The segregation notice given to Mr. Martineau stated that he was being segregated pending an investigation into the stabbing of Mr. Flamond. On December 20, Mr. Martineau was seen by the Segregation Review Board for his five-day review. Unit Manager Shadbolt said all she could tell him was that he was being segregated while the investigation continued because it was believed that his presence in the population would interfere with it. Mr. Martineau became very angry and demanded to know on what basis the institution believed him to be involved in the stabbing. Mr. Flamond was a good friend of his, and at the time of the stabbing (which took place in the unit) he was in the prison chapel at a Brotherhood meeting. If he had been aware Mr. Flamond was going to get hurt, he would have tried to stop it, although he said that what had happened was a "goof trip," meaning it did not make any sense and was not the kind of event you could anticipate or prevent. He reminded the Board that he had a private family visit with his wife coming up on December 28 and it was very important to him. To be in segregation at Christmas without any good reason was an injustice, and he demanded to be released. Ms. Shadbolt said he would not be released until the completion of the investigation, which could take several weeks.

When I spoke with Mr. Martineau after his review, he related in more detail what I had heard him tell the Board. Mr. Flamond was a close friend of his, more like a younger brother he had taken under his wing. The genesis of the stabbing, as best Mr. Martineau could understand, was drug-related and arose from a complicated chain of indebtedness involving Mr. Flamond, Mr. Sherratt, and another prisoner. Mr. Martineau had understood that the problems between Mr. Flamond and Mr. Sherratt had been resolved peacefully, so he was shocked when he heard that Mr. Flamond had been stabbed. (Mr. Sherratt was subsequently convicted of the attempted murder of Mr. Flamond.)

Mr. Martineau’s account revealed a complex web of relationships which only insiders to the politics of the drug trade could fully understand. Someone only peripherally involved in those events or who heard a second-hand account of them, could easily get important elements wrong. Many prisoners have told me over the years that informers are the source of much inaccurate information, since they have their own agendas and therefore deliberately make up stories. While this may well be the case, the intricacies of the account Robert Martineau gave me suggested that anyone not directly involved would likely give an inaccurate account of these events, even with no deliberate intent to distort or fabricate.

Following our interview, Mr. Martineau contacted Prisoners’ Legal Services and sought their assistance in securing his release from segregation. When Beth Parkinson phoned the institution on his behalf, she was informed that because Mr. Martineau was believed to be heavily involved in the underground drug economy, it was deemed necessary to segregate him to avoid his interference with the investigation. When Mr. Martineau learned about this, his anger only increased.

I was really choked. I had been working hard on getting the Native Substance Abuse program off the ground and not only participating in it myself but in baby-sitting the whole program and making sure that the other guys attended and maintained their commitment to it. I had been working to get the supplies for the gingerbread houses for the kids and we’d worked all week on that. And for all that work all I got was the same paranoia and suspicion about my involvement in the drug trade and the IPSOs’ belief that if anything negative happened I must be behind it. (Interview with Robert Martineau, January 6, 1995, Kent Institution)

After my interview with Mr. Martineau on December 20, I met with Unit Manager Shadbolt and inquired about the ongoing investigation into the stabbing. She advised me she had received information that Mr. Martineau had persuaded Mr. Flamond to hand over the knives he used in his wood carving; one of these knives was given to another prisoner, who in turn gave it to Mr. Sherratt, and this was the knife with which Mr. Sherratt had stabbed Mr. Flamond. The inference was that Mr. Martineau had orchestrated the attack on Mr. Flamond, and she observed that Mr. Martineau "was conspicuously absent" at the time the attack took place.

Mr. Martineau remained in segregation until January 3, 1995. In an interview three days later, he described what had happened subsequent to his five-day review on December 20. He had received no further information from the institution regarding the state of the investigation, nor was he given any information in writing or orally regarding the basis for the institution’s belief that he was involved. On December 29, Mr. Martineau was out of his cell getting a cup of coffee when he saw Deputy Warden Sexsmith and asked to speak with him. Mr. Sexsmith explained that the stabbing investigation had originally been assigned to a unit manager at Matsqui. However, that unit manager had been attacked with a baseball bat by a prisoner and so the preliminary investigation had been reassigned to Mr. Sexsmith himself. According to Mr. Martineau, Mr. Sexsmith told him:

There’s three inmates in the PC population that we consider are the drug traffickers and suppliers and one of them is you. We felt that this was a drug-related incident and therefore that the drug traffickers would be involved. The information that you were segregated on was information received that you were directly involved in that you gave a knife to another prisoner, that prisoner supplied the knife to Sherratt who did the stabbing, and you ensured that you were not in the area by establishing yourself visibly in another part of the institution. That was the information I received and I’ve now completed my investigation and it has not corroborated that you were involved in any conspiracy to stab Flamond and therefore you and Mr. Brown will be released from segregation on January 3. (Interview with Robert Martineau, Kent Institution, January 6, 1995)

Mr. Martineau questioned why, if there was no justification for his segregation, he could not be released immediately. Mr. Sexsmith replied that unit managers normally made the recommendations for release, and Mr. Cawsey, the unit manager for the PC separation side, would not be back in the institution until January 3. Mr. Martineau raised the issue of having lost his single cell and not wanting to double-bunk on his return to the population, and mentioned the effect his segregation had had on his scheduled three-day family visit, the first two days of which had already passed. Mr. Sexsmith said that he would make sure Mr. Martineau got a single cell and would do his best to make arrangements to have the third day of his visit with his wife.

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