Questions about the Barry and Honey Sherman murder case: Part 1
What exactly is Detective Dennis Yim doing?
On a recent trip to Toronto’s criminal courts, I ran into Detective Sergeant Brandon Price, the lead detective on the Honey and Barry Sherman murder case. Although I was unprepared and unable to take notes, I jumped at the chance to ask him a few questions, including one about an aspect of the investigation that’s been bothering me for awhile, namely Detective Constable Dennis Yim’s role.
Yim has been assigned to the case full time for five and a half years. While Price has been working on other homicides since 2018, Yim has no other assignments. I’ve never heard of a police investigation that works like this. And the explanation that’s been tossed around as to why Yim is needed full time — that he’s writing affidavits to get search warrants — doesn’t make sense either. Five and half years is a lot of time to write a bunch of affidavits in which much of the content is repeated.
While Price didn’t explicitly acknowledge how unusual Yim’s role was, he didn’t deny it nor did he try to pretend it was run of the mill. When I pushed him about what Yim was doing, he answered that the Sherman investigation was “a very unique situation” and the case was “very complex.”
Because this was an impromptu hallway encounter and I was racking my brain for questions to ask, all the while very conscious Price could just turn and walk away, I overlooked an important follow-up question — namely, why he saw the case as so unique.
Sure, the Sherman murder investigation is high profile and given how long it’s dragged on, the file is no doubt extensive and complex. Yes, the circumstances of the case are indeed weird, but on another level, murder is murder, especially if you’re a homicide detective. To paraphrase a famous writer, while all typical murders are alike, each atypical murder is atypical in its own way. So it is with the Sherman case.
The only thing I can think of that makes this investigation “unique” is the outsized role played by lawyers for Apotex, Barry Sherman’s company. The Goodmans firm was aggressive in invoking solicitor-client privilege in ways that almost certainly slowed the investigation down and might also have severely hampered it. While this has been reported on in the past, the issue of the lawyers’ involvement, could use a lot more sunshine.
The following two passages, taken from an affidavit written one month after the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman, outline just some of the constraints placed on the Toronto Police Service by Apotex’s lawyers:
The TPS will provide any documents that they wish to seize to Goodmans, who will review them to identify any documents or portions thereof that may be subject to a legal privilege. Documents that are not so identified by Goodmans, and any portions of documents that are not so identified and that can reasonably be extracted on site, will be provided to the TPS by Goodmans and may be seized in accordance with the terms of this search warrant. (page 73)
***
Following its privilege review, Goodmans will provide in a secure manner copies of any non-privileged documents and portions thereof, and a copy of the privilege log, to Det. Brandon Price or his designate at the TPS to be used in the police investigation. Goodmans or the Experts will retain in its secure possession the copies of any privileged documents and portions thereof that are not otherwise returned to the TPS. No person shall be entitled to access the copies of privileged documents or portions thereof retained in Goodmans’ or the Experts’ possession without a Court Order or, in the case of access by TPS, the consent of the potential privilege holder. (page 74)
I don’t know why the Sherman family, who owned Apotex at the time, and Jack Kay, who took over as Apotex CEO after his good friend Barry Sherman’s death, would support or push for such an arrangement. Nor do I understand why lawyers for Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General agreed to these terms, given there was an ongoing murder investigation where time was of the essence, not to mention the precedent it could set.
The conspiratorial view of the situation is that this would be a good way to cover up the potential involvement of anyone from Apotex in the murders. The non-conspiratorial, but still disheartening, view is that this was a case of out-of-control lawyer brain. As much as solicitor-client privilege is important, it has to be balanced with other rights and privileges and shouldn’t take automatic priority, as seems to have been allowed to happen in this case.
I’m guessing that this lawyerification of everything might also be the reason behind Yim’s strange gig. If he’s some kind of intermediary between the Apotex lawyers, the Attorney General and the police, that could definitely eat up a lot of time, and would indeed be unique and complex.
Given the unlikelihood that anyone involved in this process would be willing to elaborate on the use of solicitor-client privilege, beyond the unsatisfactory explanations already proffered, I thought putting Yim’s affidavit out there for everyone to read in full might be another way to get discussion going.
Share your insights in the comments or email me at ann.brocklehurst@gmail.com
Dear readers
I had to remove two comments because they crossed the line and accused specific people of murder. Substack does not allow me to delete only the offending parts so, unfortunately, the entire comments had to go including the good stuff.
Ab
Yim’s affidavit appears to show there isn’t much content they can rely on for an investigation other than the physical stuff at the murder site. Fascinating. I love to hear speculation.