A court clerk was fired from her job and pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice after she looked up a wiretapping warrant – only to find out her own fiance was the target of a murder investigation and their shared home had been bugged.
The case of Samantha Lewis reveals not only the efforts made by Ottawa prosecutors to shield an investigation from the walls of the Elgin Street courthouse, but also reveals new details about a murder investigation that has ended. That investigation has so far resulted in no murder charges against a group of male detectives believed to be responsible for two murders in the city.
Ottawa police homicide detectives launched Project Game in February 2021, Crown prosecutor Simon Heaney said in an Ottawa courtroom on June 15 this year, according to a court transcript of that day’s court hearing obtained by CBC News.
Heaney, an out-of-town prosecutor, was brought in to try the case because of “some of the players involved,” he told the court when he identified himself.
2 kills “the main focus”
The project focused on historically unsolved murders, with a “primary focus on two murders in 2018,” Heaney said, both believed by police to have been committed by the same group of people in Ottawa.
Ottawa police publicly announced the project in April 2021 as a task force reviewing nearly two dozen unsolved murders, just five days after securing court authorization to intercept private communications of multiple targets, including a man identified in court as Yasin Mohammed.
No charges have been filed against Mohammed in connection with the project.
In 2014, in an unrelated case, he was charged with human trafficking offenses in Newmarket, Ontario.
A judge’s authorization to intercept private communications and violate the otherwise constitutional rights of any targets is only valid for 60 days.
During those first 60 days, Heaney told the court, police discovered that Samantha Lewis was Muhammad’s fiancee and that she worked at the Superior Court as a court clerk.
Defense of the investigation
Wiretapping can only be authorized by a Superior Court judge, and because Lewis works directly on those cameras, police and prosecutors had to figure out a way to protect their investigation.
Homicide detective Chris Benson advised Crown attorney Brian Holowka of Lewis’ work, her relationship with the target and that there was no information gathered by police to suggest she was involved in criminal activity, Heaney told the court.
Holowka then met with Judge Callum McLeod, a regional senior high court judge, “to mitigate any compromise with the investigation” and prevent Lewis from being exposed to case work, Heaney said.
The hatched plan had Assistant District Attorney Carl Lemm take Benson’s telegraphed request to a specific court clerk, who knew he had to take it directly to Judge Robert Smith, bypassing any work from Lewis.
In June 2021, the police applied for a second telegraph for another 60 days. This time, police identified Lewis as “another known person” whose communications could be intercepted by virtue of her connection to the target. It was a given.
On June 4, police made an “authorized surreptitious entry” into the Muscari Street townhouse shared by Louis and Mohammed and installed a listening device.
An obstacle in the plans
Another 60 days are approaching when Judge Smith grants a third wiretap authorization on July 30. But an error in that warrant meant police had to correct a typo before returning the amended forms back to Smith, Heaney told the court.
Prosecutor Carl Lemm was not available to carry out the plan to circumvent Lewis. The documents were given to another prosecutor, Mark Holmes, who was unaware of the complications in the case.
He went into the judge’s chambers at 12:40 a.m. on August 5, looked for someone at the counter, handed the envelope to a clerk and asked her to deliver it to Judge Smith.
The clerk was Samantha Lewis.
The problem, however, was that there were two Justice Smiths on the Ottawa Supreme Court.
He needed to know where to deliver the envelope.
“Surveillance video footage reveals that Ms. Lewis took the envelope and returned to her desk, where she was observed removing the contents of the envelope, then quickly looking through it, and then placing the contents back and exiting the camera’s view, where he delivers it as intended. “
The video evidence is clear that she looked at the cover of the application for no more than 60 seconds – but when she did, she saw her own name and her fiance’s.
Heaney called the circumstances that led to her disclosure to the police investigation “unintentional and fortuitous.”
“You Get Me In Trouble”
What happened next was the basis of the charge that led to her conviction.
“Ms. Lewis was observed returning to her desk and texting on her cellular device,” Heaney said.
But the police were intercepting some of her communications. Monitors in the Ottawa police phone room alerted investigators that Lewis was sending messages suggesting she had seen the warrant.
At 2:18 p.m., Muhammad was caught on the phone telling another person, whose identity was not released in court, that Lewis had sent a message saying he had learned something bad at work and he should be home when she arrived.
Since the disclosure of the wiretapping, the intercepted communications … have largely ended.- Simon Heaney, prosecuting
At 16:28 Louis came home from work and immediately asked Mohammed where his phone was and told him to turn it off.
However, the home was already bugged.
As they left the townhouse, the last words caught on tape: “What I’m going to tell you, I don’t need to know that information…”
A few hours later, the audio probe heard them fighting in the house, Heaney told the court.
“You’re getting me in trouble and ruining my life and ruining everything I’ve worked for,” Lewis told her fiance,
She told him he was destroying her life and family and to “pack up and leave.”
“I saw ‘Yasin Mohammed’ and my heart dropped out of my head,” she said on the audio.
“I saw my name,” she said, and Muscari’s address.
Police later caught Mohammed communicating with “some other men”, informing them of the police investigation and the wire. Their identities were not released in court.
It was a very difficult situation and she reacted somewhat impulsively.- Michael Spratt, attorney
That same month, after Lewis’ wiretapping was revealed, police appealed to the public for help in solving unsolved cases and only highlighted the flaws in the evidence in the 2018 murders of Tarek Dakhil and Yonis Barkhadal.
“After the disclosure of the wiretapping, the intercepted communications … largely ended,” Heaney said.
“The murders remain unsolved.
Lewis did not report any material parts of the investigation, nor did he advise Muhammad to destroy evidence, Heaney said. But she also didn’t report what she did to her superiors.
Arrested and charged
The police knew what was happening in real time, but arrested Lewis on September 10, 2021 and released her on a promise to appear.
A CBC reporter’s request for the information — a public document held by the court that lists the allegations and charges against a defendant — in Lewis’ case, sent on April 29 of this year, went unanswered by court officials for nearly two months. Unprompted, officials sent the requested information on June 27 — 12 days after Lewis pleaded guilty and after the case was resolved.
I agree with what my lawyer said, the only thing I would like to say is that I am truly sorry.- Samantha Lewis
In that resolution, prosecutor Heaney and Lewis’ defense attorney, Michael Spratt, jointly sought a conditional discharge that would have saved Lewis from a criminal record after a year of probation. A condition of her release is that she not seek or maintain employment in the justice sector.
Lewis, now 30, was first hired by the Attorney General’s Office in 2018. She initially worked as a court reporter, taking notes and recording court proceedings. Less than a year later, she became a clerk of court, passing a security clearance and swearing an oath not to reveal any information she came to know in that role. During the spring and summer of 2021, Lewis served on the Supreme Court bench in Ottawa.
“This type of crime strikes right at the heart of justice, but on the other hand you have a young offender with no criminal record who comes to this by accident and sees her own name,” Heaney said.
Heaney said the wiretapping had made only “modest progress” on outstanding cases until it was compromised.
Spratt told the court his client had never been arrested or even stopped and led a pro-social life.
The person you thought you knew probably isn’t the person you know.- Judge Michael March
“It was a very difficult situation and she reacted kind of impulsively,” Spratt said.
“She admits … that she should have behaved differently and that she made an error in judgment.”
Lewis addressed the court directly: “I agree with what my lawyer said, the only thing I would like to say is that I am truly sorry.”
Ontario Judge Michael March accepted Lewis’ plea and joint sentencing.
“I believe you when you express your regrets… You realize you’ve made it difficult. The person you thought you knew was probably not the person you knew,” he said.
“What the level of Mr Mohammed’s involvement was, if any, we will probably never know at this stage.” It was pure coincidence that you were there to collect that envelope from the Crown attorney that day.’
Perhaps this is a life lesson you will carry with you to the grave.-Justice Michael March
March said Lewis was likely shocked and distraught and her survival instinct kicked in.
“Human nature…
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