World juniors sexual assault trial hears from 1 of the 5 accused men for 1st time, via police video

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We’re still on a break as technical staff at the courthouse attempt to fix the Crestron system, which shares audio and video to each of the defence team tables (there are five) and to the Crown table.

Because the witness is testifying remotely, via Zoom, there’s an added tech wrinkle.

The two tech workers here are employed by the Ontario courts. They’re trying to find a way for the video of McLeod to be played properly to the courtroom and the remote witness (Newton) without freezing or skipping or being distorted.

“Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?” one reporter suggested.

This is just the latest stalling of court proceedings due to technical issues, which were prominent earlier in the trial.

McLeod tells the detective that E.M. Bought drinks for the two of them. He says he also bought drinks, and someone bought a round for everyone.

McLeod says to the officer that he doesn’t remember E.M. Slipping and falling near the bathroom.

The detective shows McLeod pictures from Jack’s bar’s Facebook account from June 2018 that were posted on social media. McLeod identifies several teammates, as well as an “older guy” he thinks is “maybe from Nike” and was not affiliated with the team, but was one of the sponsors.

Earlier in the trial, E.M. Testified about an older man, identified in court as Matt Maccarone, who poured a shot of alcohol down her throat.

In the video, McLeod tells the detective he doesn’t remember the older guy buying Jägerbombs (a mixed drink that has a shot of Jägermeister in an energy drink), but he was probably buying dollar beers for everyone.

The audio is again really off and reverberating, so we are paused again to see if someone can fix it.

The media are now able to resume seeing the Newton-McLeod video interview.

Newton asks McLeod to take him through meeting E.M. At the bar.

McLeod says “pretty much the whole team,” except four younger guys who weren’t old enough to drink, went to Jack’s.

He says everyone was dancing and E.M. Started hanging out with the men.

“We had a drink.”

McLeod says there was no sexual contact between himself and E.M. On the dance floor.

“She was kind of close but there was none of that, no,” McLeod tells the police officer in the video.

Videos presented in court earlier in this trial showed E.M. And McLeod dancing very closely and her also dancing with Brett Howden. Very close dancing, grinding and crotch touching could be seen.

“She indicated that when you were dancing there was some touching to the groin region, that she was doing some of the touching — it was going both ways?” the officer asks McLeod. The officer says there also was butt touching.

“I dunno. For me, it would be a super minor thing,” McLeod tells him in the video. “I don’t remember like, super touching her.”

McLeod says he wasn’t “crazy drunk” and it wasn’t a “crazy night of drinking.”

E.M., he tells the officer, was “looking normal” and “she wasn’t like, hammered by any means.”

There’s an issue with something called a Crestron (an audio-visual delivery platform), so there’s been a bit of a work-around, but now it’s even harder to understand the video.

Some of the lawyers stopped the proceedings because they needed a transcript of the interview so they could follow along to better understand the audio.

Members of the media have asked for the transcript as well. There’s some back and forth about whether they should be made available to us. It’s being made a “lettered exhibit,” which means it’s not part of the evidence — the video is.

The video itself is going to be made an official exhibit so the media can have access to it right away.

The technical problems are (sort of) resolved.

Court is now being shown the video of Michael McLeod being interviewed by London police officer Stephen Newton, the lead investigator in 2018.

The video was taken in November 2018 in the Toronto office of McLeod’s lawyer.

Court staff are still trying to work out some technical issues, so the aim is to resume proceedings at 2:30 p.m. ET.

After some technical difficulties with the video showing McLeod speaking to Newton, the police investigator, court has recessed a bit early for lunch.

We’ll be back with more live coverage once proceedings resume around 2:15 p.m. ET.

Also in the video, McLeod tells Newton that the next day, the team had a golf tournament and while there, he got a call from someone at Hockey Canada about a police complaint related to the night before.

He was told E.M.’s mother had made the complaint, not E.M. Herself, so McLeod looked E.M. Up on Instagram and direct-messaged her, asking her for her number, McLeod tells the detective.

“She was like, ‘What’s up?’ and sent me her number,” McLeod tells the detective of his Instagram interaction with E.M.

“She said it was her mom” that reported the sexual assault, not her.

The video freezes, likely because of an issue with the bandwidth in the courtroom, so technicians are working to figure out the problem and get it back working again.

McLeod says the other men began leaving the room closer to 4 a.m., so he “took another video, her consent to the whole thing, just seeing that she wasn’t OK, that she wasn’t drunk, she wasn’t blackout drunk and couldn't move,” he tells the detective.

E.M. Told him she was fine and she consented to everything, McLeod recalls to the police detective.

After that, everyone left but his roommate, Formenton.

McLeod tells the detective he “hopped in the shower, and she came in and we just had sex.”

When E.M. Was getting dressed, she couldn’t find her ring, so Formenton and McLeod spent 10 or 15 minutes helping her look for it.

“She seemed really upset” that she couldn't find it and the two men “tried to calm her down. We could tell she was kind of upset. And that was the night.”

In her testimony earlier in the trial, E.M. Said she returned to the room for her ring, but the two men seemed annoyed that she had come back and didn’t help her look for it.

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