Greg Brodsky, a Winnipeg lawyer, has represented over 1,000 clients accused of homicide over 55 years of practice, changing Canadian criminal law through several landmark cases. Some of Brodsky's most significant contributions include establishing the defense of Battered Woman Syndrome and influencing how juries are instructed on insanity and reasonable doubt. Though now in his 80s, Brodsky continues taking on high-profile cases and advocating vigorously for his clients. He is widely respected for his tenacious advocacy and role in reforming Canadian law.

1. When someone in Manitoba is accused of murder, more times than not it is Greg
Brodsky’s phone that rings. And it has been ringing constantly for more than five
decades.
Brodsky, now in his 55th year as a lawyer, recently reached a milestone few, if any, others
will; he has now represented 1,000 clients in murder and manslaughter cases.
Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby, a legal titan himself, calls Brodsky "a hero to us all."
"A completely tenacious advocate, who knows his duty to his client and to the public,"
Ruby says. "Perhaps at his best in the Supreme Court of Canada, where I’ve appeared
with him.
!!NextArticle
By: Kevin Rollason | Posted: 05/25/2018 7:00 PM |
Brodsky, for the defence
Winnipeg lawyer has represented more than 1,000 accused killers, and has helped change
some of Canada's criminal laws

2. "He works and prepares far in advance so that no question from the court catches him by
surprise. One of our greatest advocates."
Brodsky has represented a significant number of Manitobans in cases that garnered
headlines across the country. Names such as Angelique Lyn Lavallee, Thomas Sophonow,
Darren Morrissette, Robert Starr, and James Driskell.
But it isn’t really the sheer number of cases Brodsky has amassed during his career that
will be his true legacy. It’s the scope and breadth of what he has been able to accomplish
in those cases and how he has changed several criminal laws in this country and what
judges have said during their instructions to juries.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
After 55 years as a lawyer, Greg Brodsky has no plans to retire. "I'm doing what I love doing," he says.

3. His fingerprints are all over sections of the Criminal Code of Canada.
But Brodsky is dismissive about what his numerical achievement means.
"It is really an attendance record," he says. "It doesn’t mean I’ve done a good job... on the
other hand, when I fight hard and find a defence where others can’t, we’ve created
jurisprudence we didn’t have before."
Brodsky was just 22 in 1963 when he was called to the bar.
Instead of keeping track of how many homicide cases he has handled, he could just as
easily have been logging how many lawsuits he had filed and how many people he
successfully sued.
"I didn’t know I wanted to go into law, period," he says. "I applied to go in business and
commercial law. But they said I’d be bored."
Brodsky ended up practising at Walsh Micay, a firm known for specializing in criminal
matters. But criminal law is not where he started.
"I was in the civil department and another lawyer was in the criminal department," he
said. "They switched me to criminal. They didn’t even ask me. They just did it.
"And that’s been my life."
One of Brodsky’s most significant legal contributions involved the so-called "burning
bed," or battered woman, defence.
"I knew I had to educate the courts," he says.

4. He became the first Canadian lawyer to successfully use
the defence of Battered Woman Syndrome when he
represented Victoria Savoyard, a Métis woman who
stabbed her common-law husband. She was acquitted
in May 1986, when a jury in Kenora accepted Brodsky’s
evidence.
But it wasn’t until a 1992 Supreme Court ruling involving
Angelique Lyn Lavallee that the legal landscape
involving Battered Woman Syndrome was changed.
Lavallee fatally shot her common-law partner, Kevin
Rust, in the back of the head in 1986, as he left the
room following an argument. During the trial, court was
told she had suffered frequent abuse from Rust.PEG FREE PRESS FILES
early 1980s, Brodsky represented Dr. Henry
ntaler in his fight to perform abortions.
ay at Walsh Micay, ‘I’ll do whatever case you think
win.’ I had to figure out a defence. Sometimes it was
other times it was harder.

5. But the contentious part of the trial was the judge allowing a psychiatrist to testify that
Lavallee would have believed she was trapped in the relationship and the shooting was "a
final desperate act by a woman who sincerely believed that she would be killed that
night."
"The trick with Angelique Lavallee," Brodsky says, "was to get her to make a statement to
the police.
"Tell the story. She said when her significant other was going out he said, ‘I’ll get you
later.’ (Psychiatrist Fred Shane) and other experts testified what that meant to her.
"I got in that medical evidence and I went to the Supreme Court. Could the doctor testify?
JOE BRYKSA / WIINIPEG FREE PRESS FILES
Greg Brodsky, seen here in 2004, has often represented people whose cases are followed closely by the media.

6. They said the doctor could. We ended up with Battered Wife Syndrome in Canada. And,
after that case, I was able to use that defence more."
Another landmark case involved Robert Chaulk, 15, and Darren Morrissette, 16. They
were both convicted of killing 88-year-old George Haywood inside a home they broke into
in September 1985.
The case is still seen as the leading decision on mental disorder — insanity — defence.
According to the majority Supreme Court decision, a trial judge must instruct a jury that if
the accused has a mental disorder it means they cannot understand or appreciate
society’s moral condemnation of the conduct.
The Supreme Court ordered that Chaulk and Morrissette should get a new trial and it was
there they were found not guilty by reason of insanity.
"That changed the law of insanity," Brodsky says, noting people were being convicted
PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Greg Brodsky talks to the media last year in relation to one of his cases.

7. before if they knew what they were doing was wrong. Now lawyers are allowed to argue
the person’s mental illness makes them not able to appreciate their conduct will be
condemned by society.
"The change was, if you think your neighbours would approve of what you did, then
you’re not criminally responsible. That was a big jump. Everybody that uses insanity as a
defence has the benefit of that."
Brodsky also represented Robert Starr, who was granted a new trial by the Supreme
Court in 2000, after it ruled some judges weren’t instructing juries correctly about what
"reasonable doubt" means when determining guilt or innocence.
Starr was originally convicted of first-degree murder in 1994 for the execution-style
killings Bernard Cook, the vice-president of the Manitoba Warriors gang, and his girlfriend
Darlene Weselowski.
The Supreme Court said judges have to tell juries they can find an accused person guilty
beyond a reasonable doubt only if they are almost certain the accused committed the
offence.
The court said jurors could have concluded that they could find Starr guilty "on a balance
of probabilities."
It said the judge at the Starr trial "told the jury that they could convict on the basis of
something less than absolute certainty of guilt, but did not explain, in essence, how much
less.... The reasonable likelihood that the jury applied the wrong standard of proof raises
a realistic possibility that the accused’s convictions constitute a miscarriage of justice."
At the time, Brodsky was quoted as saying "the Supreme Court is nervous that people are
being convicted who ought not to be. We have to be sure we are convicting the guilty."

8. Daniel Vernon Williams was Brodsky’s client in case No.
1,000.
Williams was recently convicted of manslaughter in the
death of his 21-month-old daughter, Kierra Elektra Star
Williams. She died July 17, 2014, of internal bleeding
from an abdominal injury inflicted by her mother.
Williams was convicted because he was aware of the
injuries, but did not help the child.
Brodsky had several other active murder and
manslaughter cases at the same time.
"I’ve figured out I’ve had seven others I’ve been working
on since then at the same time," he says.
"I didn’t mark them down because they have a
conviction, but not a sentence yet. And right now I have
14 on the go, plus the seven."
Brodsky represented Thomas Sophonow at the first two of his three murder trials.
Sophonow was accused of killing doughnut shop server Barbara Stoppel in 1981. The
Supreme Court finally ruled Sophonow didn’t have to go through a fourth murder trial
and he was acquitted.
Winnipeg police and the provincial government later apologized to Sophonow, saying he
didn’t commit the murder, and a judicial inquiry concluded investigating officers had
tunnel vision and the Crown had failed to disclose information to his defence attorneys.
Sophonow was later paid $2.3 million in compensation.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Greg Brodsky has represented 1,000 people cha
with homicide.

9. James Driskell is another of his clients who was
convicted of murder in 1991, but later found to be
wrongfully convicted. Brodsky later told an inquiry into
Driskell’s conviction that he believes RCMP labs are
biased in favour of police. Driskell was awarded more
than $4 million in compensation.
Brodsky represented Vaughan Pollen, the Sturgeon
Creek High School student who shot and killed 16-year-
old student Ken Maitland in a shops classroom on Oct.
19, 1978. Court was told that the student had taunted
Pollen about his being a fan of the rock band Kiss for
weeks before the shooting. Pollen was later found not
guilty by reason of insanity.
"I said, ‘Why not ask him how long is death," Brodsky
says. "It’s a simple question. My guy thought you could do a do-over. He didn’t know
when you’re dead, it’s forever.
"You have to get involved with your clients and their thinking. That’s when you find out
what’s not plain to the average person."
Lawyers generally have to research case law before making a sentencing submission or
countering the Crown’s after their clients have been convicted. Brodsky often makes
reference to outcomes he’s been involved in.
"If there is a precedent in a case, it is a precedent I worked on," he says.
When he began, he told colleagues he’d take on any and all homicide cases.
"I would say at Walsh Micay, ‘I’ll do whatever case you
GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES
rodsky represented Thomas Sophonow in the
o of his three murder trials. It was later
ined he was wrongly convicted.

