February 5 -- Gary Weaver's Initial Segregation

In accordance with standard procedure after an incident of this kind, a lock-down was announced and all prisoners were ordered to return to their houses. Also as part of standard procedure, a search was conducted involving the visual scanning of prisoners for marks such as cuts or abrasions that might indicate involvement in an assault. Shortly after 10:15 p.m., Officers Heck and Miller came into the house in which Gary Weaver resided, F-7. In his habeas corpus affidavit, Mr. Weaver described what happened.

At approximately 10:15-10:25 p.m. I was sitting at the kitchen table in F-7. CO-II Heck and CO-II Miller entered the house. They told me to remove my clothing so that my body could be inspected for wounds, as is the normal procedure when an inmate is assaulted. I did this, and Mr. Heck inspected me from the waist up, using his flashlight. He saw a small scab on my right wrist which had pink, dry scar tissue on it. He stated that it looked "fresh" and that I would be taken to SCU [the Special Correctional Unit] for further examination. He also noticed faded black ink stains on my shirt and said that it looked like blood. He then left to check upstairs. I asked CO-II Miller if CO-II Heck was "for real," and showed him how old the wound was. When I asked him why he didn't stand up to CO-II Heck, he asked me to be patient and to co-operate since they had a major incident to deal with. He said that I would be examined at SCU and probably would be back in a couple of hours. He allowed me to get a cigarette to bring with me. (Affidavit of Gary Weaver, April 1, 1999, para. 18)

Upon arrival at the segregation unit, Gary Weaver and prisoner Scott Carter -- also taken to segregation on the basis that he appeared to have recently inflicted cuts; he claimed they were old punching-bag wounds -- were placed in the indoor exercise room. Within minutes of their arrival, the two prisoners asked to see a nurse so that a medical professional could confirm there were no fresh cuts on their bodies. They were told someone would be down to see them shortly. The two prisoners also sought to exercise their legal right to make a phone call to their lawyers. Despite repeated requests, they were not allowed to make those calls until 3:50 a.m., five hours after they were taken to the segregation unit. During this period a phone was readily available, and there was no other prisoner movement within the segregation unit that would have made facilitating legal calls impractical.

At around 3:30 a.m. on February 6, Gary Weaver, who had gone to sleep on the floor of the exercise room in the segregation unit, was woken up and told that the RCMP wanted to interview him. He agreed to the interview but requested that he be allowed to contact his lawyer to seek advice. He was permitted to make a phone call and spoke to a Vancouver Island criminal lawyer. Having done so, he went into the interview room. When Mr. Weaver was first seen by the RCMP, Ken Williams, the IPSO, was also present; after Mr. Weaver agreed to talk to the police Mr. Williams offered to leave, but Mr. Weaver asked him to remain during the questioning so he could "hear the truth first hand."

Gary Weaver gave the RCMP the following account of his activities on the previous evening. At around 8:50 p.m. he had phoned Lama Margaret Ludwig, and he had been on the phone with her until around 9:30. The length of the phone call was not unusual; in addition to meeting with Lama Margaret on her twice-weekly visits to the institution, Mr. Weaver spoke to her on a regular, sometimes daily, basis by phone. Their conversation on the evening of February 5 covered Mr. Weaver's reaction to his first pass into the community and his plans for his second pass, which would involve participating in a meditation service with Lama Margaret at the Buddhist Centre in Victoria. His phone call ended when another prisoner, George Storry, came into the F-Unit Community Building to phone his wife. Mr. Weaver and Mr. Storry were regular users of this phone, and they had a courtesy arrangement in which each of them would cut short his phone call when the other person came in to use it. After finishing his phone call to Lama Margaret, Mr. Weaver went into the laundry room in the F-Unit Community Building. He took his clothes out of the washer, where he had placed them before getting on the phone, and put them into one of the dryers. He then left the F-Unit Community Building to return to his residence in F-7. Mr. Weaver was dressed only in a shirt and light pants. Although it was a cold night, he had no coat because it was only a short distance between his house and the Community Building.

Upon returning to F-7, he met three other prisoners outside, Kenny Sutherland, Scott Carter, and Kevin Sims, who had come from their residence in B-2 to borrow some tobacco. Mr. Weaver invited them in. Shortly thereafter they were joined by another prisoner, Ron Perras. At the time Mr. Weaver and his friends entered F-7, two other residents, Ray Bouchard and Robert Scott Terry, were inside watching a film on television that had begun at 8:00 p.m. Mr. Weaver, Mr. Sutherland, Mr. Sims, Mr. Carter, and Mr. Perras were at the kitchen table drinking coffee until around 9:40 p.m., when another prisoner, Chris McCullough, came into F-7 and told everybody that a prisoner had been attacked and there would likely be a lock-down of the institution. Mr. Weaver and several of the other prisoners then left F-7 so that Mr. Weaver could pick up some cigarette tubes at B-2, where the other prisoners lived, before the lock-down came into effect. On the way they stopped at the C-unit Community Building and peered into the office window, where they could see Curtis Caziere slumped in a chair. At that point, Officer Heck told the prisoners they should return to their units, and Gary Weaver and the others complied.

At the end of his interview with the RCMP, Mr. Weaver was asked to hand over his clothes so they could be checked for blood stains. He took off his clothes, with the exception of his underwear, and was given institutional coveralls in return. These clothes, including his boots, were the same ones he had been wearing from the time he got dressed on Friday morning.

After the completion of his interview with the RCMP, Mr. Weaver was given a Segregation Placement Notice which stated that he was being placed in segregation pursuant to s. 31(3)(b) of the CCRA, on the basis that there were reasonable grounds to believe "that the continued presence of the inmate in the general inmate population would interfere with an investigation that could lead to a criminal charge or a serious disciplinary offence." Mr. Weaver was not given any information to explain these "reasonable grounds."

At 4:50 that afternoon Mr. Weaver was released from segregation and told to return to his unit in the general population. He was given no reasons verbally or in writing for his release. He assumed correctional authorities had checked out his story and accepted the truth of what he had told them about his whereabouts at the time Mr. Caziere was assaulted.

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