Bye-bye Michael Rafferty. Although your name will now be synonymous with killing a child at least we won’t have to look at your smug face every day.
After following the case of the man who killed Tori Stafford day by day, minute by minute (albeit not nearly as closely as our reporter, Avery Moore, who did a stellar job covering the trial with class and sensitivity) I’ll admit I was concerned that the jury might not find Rafferty guilty on the sexual assault charge. There was no physical evidence on Tori and there were conflicting opinions on when the back seat in Rafferty’s car was removed. But this case has taught me to have a little more faith in the process. The jury saw through the b.s. and once the decision on first-degree murder was made, the rest appears to have fallen into place. Terri-Lynn McClintic, for all of her sickness and culpability, was the key to the conviction. And even though she changed her story over the last couple of years, the jury members were smart enough to understand the reasons why and to appreciate the difference between a heartbroken, drugged-out person and a cleaned-up, calmer woman resigned to the fate she created for herself. She had nothing to lose or to gain.
Once the jury was sequestered, we in media were allowed to reveal details they weren’t allowed to hear. For example, Rafferty’s computer showed he had conducted searches on how to rape a child and other very disturbing and related subjects. That information was deemed inadmissable because the investigators didn’t get a separate search warrant for the laptop which they had found in Raffery’s car. They believed the warrant for the car covered all of its contents. It did not.
The other detail was the police interrogation of Rafferty captured on video. I watched a pared-down version of it, lasting about an hour. A sniffling, whiny Rafferty sits under a blanket, hugging himself, repeatedly saying he’s hungry but refusing several offers of food. At one point Terri-Lynne McClintic is brought in so “you can tell her to her face she’s a liar” and Rafferty won’t even look at her. Not the actions of an innocent man. An innocent man would be absolutely freaking out at the injustice of it all and probably take his frustrations out on his accuser, at the very least asking her why she was doing this. When the detective points out that Rafferty hasn’t come up with a single alibi for his whereabouts the day Tori was abducted, Rafferty starts concocting lame, vague excuses. At one point the interrogator calls Rafferty a sleazebag because of all of the women he was dating at once. “Just because I’m a sleazebag doesn’t mean I did it”, says Rafferty. Sadly, his physical attractiveness and ability to weave a sack of lies made him a magnet for lonely women. Fortunately, one after another, those women testified against him. He seemed to be mostly concerned that his family would find out he was taking Oxycontin. Not a big thinker, that Mike Rafferty.
There’s no question he got a fair trial. In addition to getting evidence suppressed, Rafferty’s lead lawyer Dirk Derstine was a bulldog for his client’s rights. No one wants a mistrial, and basic rights do have to be protected, but you have to wonder how a guy like Derstine can sleep at night. It always upsets me when the defense concocts any story, no matter how implausible, in order to raise ‘reasonable doubt’ in the minds of the jury. If I made the rules, a defense lawyer would have to prove their alternate theory was true, not just offer it up as a possibility. But I digress.
Bernardo. Briere. Rafferty. Few people remember Briere because there was no trial but he is burned in my consciousness forever. He was the child-porn addict who abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered 10-year-old Holly Jones in Toronto. In 2004 he pleaded guilty to “spare the family the ordeal of a trial”. Of course, he hadn’t turned himself in or anything. He was caught through good old-fashioned police work. So Rafferty will join their ranks and rightly so. Serving on a jury is an awful inconvenience and a terrible burden but it’s such an important part of our society. We owe a debt of gratitude to the 12 people who sat there for 10 weeks and came to this conclusion. Finally, finally, it’s over.