The Whitehorse Correctional Centre (WCC) hasn’t changed its policies despite a ruling describing them as “flawed.”

Last August, a Yukon Supreme Court judge decided to exclude some of the drugs that were recovered from a search at WCC, ruling a correctional officer had been illegally detained and searched at the jail.

The jail did provide management with a refresher training about Charter of Rights and Freedoms rights and issued new Charter cards after the ruling, a spokesperson told the Star.

The search of the correctional officer and his car were illegal, and the judge criticized the lack of knowledge some of the officers displayed and the policy that allowed it.

“The (search) breach is made more serious by the fact that the warrantless search of the car on the WCC property was expressly permitted by flawed institutional policy that had the potential to make such unlawful searches commonplace,” Justice Ron Veale ruled last Aug. 28.

New training on reading accused their Charter rights is being developed for all staff at WCC, Tyler Plaunt. a Department of Justice spokesperson, told the Star in early December.

“In this particular case, the judge found that a mistake was made by WCC management and Yukon Corrections has taken steps to ensure that this type of breach does not occur again,” he said.

On Dec. 26, 2013, Michael Gaber, then a correctional officer, was searched shortly after arriving for his shift.

WCC management had been tipped off by an inmate that he was allegedly bringing contraband in the jail.

They retrieved Ritalin pills wrapped in a condom from his pockets.

Before taking his car key and searching his vehicle, Gaber was asked to write down the source and destination of the contraband drugs.

The car search led to money and marijuana being seized.

Gaber was charged later that day with two counts of drug possessions for the purpose of trafficking.

Justice Ron Veale excluded the marijuana as evidence for Gaber’s upcoming trial.

Both searches were illegal – the Crown had conceded the car search was a breach of Charter rights and so was the initial search in the boardroom, Veale ruled.

Statements Gaber gave to the officers who searched him had already been excluded by the Crown.

Evidence can be excluded from a trial if they were obtained illegally, but a number of factors have to be considered in a test the Supreme Court of Canada established in 2009.

Once it has been established the evidence was obtained through a violation of Charter rights, the judge must look at the seriousness of the infringement, how it impacted the accused and how reliable the evidence is.

“The flawed institutional policy that led to the s. 8-infringing vehicle search, and the overall pattern of disregard or ignorance of the Charter and the provisions of the Corrections Act, this factor tends to heavily support exclusion of the drug evidence found in Mr. Gaber’s possession,” the judge said.

The marijuana was therefore excluded, but not the Ritalin pills, because they are a key evidence to an allegation of profound breach of public trust by Gaber, the judge noted.

“A reasonable person informed of the relevant circumstances and the values underlying the Charter would conclude that the exclusion of the Ritalin would more negatively impact the administration of justice than its inclusion,” he wrote.

The judge didn’t buy the correctional officers’ testimonies, claiming they weren’t detaining Gaber.

“They maintained that this was the case both before and after the discovery of the pills, despite the fact Mr. Demchuk, who stands 6’4” and weighs over 250 pounds, was called in to, in the words of D/Supt. Wooding, ‘supervise Mr. Gaber’ while his car was being searched,” Veale wrote in his decision.

Gaber should have been informed of his right to a lawyer as soon as he was detained, the judge added.

“The nature of the right to counsel breach and the subsequent efforts of Supt. Curtis and D/Supt. Wooding, and to a lesser extent, Mr. Demchuk, to deny Mr. Gaber’s detained status in this voir dire reflect a wilful disregard or even disdain of the Charter on the part of the investigating officers.”