Treyvonne Willis appeals first-degree murder conviction

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This article was published 25/05/2015 (3784 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A high-profile murder-for-hire case may soon be headed to Manitoba’s highest court.

Treyvonne Willis, 22, has filed an appeal of last month’s first-degree murder conviction for his role in the 2012 ambush and execution of 27-year-old Kaila Tran outside her St. Vital apartment block.

In an affidavit filed with the Manitoba Court of Appeal, Willis’ lawyer lays out eight separate grounds. They are seeking to overturn the jury’s guilty finding and have a new trial ordered. A date for hearing has not been set.

Willis was given an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for at least 25 years after being found guilty of the most serious charge in the Criminal Code.

One of his key arguments on appeal is that Winnipeg police coerced a bogus or exaggerated confession out of him during a lengthy videotaped interview that was shown to jurors. Willis claims his Charter rights were breached by officers in a variety of ways and that his statement was not voluntary.

Willis tried to have the entire statement excluded from evidence, but Queen’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal refused.

Willis also claims jurors weren’t properly instructed by Joyal about his possible intoxication at the time of the killing and how that may have impacted his state of mind, specifically on the intent needed to commit first-degree murder.

Willis is also taking issue with the way Joyal handled a question from jurors during deliberations. They asked how an action could be planned but not deliberate and were seeking an example of a crime that falls under that definition. The judge refused to provide such an example, which is now a point of appeal.

Finally, Willis is arguing that Joyal erred in telling jurors there was no evidence in this case of a “planned robbery gone bad” that led to the killing of Tran. They say jurors should have been given that option to consider.

In his videotaped police interview following his arrest, Willis admitted to carrying out the murder in an attempt to get out of a drug debt that may have been as high as $100,000.

“I (expletive) up,” Willis said at one point in the video. “I deserve to go to jail for what I did. I murdered her.” He refused to say who put him up to the killing.

Despite the admission, Willis fought the charge on several grounds. Defence lawyer Ursula Goeres accused police of repeatedly breaching Willis’s rights during the more than 16 hours they had him locked in the interview room. In her final remarks to the jury, Goeres suggested her client was telling police what they wanted to hear out of necessity.

Goeres conceded there was other evidence — such as phone records and surveillance video — that placed Willis at the scene of the killing. But she told jurors that didn’t mean he was guilty of premeditated murder.

Goeres suggested Willis may have just been an observer while another man carried out the slaying. She pointed the finger of blame at Tremaine Sam-Kelly, a key Crown witness who testified against Willis, his former friend. Sam-Kelly told jurors he was asked to provide “support” for Willis before, during and after the killing.

Sam-Kelly told jurors Willis was a desperate man willing to do anything to dig himself out of a huge financial hole linked to his drug habit.

Even if jurors accepted Willis plunged the knife into Tran, his lawyer urged them to consider he may have been too high on drugs at the time to form the necessary intent for first-degree murder. Sam-Kelly testified he and Willis both took an unknown quantity of “Molly” — also called ecstasy — just before the killing.

Goeres also suggested her client may have just been planning to rob Tran, not kill her, when things got out of hand and he acted “impulsively.”

Jurors did have several alternative verdicts to consider, including second-degree murder or manslaughter.

mikeoncrime.com