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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Thursday, January 29, 2015 | 6 Spotlight "Connected to your Community" | submitted photos At left, duty counsel meets with a man in a cramped of ce space connected to a busy waiting area in Milton's courthouse. The of ce space is one of several examples of where closets and storage areas have been transformed into work spaces. At right, a man sits at a table in the hallway outside the Family Law Information Centre. Prior to last year, the centre did not have an of ce and used this space to meet with people. Jurors often uncomfortable walking past prisoner's box continued from p.1 day and was witness to much of what is described in this story. On any given day it's not unusual to see lawyers and clients in the Milton courthouse crammed into makeshift meeting rooms that were once closets, or inmates being escorted down corridors past witnesses or even jurors. "When you have a major criminal jury trial you might have 120 to 150 prospective jurors and there's no place for them to go," Stunt said. "They will sit in the public hallway and they will see prisoners being traipsed around in shackles -- they should never see that." One of the elevators in the courthouse even works double duty, transporting prisoners from their holding cells in the basement to courtrooms, while also regularly used by judges when it's available. "The police tell me there's all kinds of security issues in the holding area and with respect to the movement of prisoners, and judges throughout the building," Stunt said. The Oakville prosecutor has practised criminal law for more than 35 years, joining O'Connor MacLeod Hanna LLP in the early 1990s. For the past two years, Stunt, along with other lawyers in the region and members of the judiciary, have actively lobbied for a new provincial courthouse in Halton. A Town Hall meeting convened by Stunt and members of the Halton County Law Association in September 2014 was widely attended by provincial and municipal politicians, Halton Police Chief Stephen Tanner, members of the judiciary and other lawyers who work in the Region. "We've gotten used to it, but it's unacceptable," Stunt said. "In metropolitan areas, this is the worst (courthouse) I go to. It's disgraceful. I can't think of any one that's worse than ours." The Ministry said Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur was not available for an interview for this story. A list of questions was submitted to a spokesperson but insidehalton.com received no response. In the basement of the Milton courthouse is another storage room that's now used by vulnerable witnesses, often youth, when testifying through closed circuit television monitors. Stunt said these spaces, or the Halton police of ces, which are also in the basement and lack windows or proper ventilation, were never meant for this purpose. "The building is jam crowded," Stunt said. "There's no space that hasn't been used for something. It is old, it's tired, and it's out of date." Around the corner is a secure area where It's absolutely imperative that I be able to consult with my client in private, with witnesses in private, not in a public corridor, not in a room where there could be 32 people sitting around listening to every word you say. Paul Stunt lawyer lawyers can meet with incarcerated clients in a dingy holding cell area that lacks any sort of privacy when trying to discuss legal matters. "There's no sound partitions," Stunt said. "There's absolutely no possibility of a private discussion with a person in custody." Most lawyers, or others such as Canadian Mental Health Association court support workers, are often forced to discuss con dential matters out in the open. Even the Family Law Information Centre had to see people at a table in a second- oor hallway until a more suitable of ce space was made available last year. "It's absolutely imperative that I be able to consult with my client in private, with witnesses in private, not in a public corridor, not in a room where there could be 32 people sitting around listening to every word you say," Stunt said. In the third- oor courtroom frequently reserved for sexual assault or murder cases, the placement of a prisoner's box often makes jurors feel "uncomfortable." "The jurors have to walk right past the front of that prisoner's box to get to the jury box," he said. "I've seen cases where jurors actually will take a wide berth so they don't have to get close to the prisoner's box." Stunt said in other cases police of cers will stand in front of the prisoner's box. "That sent a pretty bad message to the jury that the person here is dangerous, and that shouldn't happen either," Stunt said. Local MPPs have toured the run-down Milton courthouse, expressing their support for the building of a new facility with Halton's population of 518,311 forecast to grow by another 20 per cent by 2021. Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn, who's spoken with Meilleur as well as her predecessor about the matter, said the lack of privacy was an issue for him during the courthouse visit. see Legal on p.21 NEIL OLIVER Vice ­President and Group Publisher DAVID HARVEY Regional General Manager JILL DAVIS Halton Region Editor in Chief Volume 53 | Number 8 447 Speers Road, Oakville ON (905) 845-3824 Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone (416) 340-1981. 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