Murder-for-hire appeal dismissed by Supreme Court
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/05/2017 (3076 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A man convicted in a high-profile murder-for-hire plot has had his request to appeal dismissed by the Supreme Court of Canada.
The high court announced Thursday it declined to hear the appeal from Treyvonne Willis, who argued his first-degree murder conviction should be overturned because he was under duress when he committed the murder.
Willis was convicted by a jury in 2015 of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of 27-year-old Kaila Tran. He admitted to killing Tran in an attempt to get out of a drug debt that may have been as high as $100,000.
The drug dealers who were threatening him wanted Tran killed, court heard, but Willis was the only one held criminally responsible for her death. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
He claimed he was in a situation of kill or be killed and appealed the conviction.
The Manitoba Court of Appeal dismissed his argument in November 2016, which led to the request to appeal at the Supreme Court.
Willis sought to argue he should have been allowed to use the defence of being under duress at the time of the killing and that the Criminal Code’s stance on duress violated his charter rights.
Under the Criminal Code, a defence of duress doesn’t apply to murder and can only be used when someone commits an offence under compulsion from a person who is making threats of death or bodily harm and is present when the offence is committed.
Willis was convicted of ambushing and fatally stabbing Tran outside of her St. Vital apartment building in 2012. He didn’t say who put him up to the killing.
Another man was also charged with first-degree murder and accused of being the mastermind behind the killing, but charges against him were dropped in 2014.
