An Update about Pickton...BC court rejects Picton's Appeal

B.C. court rejects Robert Pickton's appeal

June 25, 2009

CP FILE PHOTO

William Pickton, seen here in a 2002 photo, was charged with killing 26 Vancouver-area women, aged 20 to 46June 25, 2009

PETTI FONG
WESTERN CANADA BUREAU

Vancouver–One of the costliest and lengthiest murder trials in B.C. history involving convicted serial killer Robert Pickton will not be reopened after the province's highest courts this morning found there was not enough evidence to order a new trial.

Pickton, the Port Coquitlam pig farmer who was convicted in December 2007 on six counts of second degree murder, is serving a minimum of 25 years in prison before parole.

He had originally been charged with 26 counts of first-degree murder but 20 of those counts were severed and Pickton went on trial before a judge and jury on the deaths of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey.

Pickton's victims were women with drug addictions working in the sex trade in the Downtown Eastside when they disappeared over a period of five years.

The Court of Appeal in B.C. heard two connected appeals related to the year long trial which began January 2007 and concluded with a conviction after a 10 day jury deliberation in December of that year.

Pickton's lawyers appealed the decision saying chiefly the B.C. Supreme Court judge erred in his instruction to the jury after they returned during their deliberations in day six with a question about how to proceed if they were uncertain whether Pickton acted alone.

The crown appealed as well to the Court of Appeal saying that the lower courts should not have severed only six of the 26 counts on the indictment and errors in law by the trial judge about the relevance of planning the murders.

B.C.'s criminal justice branch which oversees crown prosecutors has said that it will not proceed with the other 20 counts of first-degree murder against Pickton because he is already serving the maximum amount of time in prison before eligibility for parole. However the crown said it was prepared to re-try on all 26 counts of first degree murder if a new trial was ordered.

There is a possibility now that the case will go to the Supreme Court of Canada.

By a two-to-one decision, the top justices in B.C. turned down Pickton's appeal for a new trial. But because Justice Ian Donald said he would order a new trial in a dissenting opinion, Pickton's lawyers have the right to appeal to the country's highest court.

Donald wrote that despite the body of evidence against Pickton, the jury deliberated over nine days and reached the "somewhat curious result of second degree murder."

"While it is impossible to know with certainty what was behind the lengthy deliberations and the acquittal on first degree murder, the lack of a full development of a party liability in the charge cannot be dismissed as a cause," wrote Donald.

Donald suggested that there was a possibility that the verdict reached by the jury was so misguided that it was the product of a compromise reached out of puzzlement or frustration.

Cynthia Cardinale, the sister of Georgina Papin, one of Pickton's victims, said before the decision was rendered that the family was anxious to hear the results.

"We don't know how to feel at this point. This seems to never end and we continually have to think about this," she told the Toronto Star in an interview.