10. think you can’t win,’" he says. "I had to figure out a
defence. Sometimes it was hard and other times it was
harder."
Back then, Brodsky and other defence lawyers were
acutely aware of the risks if they weren’t able to get
their clients acquitted or were unsuccessful in attempts
to have sentences reduced. The death penalty was still
on the books; the last executions in Canada were
carried out in 1962, but the federal government didn’t
abolish it until 1976.
Dwayne Johnston, one of the four men charged in the
1971 slaying of Helen Betty Osborne near The Pas, and
the only one convicted, in 1987, was Brodsky’s final
client who could, theoretically, have been sentenced to
die. But, because so many years had passed between
the crime and the time the men were charged, that
sentence was not a possibility.
Brodsky admits there are times he still has to think about the death penalty even today.
"I still do in a sense because of extradition cases. I have to check to see if these
(American) states have death penalties," he says.
While Brodsky is best known for his homicide cases, he represents clients in other
criminal matters where victims are alive and able to testify.
Such was the case when he acted for a soccer player acquitted of assaulting a goalie after
a judge ruled the kicking and stomping of the goalie’s head during a July 2009 game —
MIKE APORIUS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES
James Driskell spent 13 years in prison for a mur
didn't commit. Driskell is another of Brodsky's cl
who was found to be wrongfully convicted. Brod
later told an inquiry into Driskell’s conviction tha
believes RCMP labs are biased in favour of police

11. while "contrary to the rules of soccer, it was not beyond soccer’s playing culture, let alone
gravely so, which is required for sporting misconduct to be a crime."
"It is part of the game," Brodsky says matter-of-factly. "You are consenting it; that’s why
you have penalties."
He represented pro-choice advocate Dr. Henry Morgentaler who, ultimately, helped
convince the government to legalize abortions in Canada. Morgentaler hired Brodsky
when he opened the doors to his then-illegal clinic in Winnipeg in 1983.
"His group said, ‘You should get somebody who supports the cause,’ and he said, ‘I don’t
want to be convicted — that’s why I got Brodsky.’"
WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES
Dr. Henry Morgentaler, with Brodsky to his left, is arrested at his then-illegal abortion clinic in 1985 following a police raid.

12. Brodsky credits his wife Sylvia for helping him through law school. They have two sons;
Dan is a prominent criminal lawyer in Toronto, and Aaron is a psychologist based in
Washington, D.C.
Over the years, Brodsky has served in various roles for several bodies connected to the
legal profession, both locally and nationally; the first president of what’s now called the
Manitoba Criminal Defence Lawyers’ Association from 1976 to 1983; chairman of the
Canadian Bar Association’s justice and criminal justice sections; chairman of the Law
Society of Manitoba’s discipline committee from 1979 to 1981; and its ethics committee in
1984-85.
Brodsky was also honoured by the province decades ago when he was appointed a
Queen’s Counsel, which gives him the right to wear silk robes instead of the standard
variety lawyers wear when they appear in superior courts such as Court of Queen’s
Bench and the Supreme Court.
Away from the law, Brodsky was a president of Skills Unlimited and the Shaarey Zedek
Synagogue, and a director of the Sair Centre of Learning.
Even after 55 years in the trenches, he’s not resting on his laurels.
Brodsky, who is representing one of the two women convicted of killing 19-year-old
Serena McKay on Sagkeeng First Nation last year, argued successfully a few weeks ago
against the court considering victim impact statements from people with no direct
connection to the slain teen. In addition to statements from family and friends, the
Crown submitted statements from McKay’s family and friends, along with those of eight
people living as far away as New York and Texas who had seen a video showing the
deadly assault.
The courts "cannot just create eligible writers of victim impact statements by seeing a

13. video," Brodsky says.
He represents Andrea Giesbrecht, the woman convicted
of concealing the remains of six dead infants in a
storage locker. She was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in
prison. Last month, he was unsuccessful in an attempt
to have her released on bail while awaiting her appeal
hearing.
As well, Brodsky is representing a former Kelvin High
School student who was three months away from his
18th birthday when he fatally stabbed another teen on
the school’s grounds. He has argued against sentencing
the man, now 20, as an adult. A judge will render a decision next month.
"When people come to me, it is hard to reason.... They think if they hire me I can get them
off. I have to tell them I don’t have magic powder in my pocket," he says. "If they had a
real defence anyone could see then they could get any lawyer.
"Sometimes it’s what Harry Walsh taught me: people come to me because of the quality
of the fight and not the verdict."
James Lockyer, a founding director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly
Convicted, now known as Innocence Canada, said Brodsky "has quite a legacy, to say the
least."
"I know he has done the most of them (homicide trials) in Manitoba, but also the rest of
the country. There’s no one else in Canada who can match him," Lockyer says.
"Greg is just known as an icon for defence counsel — and he is still doing it. Greg has had
an extraordinary career and he’s still going strong.
ance footage of Andrea Giesbrecht from the
ips Street U-Haul in Winnipeg on October 3,
he footage was supplied as evidence at her
odsky is her lawyer.

