B.C. judge's error leads to murder verdict being overturned; new trial ordered
Credit to Author: Keith Fraser| Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2020 03:11:56 +0000
Citing an error by a trial judge in his response to questions from a jury, B.C.’s highest court has overturned the first-degree murder conviction of a man in northern B.C. and ordered a new trial.
In October 2017, a B.C. Supreme Court jury found James David Junior Charlie guilty of the January 2012 first-degree murder of Fribjon Bjornson, 28, on a reserve near Fort St. James.
Bjornson was a father of two young children who, according to police, had long struggled with drug addiction.
He was reported missing by his mother on Jan. 21, 2012.
His truck was discovered abandoned at an apartment complex on the Nak’azdli Reserve on Jan. 23, 2012 and about a week later police located his severed head wrapped in a comforter in the basement of a home on the shore of Stuart Lake on the reserve.
Police searched another residence and found a significant amount of blood that was later confirmed to be Bjornson’s. Charlie and two other men, Wesley Duncan and Jesse Bird, were living in the home and selling drugs from it.
In 2013, the RCMP conducted a lengthy “Mr. Big” undercover police operation that had Bird as the primary target of the investigation and Charlie and Duncan identified as potential suspects.
On Aug. 31, 2016, Bird and Duncan, who were initially charged with first-degree murder, pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of second-degree murder. Charlie pleaded guilty to offering indignities to a dead body or human remains.
The Crown’s theory was that Charlie, Duncan and others assaulted Bjornson and then Charlie provided a wire or cord to Duncan, who strangled Bjornson.
Charlie then took Bjornson’s body to the shore of Lake Stuart where it was covered with snow for about a week before he and another person moved it to the location where the indignities occurred, according to the Crown.
Following his conviction, Charlie argued that the judge, B.C. Supreme Court Ronald Tindale, had erred in several ways in answering questions from the jury during their deliberations.
In an oral ruling on Jan. 24 that was posted at the court’s website Thursday, a three-judge panel of the B.C. Court of Appeal noted that it was one of those cases in which the Crown did not contest all of the grounds of the appeal.
In her reasons for judgment, Justice Mary Saunders noted that the Crown disputed all but one of Charlie’s grounds of appeal, that dealing with the criminal intent of party liability for murder. Saunders found that the judge failed instruct the jury properly on that issue and added that it was not a harmless error.
“While this conclusion is a burden to all those interested in pressing the case to a decisive conclusion, particularly the family and friends of Mr. Bjornson, and also those called on to take part in the trial, in my view, the verdict must be set aside and a new trial ordered.”
In a Facebook post on Jan. 24, Eileen Bjornson, the victim’s mother, said she was “angry” and “sick to my stomach” about the decision. “They have granted an appeal to James Charlie on a technicality. We have to go through this whole thing again!”
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