Random Access

“The fact that you don’t know you are writing satire doesn’t mean you aren’t writing satire.”
So stated Professor Dennis Duffy in his expert testimony at the May trial of Pothole Poet Antonio Batista, as he has come to be known.
Too bad for Batista that Mr. Justice James J. Keaney didn’t agree with the expert.
In fact, he said the opposite Friday in his verbal judgment that convicted the 75-year-old Batista of uttering a death threat against Ward 9 Councillor Pat Saito.
First of all, Justice Keaney ruled that Duffy’s testimony in the trial was inadmissible. Then he flatly contradicted his argument about unintentional satire. He said Batista couldn’t argue that his comments were in jest because he didn’t know what satire was. (Batista told court that he only heard the word after the trial procedure began.)
Throughout the trial, defence lawyer Clayton Ruby desperately tried to find a witness (other than Duffy) to speak to satire. He couldn’t find any takers, not Detective-Sergeant John Mans, not resident Neil Lawrence who first spotted the poetic flyer on a mail box and not Saito herself.
So his whole case rested on Duffy’s outline of the history of political satire, which has roots as far back as Greece and Rome, roots that Prof. Duffy expertly outlined. Ruby also relied heavily on his own fine closing argument, which exhorted the judge to protect the core right of political free expression. “Do not be quick to draw criminality into political expression. Your job is to protect that kind of speech,” said Ruby. “We have to be careful to protect a citizen’s right to criticize in public.”
There were a couple of problems with pleading not guilty by reason of satire. The first one was that his client, who testified on his own behalf, is obviously not given to light humour when it comes to the subject of Councillor Saito.
As Batista demonstrated once again when given a chance to speak to his conviction Friday, he has a one-track mind when it comes to political concerns, with all roads leading back to his belief that Councillor Saito failed to act appropriately when residents were sent tax notices for their new Green Park homes and then were forced to seek rebates from the developer (as the Municipal Act dictates.)
Although Ruby said there was no evidence of personal animosity between Batista and his then-councillor, his client’s demeanour and comments stated the opposite. Outside the court Batista even said that Saito is the one who should be in jail because she isn’t doing her job.
But the main problem Ruby and his client had throughout the trial, and one they never really addressed, were the actual words that were used in the poem.
He wrote, “We are going to dig a pothole about six feet and 3 feet wide and 5 feet deep to hide her body and God will take care of Her Soul, but we cannot forgive her for doing nothing. She can keep running at a good pace but We will make sure that She is in HEAVEN and out of the race. So please GOD take care of this SOUL for ever and EVER.”
Batista said he did not intend that those words be taken so seriously. But they are what they are. It is hard to construe them as anything other than a threat of death. Mr. Lawrence, whom crown attorney Jennifer Goulin argued was a stand-in for the “reasonable person” the Criminal Code speaks to, certainly took them as a threat. He warned Saito’s office immediately.
It’s very easy to ridicule this prosecution as political over-reaction. Clearly, politicians have to accept a higher level of criticism.
It all comes back, however, to the actual words that were used. If that letter were written about my wife or daughter or son, I would have gone to the police too. The words simply “crossed the line,” as Justice Keaney said.