Manslaughter verdict in drug debt slaying

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This article was published 28/11/2019 (2455 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man who killed his cocaine dealer following a debt dispute and hid the body underneath his home’s porch has been found guilty of manslaughter.

James Morris, 42, stood trial for second-degree murder in the Jan. 3, 2015, killing of 36-year-old Christophur Baur. In finding him guilty of the reduced charge of manslaughter, jurors rejected Morris’s claim he was acting in self-defence, but found he did not have the required intent to kill when he beat Baur with a bat and slashed his neck open.

Morris appeared stoic in court, and showed no visible change in emotion as the verdict was delivered Thursday afternoon.

Jurors deliberated nearly 10 hours before reaching a verdict.

Morris remains in custody. He will return to court for sentencing Feb. 3.

Jurors heard testimony Baur visited Morris’s Magnus Avenue home the night of the killing to collect a $200 drug debt when a violent struggle ended with Baur’s death. Morris wrapped Baur’s body in plastic and hid it underneath his porch, where it was discovered by police six weeks later.

In testimony last week, Morris told jurors Baur became angry when he said he had no money, and threatened him with violence from his drug-dealing superiors. Morris said he shoved Baur, causing him to stumble backward and knock his head on a doorpost. Baur, he said, grabbed a baseball bat that was by the door and struck him in the head.

Morris said he wrenched the bat from Morris and hit him on the head before Baur managed to shove him down the basement stairs.

Morris said he feared Baur was going to beat him to death with the bat. He said he jumped on Baur’s back and tried to choke him, before slashing his throat with what he thought was a knife.

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A pathologist confirmed it was that injury, which severed Baur’s jugular vein and carotid artery, that killed him.

Prosecutors urged jurors to reject Morris’s claim of self-defence, arguing by the time Baur was slashed in the neck, he had already sustained several other injuries that would have incapacitated him or possibly rendered him unconscious, including multiple blunt-force blows to the head, several broken fingers, and a stab wound to the neck.

Baur had also been strangled with a shoe lace, something Morris claimed at trial he had no memory of doing.

“There would be no basis for the accused to think force was being used against him or that Christophur Baur posed any kind of threat at the time of death,” Crown attorney Mike Himmelman said in a closing argument Tuesday.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca

Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter

Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.

Every piece of reporting Dean produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.