the jury room.

That revelation pushed back the trial as police investigators searched for the culprit — eventually leading them to the IP address of one of the juror's homes. Now that the jury is sequestered in the Badgerow case, the publication ban on those matters is lifted.

It's a crime to reveal things from the jury room, even to your spouse.- Justice Patrick Flynn

Sharing information from jury deliberations is strictly forbidden by law. Jurors are instructed repeatedly not to talk about the case with anyone, reporters included.

The issue came to light on what was scheduled to be the first day of the trial, Sept. 26. Court heard that someone claiming to be a juror had contacted Hamilton Spectator columnist Susan Clairmont, and asked if she was interested in receiving inside information about the trial as it went forward.

The person provided Clairmont information, such as the gender of the jury members, which only a juror or someone close to them would know.

Court heard that Clairmont did not respond to the email, and after speaking with the newspaper's legal team, passed the information on to the Crown.

"It's obviously very concerning," Badgerow's lawyer Russell Silverstein said at the time. "We can go no further until we get to the bottom of this."

The trial was pushed back for several days, as investigators waited for information from Google about the email used to contact Clairmont.

In the meantime, a second email was sent to Clairmont, which she also did not respond to, court heard. That email claimed to be from a juror's spouse, and ended with, "I know the mistake I have made. I will not email again."

Finally, with the email user's IP address in hand, detectives tracked the email address to one of the juror's homes.

The juror was then brought into court to answer for the emails, and shown what had been sent to the columnist's inbox.

"There are none of us in this room that have any doubt that these emails trace back to your billing address with Rogers," Justice Patrick Flynn told the juror, to which he responded, "OK."

"It's a crime to reveal things from the jury room, even to your spouse," the judge said. "We have to march on here with a fair trial, and this has caused a lot of concern and discussion."

The man said he had "no idea" about the emails, and said it "looked like" his wife had contacted Clairmont without telling him.

"I really didn't talk to my wife about much stuff as to the trial," the juror said.

In the end, the juror was discharged from the trial for the "sake and appearance of fairness," Flynn said. An alternate juror took his place.

He also commended Clairmont on her actions. "Miss Clairmont should be thanked for bringing this to the attention of the police and the Crown," he said.

The remaining jurors are now deliberating on a verdict in the case. Badgerow, 58, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the 1981 killing of Werendowicz, a 23-year-old nursing assistant who lived in Stoney Creek, a community in east Hamilton.

The trial was expected to last three to four months, but moved quicker than many expected.

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