Derksen murder back in court

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This article was published 15/11/2014 (4208 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The Manitoba government asked the Supreme Court Friday to reinstate a conviction of second-degree murder in the 1984 slaying of Winnipeg teenager Candace Derksen.

Mark Edward Grant was convicted in 2011 of murdering Derksen but his conviction was overturned a year ago by the Manitoba Court of Appeal, which said evidence of a similar case to Derksen’s should have been admitted during Grant’s trial.

Derksen was 13 when she was abducted in November 1984. Her frozen body was found, bound with rope, in a shed the following January. Her case was one of the province’s most well-known unsolved cases for more than two decades. Grant wasn’t arrested until 2007, after DNA evidence analyzed by a private lab in Thunder Bay, Ont., connected Grant to DNA from the rope used to bind Derksen.

Crown Attorney Ami Kotler told the high court Friday the existence of the second case didn’t meet existing legal thresholds to be included in Grant’s trial because the evidence between that case and Derksen’s were not similar enough. That case involved a 12-year-old girl who was found bound by rope in an abandoned rail car less than a year after Derksen was killed. The girl, now an adult, testified the abduction never happened. The only other witness, the woman who found her, is dead. Grant was in custody when the second girl was allegedly abducted. Kotler told the Supreme Court on Friday the evidence gathered in the case did not show clear links to the Derksen murder and to allow the jury to hear the evidence was too risky. He suggested allowing in evidence with such flimsy connections could mean an accused could try to bring in evidence of cases with no clear connection to their own, but for which they have an alibi.

He said the two biggest alleged connections — the discovery of the same brand of gum wrapper in both locations and the knot used on the rope bindings — are not legitimate. The rope bindings were completely different even though they both contained one similar type of “granny knot.”

But Grant’s defence lawyer, Saul Simmonds, told the court “common sense” dictates there are similarities between the two cases: The girls were about the same age, there was no apparent motive for either attack, neither girl was sexually or physically assaulted, both were fully clothed and tied up with rope, and both were left in isolated locations in the same area of the city.

“This was not the kind of thing that was happening in Winnipeg in 1985,” said Simmonds. “To try to suggest there is no connection is not a reasonable suggestion.”

He noted police investigating the 12-year-old’s case believed there were connections to Derksen and investigated it as such.

Simmonds also told the court Friday there were two other reasons not to reinstate the conviction, including new evidence discrediting the DNA evidence used to convict his client, and the possibility of juror bias.

The DNA evidence was contested during the trial, but Simmonds says he now has a new expert who believes there was a fault with the DNA testing that was not raised at trial.

He said the sample was tested three times, and the first two times it didn’t come up with a result. The third test matched to Grant.

Simmonds said he has a DNA expert who says the DNA test results were improbable and may point to a “serious quality assurance” issue.

Grant’s defence team also argued there was clear juror bias in the original trial after one of the jurors indicated after the trial she had believed Grant was guilty before the trial was over, and also indicated she had stopped paying attention to the evidence and was instead studying the people in the gallery of the courtroom.

Kotler said the DNA evidence wasn’t improperly tested and the explanation for the different results is available from the private lab’s reports. He said the first two tests weren’t of good quality. He also said the juror’s comment was that she believed Grant was guilty after hearing the Crown’s evidence on the first day of the trial, and to infer she no longer had an open mind was not fair.

The court reserved its decision. If the court agrees with the Appeal Court to overturn Grant’s conviction, Manitoba Justice will have to decide whether to hold another trial or let the case drop.

Grant remains in custody awaiting the outcome.

 

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca