Appeal of murder conviction denied

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This article was published 13/11/2022 (1114 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A convicted killer’s appeal has been denied a decade after he was found guilty.

Garvin Beardy is serving a life sentence for second-degree murder in the December 2008 beating death of 35-year-old Radford Seaton. Seaton was homeless and was sleeping inside an apartment-building stairwell in downtown Winnipeg to get out of the cold.

Three men were charged in the group attack, but Beardy was the only one convicted, largely because the trial judge didn’t believe his testimony in court and relied on Beardy’s voluntary statement to police, in which he admitted he joined in the attack, threw the victim on the stairs, and kicked him. Beardy was 27 at the time of the killing. He was convicted in 2012 and was later sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 14 years.

On appeal, his lawyer argued he should instead have been convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter, which doesn’t carry a mandatory life sentence. The evidence against Beardy was circumstantial and failed to prove he had the intent to commit murder, defence lawyer Sarah Inness argued on appeal. She also argued the trial judge misunderstood blood spatter evidence, which led to her disbelieving Beardy’s testimony. After a hearing on Oct. 26, the Manitoba Court of Appeal rejected those arguments and ruled that being part of a fatal group attack made Beardy guilty of murder regardless of who struck the fatal blow.

“We are not satisfied that the trial judge made a readily obvious error with respect to material evidence. The trial judge’s credibility finding was reasonably grounded in the evidence; no palpable and overriding error has been demonstrated. It would be inappropriate for this Court to interfere with her fact finding based on a different interpretation of the evidence,” Justice Christopher Mainella wrote. The court’s written decision was issued Nov. 4 and also signed by Justice Lori Spivak and Justice Jennifer Pfuetzner.

While issuing the appeal decision 10 years after the murder conviction, the appeal court noted the remorse Beardy felt at the end of the attack, when he realized the victim might be dead. It was too late, the trial judge ruled, and the appeal court agreed.

“Timing is everything in this case,” Mainella wrote.

The victim of the attack “never had a chance,” the decision states.

“The group attack was done before regret set into the mind of the accused at all. And, when shame eventually did set in, the accused did little to help the victim; rather, he retired to an apartment to go to sleep, leaving the victim face down in a pool of blood on the stairwell.”

katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com