14. "May he live forever."
Jody Ostapiw, current president of the Manitoba Criminal Defence Lawyers’ Association,
said the number of homicide clients Brodsky has represented is "unbelievable."
"His contributions to criminal law in this province, and this country, cannot be
overstated," Ostapiw says.
"As a lawyer called (to the bar) in 2004, when I look up case law I see his name over and
over... he has probably forgotten more law than I know."
Ostapiw says she and others also appreciate how helpful he is to young lawyers when
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Known as a tenacious advocate, Greg Brodsky has changed the legal landscape in Canada.

15. Brodsky’s high-profile cases
! Angelique Lyn Lavallee — The Canadian precedent for the battered woman defence would be a
career-defining case for any other lawyer, but it was just one of several Brodsky has been involved in
that resulted in changes to the law. Lavallee shot her common-law husband, Kevin Rust, in 1986, to
escape years of abuse.
! Darren Morrissette — He, along with Robert Chaulk, were convicted in the 1985 slaying of 88-year-old
George Haywood. The pair believed they were superhumans destined to rule the world and they killed
Haywood as proof of their power. The case is cited as the leading decision on mental disorder defence.
! Robert Starr — He was convicted of first-degree murder in the execution-style slayings of Darlene
Weselowski and Bernard Cook in 1994. But a new trial was ordered by the Supreme Court — and new
instructions were given to trial judges to tell juries — when it was determined the trial judge gave the
wrong standard of proof for what “reasonable doubt” means.
! Thomas Sophonow — Brodsky defended him during his first two trials against a charge of killing
doughnut shop server Barbara Stoppel just before Christmas in 1981. It was later determined Sophonow
was wrongly convicted and he received $2.3 million in compensation from the province.
! James Driskell — He was wrongfully convicted for the slaying of Perry Harder in 1991. DNA tests later
discredited hair samples used at the trial and years later it was learned the Crown hadn’t disclosed it
paid thousands of dollars to two key witnesses who testified against Driskell. He was later awarded more
than $4 million in compensation.
! Frank Ostrowski — He has been fighting to clear his name since his 1987 conviction for the drug-
related slaying of Robert Nieman in 1986. The former hairstylist and cocaine dealer spent 23 years in
prison before being granted bail in 2009 after new information surfaced about a secret deal made with a
key Crown witness. The federal government sent the case to the Manitoba Court of Appeal for review in
they are starting out.
"He is just an all-round great guy. He has truly helped change the law. Not everyone can
say they helped develop the law and the legal community."
Most lawyers Brodsky’s age would be talking about retirement if they hadn’t already hung
up their robes.
Brodsky points to Walsh, his mentor, who was still Canada’s oldest working lawyer when
he died at 97 in 2011.
"I’m doing what I love doing," he says, chuckling. "And people are paying me."
kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
Read more by Kevin Rollason.

16. 2014, saying there was a reasonable likelihood of a wrongful conviction. The court has yet to deliver a
decision.
! Jerry Stolar — Brodsky represented the former Winnipeg police officer who, with his patrol partner
Barry Nielsen, were convicted of killing Nielsen’s brother-in-law Paul Clear, and was later successful in
getting the Appeal Court to ask for a new trial. Another lawyer took over the case and Stolar was
convicted when a new witness came forward.
! Edwin Dennis Proctor — Possibly Brodsky’s longest-term client. He was charged with the strangling
death of Catherine Cluney in 1979, but he wasn’t convicted until 1995. A judge ruled he was not fit to
stand trial in 1980, and he was committed to the Selkirk Mental Health Centre. In 1994, a jury
determined he could be tried.
! Edward Andronovich — He was charged with killing his wife behind the Grant Park High School in
1990, but forensic evidence later proved he couldn’t have committed the crime. Another man was
eventually convicted of the slaying.
! Vaughan Pollen — The Sturgeon Creek High School student shot and killed 16-year-old Ken Maitland
in a school classroom in 1978. Pollen, who was later found not guilty of the slaying by reason of insanity,
pulled the trigger after weeks of taunting about being a fan of the rock band Kiss.
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