Nina Courtepatte is shown in this undated handout photo.
An Edmonton mall rat blinded himself to what was going on as his friends abducted, raped and killed a 13-year-old girl in 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada said Thursday.
In a 9-0 ruling, the court stripped Michael Erin Briscoe of his acquittal and ordered him to be retried in the savage attack on Nina Courtepatte.
The court was skeptical of Mr. Briscoe's portrayal of himself as a hapless wanderer unwittingly caught up in the crime. It said that substantial evidence indicated Mr. Briscoe was heavily involved.
"His statements show that he deliberately chose not to inquire about what the members of the group intended to do because he did not want to know," Madam Justice Louise Charron said for the court. "It is my respectful view that the evidence cried out for an analysis on willful blindness."
The Alberta Crown pulled off a double triumph in the case yesterday, also persuading the court to restore convictions for first-degree murder, kidnap and rape against Joseph Laboucan. The court said that Mr. Laboucan - the purported ringleader in the sex slaying - suffered minimal harm as a result of a trial error.
Ms. Courtepatte and a friend were spirited away from West Edmonton Mall on April 3, 2007, by five strangers claiming to know the location of a bush party.
Unbeknownst to the girls, Mr. Laboucan had earlier that day floated the idea of perpetrating a thrill-killing. The group took their intended victims to a secluded golf course, where Ms. Courtepatte was gang raped and murdered.
Judge Charron noted that Mr. Briscoe aided the group in several ways, including driving the car used to abduct Ms. Courtepatte. Upon arriving at the golf course, he obtained a pair of pliers from the trunk of the car - one of several weapons used. Mr. Briscoe also grabbed Ms. Courtepatte at one point and told her to shut up as the group led her down a path towards her death.
"They hit her in the head multiple times with the sledgehammer or mallet, and Mr. Laboucan choked her from behind with a wrench," Judge Charron said. "Mr. Laboucan also directed another youth - D.T. - to stab Ms. Courtepatte's throat with a throwing knife. She did. Mr. Briscoe stood by and watched the rape and murder."
Ms. Courtepatte's friend was not harmed.
At Mr. Briscoe's trial, the Crown argued that he possessed advance knowledge of the plan or was willfully blind to what was unfolding.
However, the trial judge acquitted Mr. Briscoe, referring to a police statement in which the defendant minimized his foreknowledge. "Whatever you guys wanna do, just do it," