Watch above: A Saskatoon police officer has told a judge he doesn’t know what happened to a statement that has since gone missing. Meaghan Craig tells us it is that piece of paper that is at the crux of this officer’s obstruction of justice trial.
SASKATOON – He doesn’t remember. Those words were repeated time and time again on Tuesday at Saskatoon provincial court by Const. Steven Nelson.
Nelson said three things might have happened to a witness statement that vanished without a trace.
He submitted it for scanning and it was attached to the wrong file, he put it in his personal bin and it went missing or he threw in the trash either by accident or out of frustration, if it was even in his possession at all.
All this came out in court Wednesday when Nelson, 33, took the stand in his own defence. He was the one and only star witness called to provide testimony by the defence, following four Crown witnesses who testified Tuesday.
Nelson, a married father of three, is accused of attempting to obstruct justice after a second witness statement filed on Aug. 13, 2012 disappeared sometime between then and October 2013.
In the second statement, a woman recanted her entire story from the day before regarding an alleged domestic dispute. Nelson was the first responding officer to the scene and testified that there was evidence consistent with an assault.
The next day, the woman retracted her statement in a second document and left it with Const. Tyler Melnychuk at the front desk of the old police headquarters.
READ MORE: Obstruction of justice trial starts for Saskatoon police constable
On Tuesday, court heard an audio recording of a phone call between Melnychuk and Nelson regarding the second statement in which Nelson says to rip it up.
“She’s saying now that she wasn’t assaulted at all and she fell numerous times,” said Melnychuk on recording.
“Yeah, that can be ripped up,” said Nelson.
“I already talked to her on the phone tonight, I told her I was not dropping the charges.”
Details of the conversation is another thing Nelson doesn’t recall or speaking with the woman earlier that day he testified. Nelson also admitted he did not make any further notes on the case or file another police report despite the new evidence.
During Nelson’s testimony he said he doesn’t know what happened to the second statement and that paperwork at times was misplaced at the station. On occasion he would find paperwork associated with another officer’s case in his personal mailbox and vice versa.
Nelson also maintained on the stand that he would never intentionally misplace or destroy a piece of evidence and did not know either involved in the alleged dispute.
“Why risk everything for a particular investigation? The answer is he didn’t,” said Brad Mitchell, Nelson’s lawyer.
During closing arguments Mitchell cited two themes to the case, human error and if there was specific intent to obstruct justice.
The Crown argued the offense was complete when the constable asked another to rip up the document.
A verdict is now scheduled for the afternoon of June 18, nine months after the charge was first laid and when Nelson was suspended with pay from the Saskatoon Police Service.
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