Poison (42 page)

Silverstein continued with the homeopathic line of questions. “Did you tell the doctors or nurses at the hospital anything about the herbal medicine that you had seen Parvesh take beginning some time in December?”

“No.”

“And why not?”

“I thought people take that and it’s not harmful. I didn’t think it was important. I thought it was just an herb.”

To further bolster his theory, Silverstein later called an expert in Punjabi culture to testify that women commonly take homeopathics in order to conceive a male. There are ads in Punjabi newspapers advertising remedies that will give parents a boy. And strychnine, in minute quantities, is used in some of those homeopathics. The expert said it was not uncommon for Sikh women to be secretive and superstitious when it comes to their desire for a male child. The Crown countered with testimony from Dundas naturopath Paul Saunders, who said minute levels of strychnine are sometimes recommended for complaints of impotence, constipation, urinary incontinence, and hangovers, but that strychnine is never used in connection with female fertility.

Silverstein took Dhillon through the day Parvesh died. Grocery shopping, lunch in the house, just the two of them. The girls came home after school, Parvesh prepared a snack. She needed to lie down, she had a splitting headache, felt dizzy. And then, said Dhillon, the next thing he knew she was on the floor.

“She was saying: ‘My heart is going. My heart is going. I’m dying. I’m dying.’ I tried to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.” In the witness box, Dhillon rubbed one eye as though wiping a tear, and took a drink of water. “She started to shake,” he continued. “I can show you.”

Dhillon climbed down from the witness box and walked back across the courtroom to the accused’s cubicle. He lay down and stretched his legs across the length of a bench. He pretended his body was rigid, and started to shake, and arched his back, and said: “I’m dying! I’m dying!”

Earlier witnesses had given confusing and contradictory testimony as to the symptoms Parvesh had exhibited. Now Dhillon, the man accused of killing her, was making things clear. His graphic—and accurate—portrayal of the symptoms of death by strychnine was helping the case against him. Silverstein took just under five hours to question Dhillon. Now it was Brent Bentham’s turn to cross-examine. If Dhillon hoped Bentham would be short
with him, he was dead wrong. Bentham, as he did with all witnesses, moved methodically, deliberately, authoritatively. It was as though Bentham wanted to give the jury time to get to know Dhillon. Trap the accused on the stand as long as possible, keep him there like a fish flopping in the open air, leave him there to dry and rot. Bentham kept him on the stand for two and a half days.

Brent Bentham broke the mold in several ways. Conventional wisdom says lawyers love to talk. But Bentham had a taciturn nature, rarely chatted with reporters, and even friends and colleagues were kept at arm’s length about his personal life. To those who did not know him, he came across as serious, introverted. In private, he had a keen, though gentlemanly, sense of humor.

While Bentham never offered theories on the matter, perhaps his demeanor was a reaction to the figure cut by his father, a man Brent deeply admired. “Dynamic” was the word he used to describe his dad. John Bentham was an RCMP investigator and, toward the end of his career, a spokesman for the Mounties. Brent moved around Alberta as his father shuttled between field offices before finally settling in Ottawa in the 1970s. He wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. As a student he worked a summer in the Yukon, assisting investigators. It was probably the most enjoyable job he ever had. But full-time jobs in the RCMP were hard to come by. So he pursued the study of law.

Bentham pursued his calling relentlessly. There was no other conclusion to draw than he loved his work. He certainly was ambitious, but not in the conventional way: his wasn’t an ambition to gain fame; it was an ambition to win, lock criminals away, do his job. Journalists tried in vain to pry information from him. He couldn’t see what speaking with a reporter would accomplish in terms of winning the case.

As for personal acclaim, Bentham seemed to have not a kernel of ego. Money didn’t concern him, either. A lawyer who has been in the Crown attorney’s office for several years can apply for Level 3 status, which carries with it a substantial increase in pay. All the lawyer has to do is fill out the form. Bentham could never be bothered. He laughed at the notion of vying for a spot on the bench as a judge. He would be eminently qualified. But he liked his plain Crown attorney’s black robe just fine. All that mattered was his work and his family. Three children. He coached minor hockey and soccer, was a Scout leader. He was unabashedly devoted to his kids, a point that Tony Leitch delighted in making
to courtroom staff the day after the Grey Cup, the championship game in Canadian pro football.

“Okay, get this,” Leitch announced. “Yesterday was the Grey Cup. And, while that was on TV, Mr. Bentham was at the theater watching
Harry Potter
.” He turned to Bentham. “What were you
thinking
?”

The staffers chuckled. Bentham bowed his head, forcing a grin. It all made him sound like a saint. Nobody is, of course. But, whatever Bentham’s weaknesses were, he never revealed them. He accepted cases without question, never complaining that one was less interesting than another. He rarely said a bad word about anyone. He had one other passion. Hockey. He played late-night games at Eastwood Arena with guys from all walks of life. The others probably didn’t even know what he did for a living. One could imagine Bentham glorying in the anonymity of the rink, two teams, no individuals.

Bentham had been at his best in the winter of 2001, the day the first Dhillon trial crumbled into a mistrial. The impostor witnesses, everything unraveling, the detectives furious. Kevin Dhinsa had watched Bentham react with scholarly detachment. The prosecutor’s mind silently processing the options, then providing directions to the detectives. A double murder case was suddenly at risk and Bentham, the lead Crown, talked with the same urgency as if they were discussing lunch plans. Incredible, Dhinsa thought. The detective was a movie buff. He assigned Bentham a role in the imaginary movie of the Dhillon story. Henceforth, the detective decided, the prosecutor would be known as “Cool Hand Bentham.”

In the wood-trimmed Kitchener courtroom, Bentham rose from his seat and approached Sukhwinder Dhillon. He would not play with Dhillon. His personality would not allow it. He would not show the jury any wink or nod, would not give Dhillon the chance to come up for air. From his first question, in his deep, studious baritone, Bentham attacked Dhillon’s character, subtly but powerfully.

“When did you marry Parvesh?” he asked. The translator repeated the question to Dhillon, “
Tuhaada Parvesh naal vihah kadon hoia see?
”

“1983,” Dhillon answered in English.

“What date?” Bentham replied.

“I don’t remember the date. It was second month, fifth, or I don’t know.”

“You don’t remember the date that you got married?”

“Not…I…I can’t read Punjabi. I can’t read English.”

“I’m not asking you to read. I’m asking you to remember the date that you got married.”

“No.”

“No, you don’t know?”

“No…We got married second month in 1983. You can count.”

“Well, do you agree with me that you were married 12 years?”

“Yes.”

“Is it fair to say Parvesh worked pretty hard all her life?”

“We all do that. Indian people, Punjabi people, we all do that.”

“And … and you’re putting yourself in that category as a person who has worked hard all his life?”

“Yes. Yes. I work hard, too.”

“She did those difficult jobs because she cared about the family?”

“Yes. It’s in our culture that husband and wife, they both work hard.”

“And again, you’re putting yourself in that category as a person who works hard?”

“Yes.”

So many cards showing Dhillon’s dark character had been taken away from Bentham. He needed to play around the edges as much as possible, let the jurors read between the lines. The next day, Thursday, he poked holes in Dhillon’s claim that he continued to suffer pain from a 1991 factory accident that left him on worker’s compensation.

“You just tell us when you’re having some difficulty standing,” Bentham said.

“Yes. Even now I’m standing, I have pain. I cannot stand for very long.”

“For the record, you’ve been standing up to this point in the day giving your evidence, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And in fact, you put on a demonstration for the jury where you were able to lie across the bench in the prisoner’s box with your head resting on the one edge, weren’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you got back up and you walked back up into the witness box?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t see any pain on your face.”

Dhillon had grossed more than $38,000 in 1994-95 from his fledgling used-car dealership according to his accountant, Bentham noted. Yet he had reported zero income on his tax form that year and failed to tell the Workers’ Compensation Board, which was paying him benefits for being unable to work, about his income.

“I was just starting out selling cars and I didn’t know if I was making any money or not,” Dhillon replied. “I can’t remember. I must have forgot to report it.”

“I’m going to suggest that money is more important to you than truth and honesty,” Bentham said.

Next, Bentham focused on Dhillon’s behavior following the death of Parvesh. He accused Dhillon of crying crocodile tears but of feeling no real grief.

“You went to India, you would have us believe, because you were devastated by the death of your wife. And yet, within three weeks of your arrival, you were engaged to a 21-year-old woman.”

“Yes, they were forcing me, saying: ‘You have to get married right away. You need somebody to take care of your girls. Who will look after the children?’”

“You picked her, first of all, because she was young and you thought she could bear you a son, something Parvesh had been unable to do.”

“That was in God’s hands,” Dhillon said.

“And you had sex with Sarabjit Brar?”

“Yes. You do that. She was my wife, and after marriage, yes.”

“Right. And at the time, obviously, you had sex with her more than once up until the time that you left India on May 9?”

“Must have. Yes.”

“An attractive, 21-year-old woman?”

“People were ready to give me 18- and 16-year-olds, too. It’s not a sin.”

“And so you had the pick of anybody you wanted?”

“I’m telling you that I didn’t get married because of sex. I got married because of my girls.”

“And when you had sex with Sarabjit, were you able to take your mind off the tragedy of the death of Parvesh that had happened a mere two months earlier?”

“How can I forget that? Even today, I didn’t—”

“Right.”

“I didn’t forget. You get married. You can’t forget.”

“Even though within two months, you’re having sex with a 21-year-old woman after the death of your wife of 12 years?”

Dhillon said that some people in his culture get married the same day as a spouse’s funeral. His message was clear: it’s a different world; you don’t understand. But Bentham would not let this cultural relativism pass, scolding Dhillon as though he were a rebellious teen. “I’m not asking about some people. I’m asking about you—was your wedding day a happy day for you?”

“Yes. Above the surface, yes.”

“We saw, at length, the videotape. Are you telling us that you were able to hide your true emotions at the wedding?”

“Yes. Even now, it’s hidden. You don’t know—nobody knows what’s inside me.”

“I’ll agree with that,” Bentham said.

“Yeah. When someone looks at me, they say, ‘Yeah, you look fine.’ But they don’t know whether I have hurt inside or not.”

“Right. I’m going to suggest to you that you did a very good job in that wedding video of masking your supposed devastation at the tragic loss of your wife.”

“Yes.”

Bentham closed his questioning of Dhillon by tackling the homeopathic medication theory head-on. He had to deflate the notion that Parvesh took homeopathics and perhaps poisoned herself by accident. He asked Dhillon about his conversation with Dhinsa on March 17, 1997, as his house was being searched.

“Did Detective Dhinsa ask you to tell him where the
kuchila
was in your house? Did he ask you that?”

“I don’t remember. I’ve never heard the word
kuchila
from him.”

“I’m suggesting to you that he asked you where they could find
kuchila
in your home.”

“Maybe he asked. He was writing. I wasn’t writing.”