PRISONER THOUGHT HE WAS 'GOING TO DIE' AMID TORONTO POLICE BEATING, TRIAL TOLD

A former pot dealer says he felt pressured, as part of a plea bargain,
into signing a document agreeing not to sue two police officers who
brutally beat him in custody.

Christopher Quigley testified at a cop corruption trial Tuesday that
Toronto Central Field Command drug squad officers beat him so severely
after they arrested him on April 30, 1998, that he thought he was going to die.

"I was terrified," he told an Ontario Superior Court jury. "I was
being pulverized."

Quigley said he was kicked, punched and choked by drug squad officers
Ned Maodus and Richard Benoit in a police interview room with the
encouragement and participation of their boss, Det.-Sgt. John Schertzer.

They kept angrily demanding where he kept his drugs and money, he testified.

He was treated in hospital for his injuries, but the officers turned
around and charged him with assault, as well as possessing marijuana
and the proceeds of crime, he told an Ontario Superior Court jury Tuesday.

"I was never told who I assaulted because I didn't assault anyone,"
Quigley told prosecutor John Pearson.

But he agreed to a plea deal allowing him to plead guilty to simple
marijuana possession and a $1,000 fine in return for the other charges
being dropped, he told prosecutor John Pearson.

His lawyer at the time, Bruce Olmsted, made it very clear to him it
was the best deal he could get, he said.

The lawyer told Quigley that police would not give back the
possessions they had seized unless he took the deal, he said.

They had trashed his Eglinton Ave. W. apartment and taken his $400
boots, a briefcase containing an $8,000 sapphire and other items, as
well as $54,000 of his cash from his mother's bank safety deposit box, he said.

So before he pleaded guilty he signed a document releasing the Toronto
police force and any of its officers, including Benoit and Maodus, for
any injuries he sustained at the time of his arrest.

Schertzer, 54; Maodus, 48; Steve Correia, 44; Joseph Miched, 53; and
Raymond Pollard, 47; collectively face 29 charges, laid in January
2004, including obstruction of justice, perjury, assault and extortion
related to their work between 1997 and 2002.

During one of three separate beatings, Quigley said, his head was
smashed against a wall and he lost consciousness.

"I was covered from head to toe in blood," he testified.

"That's when I started throwing up blood. I was breathing up blood. I
was choking on my own blood."

He was finally taken to a cell in another part of the station, where
another officer saw his bloodied state and immediately screamed for
someone to call an ambulance.