Donald Brodie has been found guilty of criminal negligence causing bodily harm and flight causing bodily harm but not guilty of two counts of wilfully resisting or obstructing a peace officer.
In 2013, Brodie was driving a car that evaded a police road check in Rutland, prompting a police chase that ended when a 41-year-old newspaper carrier was hit, seriously injuring him and putting him in a coma for a week.
Natahan Fahl was initially charged as the driver until Brodie wrote a dozen letters during the course of several months to police and the media, implicating himself as the driver.
Brodie was charged in June 2014 and charged against Fahl were dropped.
But in court, during his trial, Brodie said the confessions in the letters were lies in an attempt to get his friend, Fahl, out of jail.
During her decision, Justice Martha Devlin said she didn’t believe Brodie’s testimony on the stand, calling it a “convoluted web of lies and deception” and found him guilty of the two more serious charges.
Brodie's letters continued after charges against Fahl were dropped, which Devlin says proves his claim that he only confessed to get Fahl out of jail, to be false.
One letter Devlin read out during her verdict, said in portion, “I’m trying to take responsibility for my s***. I did it.”
Brodie has said that he follows the "g-code", or gangster code, which Devlin said further led her to believe that his letters were true, because he wouldn't have wanted someone else to go to jail for his crime.
Devlin found him not guilty on the obstruction charges, saying the crown didn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did.
Brodie will be sentenced at a later date and a pre-sentence report is prepared.