Edwin Pearson, how a petty criminal court gadfly toppled a judge

   

  Edwin Pearson (1932-2010) was a criminal who loved to play lawyer, defending himself against an endless series of charges ranging from fraud to theft, seizing every opportunity to file every type of legal motion in an effort to subvert his prosecutions.

  Pearson's crimes date from at least 1962 when he was sentenced to 10 years for a robbery in Albany, New York. He managed to get out of prison after three years following a successful appeal but he remained banned from the USA thereafter.

   Pearson, an Irish-Canadian baptized Anglican, was about to be put in jail for six months on a charge in 1968 but he noted that paperwork was mislaid and he was released.

  The newly-married Pearson was then arrested with veteran burglar Lawrence Helm in Lachine hauling burglary tools around in November 1969. A judge granted him bail but Pearson was rearrested and detained as he walked out of the courthouse, with wife Joanne watched on in tears. 

  It seems that prosecutors had finally located the lost paperwork from the previous case. He was charged with a burglary in St. Leonard and for breaking into pay phones in Oka, Quebec, stealing $165 in coins. 

  Police associated Pearson with the West End Gang but he wasn't its most accomplished member. On 13 October 1969 he pretended to be a bread delivery guy and forced a night guard into a closet, taking off with a measly $32 from 340 St. Catherine Street before getting caught.  

  Pearson got himself cleared yet again in January 1972 when an appeals court reversed his conviction because, he noted, the crimes were not committed in Laval nor St. Leonard but in Lachine.  

 Pearson's notoriety peaked in the early 1970s when his courtroom antics managed to topple a sitting judge for what might seem a minor misdeed.   

   Pearson had a job doing odd jobs for criminal defence attorney Maurice Hebert, who was later disbarred for various misdeeds.

  Pearson supplemented his income to support his family of six kids through petty crimes and in one example was busted for breaking into commercial washer-dryers in apartment buildings, getting caught red-handed with $54 in stolen coins.

   Pearson decided to fight the charge on his own and was sentenced to six months in prison. He was granted an appeal, when he noted that stenographic notes were missing. In January 1972 Pearson showed up in an appeals court overseen by Judge Jacques Anctil, an unpopular judge who had once sentenced a suspect to seven years in prison for forging a cheque.

 Pearson represented himself but also had a pair of lawyers by his side. Lucien Proulx, another Hebert employee with a criminal record, was also present in the courtroom watching as an observer. 

Anctil

  An apparently vanilla incident turned sour when Proulx irritated Judge Anctil by repeatedly entering and exiting the courtroom.  Judge Anctil made the unusual move of interrogating Proulx, asking him he had a criminal record. Proulx answered that he indeed had a record for fraud. Anctil ordered Proulx out of the courtroom.

  Pearson, now with high-profile attorney Frank Shoofey by his side, seized on the moment to demand a mistrial, noting that a judge had no business ejecting an onlooker in a public trial. 

  In a separate procedure, judges ordered Anctil to discontinue the Pearson trial following the expulsion of Proulx. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court.. 

 Judge Anctil's detractors seized on the moment to make life miserable for him, as 31 Legal Aid lawyers refused to plead before him after he held a lawyer in contempt for refusing to sit down. The Gazette's George Radwanski wrote unflattering articles about Anctil on 8 and 9 March 1973 with plenty of quotes denouncing Anctil, who sued for the journalist and newspaper for $200,000 in libel. No word on what became of that lawsuit. 

 The discredited Anctil retired as a judge in 1974 after nine years on the bench. He returned to work as a lawyer but died at his home in Beaconsfield in 1983 at the age of 57.

  Pearson was involved in a bizarre incident that same year when he found himself representing lifelong criminal Thomas "Mickey" Matticks in a court of law, even though he was never a lawyer. Matticks was attempting to have his habitual offender status reversed. The judge expressed extreme displeasure with Pearson. Matticks eventually had his habitual offender label and was released from prison. 

Maurice Hebert

 By 1975 Pearson was managing a bar and working for the Cotroni crime family, calling himself a private investigator, even though he had no license for such a profession. Pearson managed to get to Brooklyn, New York for Frank Cotroni's trial where he presented some spicy letters written embarassing a prosecution witness. 

  A judge realized that Pearson was banned from the States and ordered him detained in December 1974. But prosecutors dropped the charges two months later and he was freed and allowed to stay until the end of the Cotroni trial, which ended with Frank Cotroni getting sentenced to four years for a $3 million cocaine deal. 

 In May 1975 Pearson fought 96 fines of $25 each which he was ordered to pay for failing to return provincial tax filings between 1965 to 1972. Pearson attempted to argue that he shouldn't have to pay the fine because the letters sent to his home misspelled his name as Pearsons. He was given 60 days to pay $2,400 in fines.

Pearson in later years

 Pearson was jailed in February 1978 for defrauding a pair of banks of $18,72 in December 1977, once again conducting his own defence. He had cashed some Hydro Quebec bonds that had been taken out of circulation. 

 Pearson always made sure to tell judges that  he was personally responsible for both the The Keable  MacDonald Commission inquiries into RCMP misdeeds. 

 Pearson, aged 57, was busted for what appears to be his final time in September 1989, facing six drug charges after police seized a relatively minor haul of 460 grams of cocaine and two kilos of hashish.  

   True to form, Pearson - still behind bars without trial for 12 months - successfully lobbied a legal change in Quebec to make drug dealing defendants eligible for bail without having to prove that they are not a danger to the public. The onus instead was thereafter put on prosecutors to argue against bail. 

 Pearson died in Oakville, Ontario in 2010, his wife Jo-Anne having predeceased him. He was survived by kids Todd, Dawn, Kyle, Jay, Tara and Jessica.