Except for completion of his two-year conditional sentence and a possible police board hearing, the long saga of trials may have ended for Ned Maodus, a former Mono resident and member of the once-elite Toronto police drug squad.

(The disposition of other charges including allegations of kicking a Windsor police officer, road rage at London, and trying to pick up an undercover female police officer posing as a hooker could not be immediately determined.)

Mr. Maodus, along with five other members of the elite squad, was charged in Toronto with numerous offences in 2004 after several alleged criminals arrested by the squad for alleged drug crimes complained of theft, assault, extortion and other such things.

Those charges were all stayed by Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer last week because of delays in bringing them to trial. In the meantime, more than 200 of the drug charges the squad had laid had been dismissed because of the charges against the officers.

The saga of investigations and trials actually began almost 12 years ago when, in 1996, the squad came under scrutiny based on information from accused persons. This led to a $3-million RCMP investigation that generated a reported 500,000 pages of evidence on which charges of theft, fraud, forgery and breach of trust were laid in 2000. Those were stayed in 2002, and brought back in 2004.

In the meantime, Mr. Maodus found himself facing charges in Dufferin, based on a Mono female's complaints of assault, sexual assault and threatening, among other things. (Publication of the complainant's identity was banned.) That was in March 2002.

According to evidence at a preliminary hearing into those charges, Dufferin OPP notified Toronto police that they had found confidential Toronto police files among other things at Mr. Maodus's Mono home.

That led to a Toronto police investigation at the Mono residence, and the laying of drug charges against Maodus in Dufferin.

The charges laid by Dufferin OPP became almost a saga by themselves. There was a lengthy preliminary hearing in Orangeville, and committal for a Superior Court trial before a judge in Brampton. Then, in February 2005, Mr. Justice Terrance O'Connor stayed the charges based on a delay in bringing them to trial. That decision was later overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

When the Dufferin charges finally came down to the wire in a Brampton court last fall, all of the drug evidence - including possession of 3.5 grams of heroin, 45.5 grams of cocaine and four ecstasy tablets, as well as possession of a prohibited Glock pistol, butterfly knives, brass knuckles plus careless storage of a .357 Magnum revolver and a shotgun - was ruled inadmissible.

At that final Dufferin trial, Mr. Maodus pleaded guilty before Mr. Justice Bruce Durno to charges of assault causing bodily harm, threatening and pointing a firearm. In a joint submission by Crown Mary Ellen Cullen and defence lawyer Peter Brauti, all other charges were dropped.

The Dufferin drug investigation was prominent not only in the Dufferin charges against Mr. Maodus, but in the Toronto trials as well.

Dufferin OPP Detective Constable Jill Manser told the courts that Toronto officers investigating the Dufferin offences tried to piggy-back on the Dufferin search warrant to obtain their evidence without securing a warrant.

This, in part, is how reporter Nick Pron described the incident in the Toronto Star: "An internal affairs detective acted like a bully, pressuring another officer to break the law as he investigated allegations of corruption against a crew of Toronto drug squad officers, court documents state. Det. Sgt. Bryce Evans, along with other detectives from the special task force, were 'crossing the line' in their investigation of Staff Sgt. John Schertzer, head of a sixman crew accused of beating up drug dealers and stealing their money, court documents show.

"What Evans wanted the Ontario Provincial Police constable to do in March 2002 was sneak evidence out of the house of one of the officers, Const. Ned Maodus, who was being investigated on an unrelated domestic dispute. The OPP officer was to have let Evans see the evidence before she took it back. But OPP Const. Jill Manser stood her ground, refusing to go along with what she believed was an 'unlawful act,' a court would later hear."

At the earlier Dufferin hearing, in which Mr. Brauti had the Maodus trial delayed pending an investigation of that, Mr. Brauti described Ms. Manser as a person of great courage for standing her ground against officers who outranked her.

According to the Star article, the Dufferin incident was "one of three instances of alleged misconduct by internal affairs officers described by Justice Ian Nordheimer last week. He stayed the charges against Schertzer, Maodus and the other members of the drug squad over fears they weren't getting a fair trial."

Ms. Manser had testified a year earlier, before Mr. Justice Casey Hill, apparently as part of an investigation of the Toronto investigation of the squad. Then, she described the action of Mr. Evans and his colleagues as wanting to do a "warrantless search" of the Maodus house. Court documents reveal that Ms. Manser felt bullied by the Toronto officers, who repeatedly wanted her to include their names on the OPP search warrant.

She told the court that she considered that to be serious misconduct, as their corruption investigation had nothing to do with the OPP one.

That misconduct, and Ms. Manser's evidence, led to the inadmissibility of seized notebooks and certain other evidence.