Mass murderer Pickton wrongly convicted, appeal lawyers say

Hmmm not even sure where to start regarding my thoughts on this article...however I have noted repeated comments that Pickton didn't act alone, questions as to why no one else was charged and that it appeared that the prosecution took the easy way out.  He had been charged with 27 counts of first degree murder, although 1 charge has since been dropped-the charge was later dropped as it didn't meet the criteria of Section 581 of the Criminal Code, this deals with trial procedure.  He has since bee connected but not charged with 5 other deaths.

This has been a lengthy and drawn out process both for the families of the victims as well as friends. I am urging that an investigation/inquiry be done regrading what happened.  As I know, first hand, what this creep is capable of.  We knew long before the Vancouver Sun first broke the story about the farm and that often people didn't come back if they went out there.  It was because society and the police often considered the women who lived and worked the Downtown Eastside as less than or throw away. Again I saw this first hand. He was charged February 2002 with first degree murder and the charges kept coming until May 2005, for a total of 27 charges. Please read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton. He was even put on the bad trick list that was put out.

Cora

Mass murderer Pickton wrongly convicted, appeal lawyers say

Artist's sketch shows accused serial killer Robert Pickton taking notes as Judge James Williams instructs the jury at Pickton's murder trial in New Westminster, B.C., Nov. 30, 2007. (Reuters) REUTERS

Murderer of six women argues trial judge erred in a response to jurors' question

Robert Matas

Vancouver — From Thursday's Globe and Mail Published on Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009 9:16PM EST Last updated on Thursday, Dec. 31, 2009 2:33AM EST

 

Serial killer Robert Pickton may have been found guilty for activities that are not even criminal, his lawyers say in an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

In a bid to overturn his conviction of the second-degree murder of six women, his lawyers also say Mr. Pickton's Charter rights to a fair trial and to respond fully to the charges against him were infringed.
“There was a real risk that the jury convicted [Mr. Pickton] for indirect acts upon which they were not properly instructed, which the defence did not have an opportunity to address, and which might even fall outside the ambit of criminal activity,” Mr. Pickton's lawyers Gil McKinnon and Patrick McGowan state in a 63-page submission to the court.

“Trial fairness is at the heart of this appeal,” they say. “No matter how heinous the crime, an accused has a constitutional right to a fair trial.”

The Supreme Court of Canada is to hear Mr. Pickton's closely watched appeal on March 25. He is asking the court to overturn his conviction and order a new trial. Mr. Pickton was found guilty in a jury trial in December, 2007. The Court of Appeal, in a 2-to-1 decision, upheld the conviction.

Mr. Pickton has also been charged with the murder of 20 additional women. All were dependent on drugs and worked as prostitutes in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, Canada's poorest postal code.
Mr. Pickton's lawyers say Crown prosecutors maintained throughout the trial that Mr. Pickton was the person who killed the six women and that he acted alone.

The trial judge instructed the jurors that they must return a verdict of not guilty if they had a reasonable doubt about whether Mr. Pickton shot the women.

But after six days of deliberating, the jury sent a note to the judge asking if it could find Mr. Pickton was the killer if it inferred he “acted indirectly.”

The trial judge acknowledged he did not know what the jury meant by “acted indirectly,” but did not ask for clarification. He called the jurors back into the courtroom and revised his instructions, saying they could convict Mr. Pickton if they found he shot the victim or was otherwise “an active participant” in the killing.
The trial judge amended the charges against Mr. Pickton “to include an ill-defined, alternative basis for finding [Mr.] Pickton guilty,” the lawyers say.

Two days later, the jury convicted Mr. Pickton of second-degree murder.

Mr. Pickton's lawyers say the issue in the appeal is whether the trial judge's response to the jury, in the context of his previous instructions and the entire trial, compromised the fairness of the trial.

“Put simply, the jury's critical question was incorrectly answered, the ‘goal posts' were changed by the amendment at a very late and impermissible stage of the trial and the Crown gained a significant unjustified advantage,” the lawyers say.

“If [Mr.] Pickton was not the shooter, there was nothing to support a finding that he was present when [someone else] shot the women and that he did some culpable act that significantly contributed toward the cause of death,” they say.

The lawyers say the trial judge erred procedurally when he answered the jurors' question without having a clear understanding of the problem that was troubling them and erred substantively in failing to give a proper response.

Gil McKinnon, Mr. Pickton's lead lawyer, declined yesterday to comment on his written submissions to court. The Crown lawyers have not yet made any submissions.

Mr. Pickton was convicted of murdering Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Marnie Frey, Brenda Wolfe and Georgina Papin.