Judge grants convicted murderer chance to withdraw 2011 guilty plea

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This article was published 16/02/2017 (3481 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg sex-trade worker convicted of killing a customer after a payment dispute more than five years ago has kept alive her chance of withdrawing her guilty plea.

In a 12-page written decision released this week, Manitoba Court of Appeal Justice Michel Monnin granted Mary Ellen Thomas 60 days to pursue her bid to withdraw her December 2011 second-degree murder guilty plea.

Thomas received the mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole for at least 10 years.

Monnin said Thomas, who is representing herself, should at least get a chance for her arguments and new evidence to be heard by a full panel of Appeal Court justices.

“I am alive to the fact that the accused is acting on her own behalf and that the issue she wants to raise is the matter of ineffective counsel at the time of her plea,” Monnin wrote.

“If I deny her application to extend the time for her to file an appeal, it would be extremely difficult for her to put this matter before the court.”

Michael Allan, 62, who was diagnosed with tuberculosis, was 6-2 and weighed 112 lbs., was high on cocaine and had a blood-alcohol level four times the legal driving limit, died after being brutally assaulted in July 2010. His dozens of injuries included brain trauma, 14 broken ribs, a broken neck and deep cuts to his face and throat.

Thomas told police that when Allan, who lived on Nassau Street South, accused her of stealing his wallet after hiring her for sex, she “lost it and went crazy.”

Thomas said in court at the time that “when I’m drunk and on the streets I’m a different person.”

Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench Justice John Menzies called Thomas’s case “a classic example of everything that’s gone wrong for aboriginal people in this province.”

But Monnin noted that Thomas said, in a 2013 affidavit, that she agreed to plead guilty only because her lawyer told her if she didn’t she would “end up with 25 (years) to life.”

“I was drunk I was in scisofrenic (sic) state of mind it was an accident,” she wrote.

The judge said Thomas also noted in a 2015 affidavit that there was “one main witness that lived next door to where the crime happend (sic) he saw me drunk and staggering there’s multiple witnesses that knew I was drunk that night of the crime… I was not at my right frame of mind… I feel that manslaughter will be the best outcome.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca