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ReuniteLuna note: Michael Parfit and Suzanne Chishom attended the trial for Guy Chiasson and sent us these notes...

On Tuesday, July 12, we attended the final arguments and then the announcement of the decision made in Provincial Court in Nanaimo by Judge Brian Klaver in the case of Guy Chiasson. Chiasson was accused of hitting Luna with a stick back in July, 2003.

The judge ruled that Chiasson was not guilty.

The case was very high profile for some time after the charges were made. It was often cited in the press during the months leading up to the attempt to move Luna, as an example of bad things that could happen to the whale.

The case unfolded quite differently.

We were taking notes as fast as we could, but the precise language of Judge Klaver’s decision will have to wait until there are transcripts. But as we understand it, the key findings were the following. 1. Guy Chiasson received extremely high character references from many people during the trial. All described him as hard working, honest and extremely kind to all animals.

2. Chiasson’s version of the story was that when he was observed from a distance appearing to hit Luna near his boat, he was in fact using a walking stick to try to free Luna from a rope that led from his boat to his Zodiac. Chiasson said that Luna had become entangled when he came to play with the Zodiac as Chiasson approached the Gold River dock.

3. In the trial there had been testimony that claimed that Chiasson had hit Luna out of frustration or because he thought he could train him to stay away from boats, not in an attempt to free him. But because some of that testimony differed significantly from the bulk of other testimony, or contained errors (such as an inaccurate description of what Chiasson looked like), or involved a view from too far away to be precise, or was based on conversations after the fact, the judge ruled that he accepted Chiasson’s version of the story.

4. The prosecution had argued that whether or not Chiasson had intended to hit Luna from frustration, to train him, or to free him didn’t really matter, because the Marine Mammal Regulations forbid any disturbance of a marine mammal, and by definition Chiasson was disturbing Luna by poking at him with a stick. In this point the judge made a special distinction that might have some ramifications on how the DFO handles future cases. In reading previous case law, the judge said, the cases in which people were convicted of disturbing whales happened when people approached whales that were behaving "regularly." In other words, the whales were foraging, playing among themselves, or otherwise going about their own business, and the accused individuals chased them or engaged them during this normal behaviour, thus in some way disturbing that normal behavior. The concept of what was normal or regular was critical to the case. In this case, the judge ruled, Luna was not behaving regularly – in effect because he approached Chiasson’s boat, as he has done to many others, and had attempted to play with it. Therefore, since the case law indicated that disturbance is defined as happening when a regularly-behaving whale is interfered with, in this case Luna was not behaving normally. Thus, Judge Klaver said, Luna was not disturbed -- in the legal sense -- by Chiasson’s attempt to free him, and thus Chiasson was not guilty. (Please note that this is how we understand the case at the moment; we may have missed a legal point or two here and have some of it wrong. But the final outcome was definitely Not Guilty.)

5. The judge went on to emphatically state that this ruling was specific to this case, and it should not be interpreted to give other people the right to engage Luna in activities such as whale watching, nor to allow any aggressive behaviour toward Luna.

There was no indication after the verdict was announced whether DFO would appeal the case.

Probably the most remarkable thing to us about the aftermath of the trial happened when we saw Guy Chiasson outside the courthouse. He was leaving in a car and we stopped him to ask if he was willing to do a future interview. We expected him to be celebrating. But instead, he was worried. He immediately expressed concern to us about whether or not this ruling in his favour would somehow allow other people to interact with Luna. He said that he did not want his own personal victory to lead to increased interaction, because, he said, he was still very concerned that people should refrain from interaction, in order to give Luna a better chance at reunification with his pod.

--Mike and Suzanne