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“Jury president, have you agreed upon a verdict?” the court registrar asked.

“We have,” said the man, representing the 11 people sitting in judgment. They’d started two months before with 12 jurors. But halfway through the trial, one announced he felt ill, couldn’t concentrate, and needed an operation. The judge let him go, against the protestations of Chris’s lawyer. Juries normally have two alternates, for just this situation, but they had both been excused earlier.

Chris glanced over his shoulder. Marjorie and Lloyd, his parents, were always there. But the jury came back after less than a day. The judge didn’t wait for the Sheriffe family.

Recalling the trial years later, Chris said he felt the deck was stacked. The jury had been given false DNA information, incorrect police transcriptions of his words, and damaging hearsay evidence from informants who received either money or a break on criminal charges.

The registrar faced the jury again. “On the count of first-degree murder, guilty or not guilty?”

When the trial began, prospective jurors from a pool of citizens had been asked two questions, agreed upon by the Crown and the two defence lawyers.

First, given that Awet and Chris were Black, did they have “a bias, prejudice for or against Black persons to the extent that it would likely prevent you from rendering true verdicts based solely on the evidence.”

Second, did they have “an opinion about membership in street gangs” that would prevent them from giving a fair verdict. 

A “yes” to either question and the juror was excused. Defence and prosecution also had a fixed number of challenges — 40 for each side with no reason given — to get rid of prospective jurors based on gut feelings. After two days, a jury of 11 white people and one Black man was chosen. It was the lone Black juror who later asked to be excused for medical reasons.  

Christopher Hicks, Chris Sheriffe’s lawyer, said ɫɫ�� juries are normally more diverse, given that less than half the population is white. In this case, both the accused and the victim were Black.

“I only have so many challenges,” said Hicks. “It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a bad break.”

Justice Eugene Ewaschuk was presiding. Tall, with chiseled, Mount Rushmore features, the former federal prosecutor was nicknamed “Tex” for the cowboy boots under his robe and his “shoot from the hip” style. “Justice U-Is-F—ked” was another nickname coined by accused criminals.

“Nobody in the defence bar ever liked him of course,” says Hicks. “You didn’t want to see him come through the (courtroom) door.

By the time he retired a few years after the Golaub trial, the Ontario Court of Appeal would reverse numerous cases he presided over and throw out the convictions, citing errors in rulings. A Star review of 41 murder cases Ewaschuk presided over that were appealed found that the conviction was thrown out in almost one-third. Presented with a written series of allegations by the Star related to his trial record and this case, Ewaschuk did not respond. When a reporter called his home, Ewaschuk said “not interested” and hung up.

Presenting the Crown’s case against Chris and Awet was Laura Bird, the prosecutor who’d been brought in to shore up the case when a preliminary hearing judge reduced the charges against both men. That judge found no evidence of any planning or gang membership. As to Chris, the preliminary hearing judge saw no evidence that he did anything other than give Awet a ride.

Then, a few months before trial, a bombshell. A young police officer Bird knew showed up with new evidence. He said two sources told him Chris was a gang leader with “bodies to his name” and Awet was trying to join the gang. This was hearsay evidence from secret sources. Bird would have to convince Ewaschuk to allow the jury to hear it. 

First, Bird set the scene with the night before the murder. 

It was a stifling hot evening in the Jamestown neighbourhood. Teens and young adults were out, listening to music, eating, drinking. Renters in a few townhouses were hosting barbecues. Chris and Awet arrived separately at one. They weren’t friends, but knew each other from around. Awet was 24, Chris 19. Awet had gone to school with Chris’s older sister. They were following different paths. Chris had been a top athlete, was injured, and after training was about to start a union carpentry job. He had no criminal record. Awet did odd jobs like driveway sealing, and had a criminal record for selling drugs.

Bird’s first witnesses were two college students, Roxanne and Hannah. Both were home for the summer and attended the Jamestown barbecue. When that backyard event ended, they walked with a group to another barbecue across a field. Roxanne liked Chris as soon as she met him.

“I was attracted to him,” Roxanne, 20, told the jury.

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Around 11 p.m., someone suggested they head up to Juicy Jerks, a dance hall that played reggae music. Chris had borrowed his mom’s Mazda, and it was commonplace for him to give people rides. He drove Roxanne, Hannah, Awet and a young man nicknamed “Clumsy” (he kept spilling his drink) to the dance hall.

After a couple of hours at Juicy Jerks, Awet and Clumsy came up with the idea of going to a hotel to keep the evening going. Chris was standing with Roxanne and Hannah when this was being discussed. “They asked if I could go, too,” Chris told the jury. He said he’d like to go, he’d be happy to drive but needed money for gas. The five piled into the Mazda and drove 15 minutes to the Travelodge Hotel. 

Two rooms were booked. Clumsy, 19, paid for them with a credit card. By 2 a.m., Chris, Awet, Roxanne and Hannah were in one, with Clumsy bouncing between their room and the other room, where another group was lounging. People were smoking cigarettes and marijuana. A bottle of Appleton rum travelled between the rooms. 

Hannah said nothing remarkable happened. “We were still drinking, we were watching TV, and playing music and smoking cigarettes. That’s about it.”

Same from Roxanne. “We were just flipping through channels,” she said. They watched “Wipeout,” “America’s Funniest ɫɫ�� Videos.” Even watched National Geographic on Discovery. “Nothing else happened. We just fell asleep.”

Awet said one of the shows they watched was about “Somali pirates” and he recalled chuckling how they hijacked a high-value tanker and ended up selling it for a lot less than the crude oil was worth. 

Chris said he could tell Roxanne was attracted to him, but they didn’t fool around. By all accounts that night, nobody did. Everyone just fell asleep. 

Someone had arranged for a very late checkout but long after they should have left, hotel cleaning staff banged on the room door. 

” ‘You have to get out now,’ ” Chris recalled in his testimony. Meanwhile, Clumsy had gone home in the middle of the night, complaining his back hurt from having to sleep on a couch, while Awet and Hannah took one bed, and Chris and Roxanne the other.

Hotel security cameras show the group leaving the Travelodge at 1:20 p.m. Chris is driving the Mazda, with Roxanne in the passenger seat. Awet and Hannah are in the back. Chris still needed gas. They drove to a Shell station. Awet went inside and bought cigarettes to smoke with Hannah. Chris didn’t get any gas money.

Back in the car, Hannah and Roxanne said they just wanted to go home, but the four made a plan to meet up later Sunday evening. Hannah recalls Awet saying something that caught her attention. 

“When we were at the gas station, Mr. Asfaha told Mr. Sheriffe that he wanted to go stop somewhere,” Hannah told the jury. Roxanne, who was in the front with Chris, didn’t hear this. She said she was tired and just wanted to go home. Both young women were staying at Roxanne’s apartment on Kipling Avenue, not far away. 

Hannah said Chris replied, saying, “Let’s drop the girls first, and then we’ll deal with whatever they had to deal with.”

This was a key moment. It was the only testimony referencing a hint of planning — though for what was unclear. 

Video at the Kipling building shows Hannah and Roxanne being dropped off at 1:42 p.m. Awet moves to the front passenger seat.

Bird made sure the jury focused on the time of the apartment drop-off: 1:42 p.m. That was roughly when a hungry Kim Golaub pulled up to the curb at the barbecue on Mount Olive, just one kilometre from the apartment building. Six minutes later, at 1:48 p.m., Golaub is shot.

What happened in those six minutes leading up to the shooting? Chris and Awet’s stories differ dramatically. It’s known as a “cut-throat defence.” Two defendants tried together, telling different stories.

Chris’s story: He said his plan was to drop Awet home, then go home himself to sleep. Driving south on Kipling, he said Awet suddenly told him to turn onto Mount Olive. This route took them past the barbecue. Chris said he didn’t notice the barbecue, or Kim Golaub standing at the gate in his red shirt. He said Awet then told him to turn onto Silverstone Avenue, a side street, and park. Chris said Awet got out and said he’d be right back. Chris told the jury he assumed Awet was picking something up. 

Awet’s story: When he testified, Awet told the jury it was Chris who suddenly decided to turn onto Mount Olive, and then onto Silverstone. Awet said that as someone who lives in Jamestown, which he said is a rival of the Mount Olive gang, he was nervous about being near Mount Olive. Awet said Chris parked, told him he was picking up a friend. In what Awet took as a sign of “disrespect,” he said Chris told him to move to the back seat.

The stories of the two young men diverge even more at this point.

Chris’s story: He said Awet was gone for a couple of minutes, came back, and they drove off. His route took him back to the Mount Olive intersection, where he turned right, away from where, at that moment, Golaub was lying on the ground bleeding out. Chris told the jury he had music on, heard and saw nothing, and that Awet seemed normal when he got back into the car.

Awet’s story: He surprised the courtroom by telling a completely different story, one he had never told in the three years awaiting trial. A story about a “third man.” Sitting in the back seat of Chris’s Mazda, parked on Silverstone around the corner from the barbecue, Awet said he heard sharp sounds.

“I hear three shots, three to four shots. I’m like, Did you hear that? Let’s get out of here! What the f—k?” Awet told the jury. “Then I see a male running towards us with a gun in his hand.” Awet said he ducked down in the back seat. 

“So this guy’s running towards us with a gun in his hand. I start panicking. I’m like, Drive, let’s go. And I’m kind of tapping the, his, seat. And this guy’s getting close. I just ducked. I thought this guy was about to unload. I’m expecting the glass in the car to burst.”

Awet said the running man got into the passenger seat, and Chris took off, screeching in a tight turn onto Mount Olive, away from the shooting scene. Awet said he got a look at the man in the front seat. “He’s young. Probably 19, 18. He’s dark-skinned, he’s got braids, cornrows, going tightly on his scalp going to the back.” Awet said he can smell body odour oozing off the man. This “third man,” wearing a grey hoodie, turns to Chris and says, “I aired that n—— out.”

A few minutes later, Awet said Chris and the man with the braids dropped him off. 

There was one glaring problem with the story. An eyewitness only saw two people — Chris and Awet — in the Mazda as it drove off. There was speculation during the trial that Awet conjured up this story after learning that witnesses said the shooter — and the man smoking pot on the street — had braids. Awet said no, he said it because that’s the hairstyle of the man who jumped into the car.

Star witness

When seasoned gang squad and homicide detectives failed for two years to dig up gang evidence on Chris and Awet, Bird asked junior officer Const. Aman Nasser for help. She’d run into him by chance in a court hallway. A couple of days later, Nasser reported to Bird that he had two confidential sources who could help. One was a Jamestown Crips gang member, another was friends with Jamestown Crips.

Det. Doug Sansom, the lead officer on the case, told the Star this “gang” information was of immense help. He said it helps the jury “make sense of what the hell happened.”

According to Nasser, these sources told him the 24-year-old Awet was doing drug deals, “putting in work” to join the Crips. But Chris, 19, was already a leader, running the “Hustle Squad,” which the sources identified as a subgroup of the Jamestown Crips. One of Nasser’s sources handed over a photo of Chris and nine young Black men. The source said this was the “Hustle Squad.”

According to a police document, one of the sources received a cash payment and a break on charges from police, the other a reduction in criminal charges.

Bird’s plan was to have Nasser present this gang information at trial. Nasser would be the star witness, speaking for his two confidential informants. This would be hearsay evidence — the sources would not be identified or appear in court. Ewaschuk would decide if this was legal. Christopher Hicks, Chris’s lawyer, fought back. 

“I was very suspicious of this confidential informant that appeared so suddenly,” Hicks told the Star.

Lawyers who later took up Chris’s case point out that this supposedly violent “Hustle Squad” does not appear in any of the voluminous gang records of ɫɫ�� police, was never heard of before this case, and has never been heard of since.

Chris and several friends testified that the “Hustle Squad” was actually the nickname for their pickup basketball team. If they’d had more money, they would have had jerseys made. As to the photo, Chris said it was a photo taken after a funeral for a slain friend. 

Hicks tried to convince the judge that Nasser’s evidence — quoting paid informants who could not be cross-examined — was hearsay and prejudicial to a fair trial. Hicks tried to get more information about these two sources. One was in a gang, one was friends with members of that gang. Did they have a grudge against Chris? Had they lied in the past on another case? Hicks said he needed to know more, including the exact compensation they received. Ewaschuk said no. The jury would hear Const. Nasser’s evidence.

Chris Sheriffe “is a gang member,” Nasser told the jury. Asked about the photo of Chris and the nine young men, Nasser testified: “The persons in this picture are not only members of the Jamestown Crips, they are a subgroup that call themselves Hustle Squad. I was told that the person in the centre, Mr. Sheriffe, is the leader of this particular group.”

The Star has been unable to find any other examples in a Canadian court of this type of testimony being allowed.

Geoff Haskell, a lawyer who represented Chris on a special appeal — unsuccessfully — said in an interview that it was wrong of the judge to admit that evidence. 

“The court allowed a police officer to come into the courtroom, take the stand, and basically say, someone told me that Christopher Sheriffe was in a gang, someone told me that he’s a bad person. Someone told me that there’s this gang called the Hustle Squad, yada, yada, yada, and it goes on. And then, of course, you can’t cross-examine him.”

What he didn’t say

During the trial, the jury heard information that was wrong. In one instance — Chris’s own words were incorrectly transcribed by police.

“I think it (the gun) was on the street from before,” Chris apparently told police, according to an official transcript. Lead investigator Sansom had been using a classic interrogation tactic, appealing to Chris to help them get the murder weapon off the street. The transcript records Chris saying he believes the murder weapon was “on the street from before” the killing.

For the jury, Chris’s words must have seemed damning. Chris was admitting to knowledge of the gun used to kill Kim Golaub.

Except that transcript was wrong.

Chris actually said: “If I could take guns off the street I would.” The actual audio is quite clear, as is a copy of the corrected transcript.

Hicks asked Ewaschuk to correct this in front of the jury, and instruct them that the transcript was wrong. Ewaschuk refused, telling Chris’s lawyer to correct it himself later in the trial. For Hicks, the damage was done. 

Also presented to the jury were the words police recalled Chris saying when he was arrested at gunpoint. According to two officers, Chris said: “I swear on my life I didn’t do it. I was just dropping off a friend. I didn’t shoot anyone.”

The Crown focused on the words, “I didn’t shoot anyone.” Chris had been arrested for murder, but the officers said they never mention it was a shooting.  

There’s no recording. One officer said he made his notes at various points that evening, but then redid them because they were messy. The other officer said he made his notes the next day. The notes entered into evidence at trial are nearly identical.

Chris, today, says he never said “I didn’t shoot anyone.” He lied on the witness stand. He says his lawyer coached him to say that he was referring to another shooting he’d heard about from weeks before. He said his lawyer felt an outright denial, against the words of two officers, would not be believed by a jury.

Asked about this by the Star, Hicks says he didn’t coach Chris to say anything. But he says it’s been so long that he “simply doesn’t remember this issue in any detail.”

DNA doesn’t lie ... or does it?

People accused in murder trials don’t always testify. They don’t have to. Both Awet and Chris did take the witness stand. When Chris testified, lawyer Hicks began by taking his client through his time as a soccer player, his overseas play, the two jobs he’d worked, and how he had been about to start work as a carpenter when he was arrested. The judge cut him off halfway through.

“Enough is enough,” Ewaschuk said. “Let’s get on to the meat.”

While one would expect the Crown attorney to be tough on an accused person, it was Awet’s defence lawyer, Liam O’Connor, who was tougher on Chris. O’Connor’s goal was to discredit him — show him to be a liar. O’Connor believed this would benefit his own client. O’Connor homed in on Chris’s claim that he hardly knew Awet. O’Connor did it with a flourish worthy of a Perry Mason drama. He set the scene by referring to the allegation that Chris had stabbed a young man who had attacked Chris with a samurai sword. (A year later, Chris would be acquitted after it was found he acted in self-defence.)

O’Connor said Chris was lying when he said he hardly knew Awet. As proof, O’Connor waved a police document that said Awet’s DNA was found on a glove at the sword attack. O’Connor’s theory was that Chris had stolen a glove from Awet, who he knew well, and planted it at the scene. This was part of O’Connor’s bigger theory that Chris was the crime boss who had arranged the murder of Kim Golaub, and that he had framed Awet for the murder, having previously tried to frame him for the stabbing.

The problem with O’Connor’s line of attack was the police document he had in his hand was wrong. It did say that Awet’s DNA was on the glove, but the document was wrong. Chris’s DNA was on the glove, which made sense as he was at the apartment where the fight occurred. 

To this day, the ɫɫ�� police have never explained the mistake. It was not corrected at the murder trial. Ewaschuk even referred to this evidence in his charge to the jury.

In a recent interview in prison, Chris said he discovered this mistake (which the Star has verified by examining police case files) two years after he began his life sentence.

“Even with the DNA. I can tell you that no lawyer wanted to believe me. No lawyer wanted to believe that that could ever happen.”

The verdict

The registrar faced the jury again. “On the count of first-degree murder, guilty or not guilty?”

The jury president stood. “Guilty,” he said. 

After the conviction, Kim Golaub’s family members were invited to give victim impact statements.

His mother, Ruth Watson, told the court how she can still remember Kim being born on a breezy hilltop in Hanover, Jamaica, and how he brought her great joy, love and laughter. Through tears, Ruth said her son was a special person whose memories will live in the hearts of his family and friends. Kim’s brother, Ryan, railed against “two young men acting on vengeance” who stole his brother’s life. Kim’s wife, Tedica, described his murder as a “senseless, cold-hearted” killing of an innocent man. She said this murder has opened her eyes to “the evil” in the world.

A first-degree murder conviction comes with an automatic life sentence, with no eligibility for parole for 25 years. 

In an interview, I asked Chris about the possibility that he could ask for his parole eligibility to be reduced after serving 15 years. This “faint hope” appeal has a better chance if the prisoner admits some responsibility. 

“The problem is,” Chris says. “I can’t take accountability for something I didn’t do and I won’t do it.”

He’s now pinning his hopes on the recently established Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission, which has been created to address growing evidence that the Canadian justice system, from time to time, gets it wrong. Unlike an appeal, which only looks to see if legal errors were made at trial, the commission would review all aspects of a case. 

James Lockyer, a leading lawyer and director of Innocence Canada, has advocated for the commission for years.

“It’s going to be a sea change for the whole criminal justice system. It’s going to create a new back end for the criminal justice system, and it’s going to amount to an acknowledgment that the criminal justice system can get it wrong.”

In prison, Chris Sheriffe says he is looking forward to another day in court. The lawyer he hoped would take his case to the new commission has recently taken a job at the Law Society of Ontario. From behind bars, Chris is searching for new counsel. “I just need to find a lawyer who will take up my case.”

Postscript: The Star presented the result of its investigation of the case, and of the case involving Lloyd Sheriffe Sr., to ɫɫ�� police. Stephanie Sayer, a spokesperson, provided this short response:

“While we appreciate your interest in revisiting these cases, both the criminal proceedings and the separate civil matter were resolved through the courts over a decade ago. As such, we have no plans to re-examine either of these matters. As you know, it is the role of police to investigate and pursue charges where the grounds exist, and the Crown’s responsibility to assess the case and make the decision to prosecute or not. In this case, Mr. Sheriffe was found guilty by a jury, his appeal was unsuccessful, and as you said, the case was extensively litigated. Any decision to reopen or re-investigate this case would rest with the courts, not the police.”