April 20 -- The Warden's Response to the Rebuttal

On April 19, Warden Gallagher responded in writing to my rebuttal, informing Mr. Weaver that he would be recommending his involuntary transfer to Kent. In two and a half pages, the warden addressed only a few of the arguments I had set out in my twenty-five-page rebuttal. Surprisingly, he challenged my contention that the time frame for the attack on Mr. Caziere was best gauged by the times the officer on the front gate had recorded.

This conclusion is only warranted if all other time references are specifically related to timekeeping as maintained by Officer Shular, and if one has confidence that hers was a completely accurate reference in the first place. Indeed, Ms. Shular indicates in subsequent inquiries that she is uncertain about what timepiece she used to note the time reference, although she believes it was her personal analog wristwatch. She states she habitually keeps it five minutes fast. As the timepiece she believes she used for the reference is an analog variety, her observations are, almost by necessity, estimates, due to the nature of the faces of analog timepieces. (Notification of Review of Recommendation Relative to Transfer, William Head Institution, April 19, 1999)

Ironically, just the day before the warden expressed his view that Officer Shular's observations were estimates "due to the nature of the faces of analog timepieces," David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale, had written in a special edition of the New York Times Magazine devoted to "the best ideas, stories and inventions of the last thousand years" that his vote for runner-up for best invention of the millennium went to the analog clock face.

Two hands trace out different scales; you would think such a gadget would be too tricky to use. In fact, it's the best "interface" ever designed. No other device can transmit such complex information so precisely, so fast. (David Gelernter, "Bound to Succeed," New York Times Magazine, April 18, 1999, p. 132)

Certainly Officer Shular, when she was on duty on February 5, did not believe that she was only estimating time when she wrote down that the call for help over the radio came at 21:37, that the front gate was contacted to phone 911 at 21:38, that a lock-down was imposed at 21:49, and that the ambulance arrived at 21:54.

Warden Gallagher also challenged my assumption (one shared by the RCMP) that it must have taken Mr. Caziere at least five minutes to get from the site of his attack to the C-Unit Community Building. He suggests, "It is equally conceivable that, being fully conscious during this fight, and driven by fear and adrenaline, the victim could have traversed the distance between Upper G Tier and the C-Unit Community Building in considerably less time, perhaps stumbling due to the speed of his movement as well as his injuries." Conceivable, yes, but highly improbable. Indeed, subsequent to my receipt of the warden's recommendation, I interviewed another prisoner at William Head who had observed, from a window in his house, Mr. Caziere coming up the path very slowly and stumbling. Moreover, according to this prisoner's observations, instead of proceeding straight to C-Unit Community Building, Mr. Caziere went to his own house and sat on the porch for several minutes before moving slowly over to the C-Unit Community Building. If that was the case, my original estimate that it took him five minutes to get from Upper G Tier to the C-Unit building was on the low side.

Even more surprising than Warden Gallagher's reliance on the necessary imprecision of an analog timepiece was his suggestion that the phone calls made to Lama Margaret, as verified by the Millennium phone records, may have been made by another prisoner. He stated that the use of the second PIN number "does not irrefutably mean Offender Weaver in fact made the calls." The implication here is either that Lama Margaret Ludwig lied when she said she spoke to Gary Weaver or that she mistakenly believed the prisoner she spoke to for forty minutes was Gary Weaver. In response to this incredible assertion, I obtained an affidavit from Lama Margaret in which she swore the conversation she had between 8:53 p.m. and 9:27 p.m. on February 5 "was with Mr. Weaver and no other prisoner" (Affidavit of Lama Margaret Ludwig, April 30, 1999). Her affidavit also stated that the conversation was particularly memorable since it concerned Mr. Weaver's reflections on his first pass into the community and his forthcoming pass to the Buddhist Dharma Centre.

Warden Gallagher also took issue with my argument that George Storry had no motive for providing Gary Weaver with a cover story because they were not friends or associates. He stated that Mr. Storry may have harboured ill will towards the administration due to his own involuntary transfer from William Head and pointed to the fact that Mr. Storry initially told the IPSOs his telephone conversation with his wife began at 9:15 p.m. The Warden failed to realize, however, that this last factor supported my contention that Mr. Storry was not trying to provide Mr. Weaver with an alibi; otherwise, he would have chosen a time much closer to when Mr. Caziere was attacked. In any event, the Millennium record shows definitively that Mr. Storry began his phone call at 9:29 p.m. Mr. Storry had already told me that his willingness to swear an affidavit supporting Mr. Weaver's account was born of his concern that Warden Gallagher not be permitted to unfairly accuse another prisoner and thereby destroy all that the prisoner had worked for.

For Warden Gallagher, the bottom line was "the essential fact . . . that the victim has repeatedly identified Offender Weaver as one of his assailants." He suggested Mr. Caziere's initial reluctance to identify his assailants likely stemmed from a hope he could "fix" the difficulty and re-enter the general population. Mr. Caziere had told staff that the meeting in Upper G Tier was pre-arranged to conclude a drug transaction, and therefore the warden found it "quite conceivable that all of the necessities to commit the assault, including weapons and protective clothing, were in place before the assault."

Putting aside the important fact that this was only one of three different accounts Mr. Caziere gave to staff to explain his presence in Upper G Tier, Mr. Weaver's activities from 8:50 until 9:27 are inconsistent with his participation in this conspiracy. He was engaged in an extended telephone conversation with a Buddhist nun about his future outside of prison; the call was terminated by the unpredictable timing of Mr. Storry's arrival to use the phone.

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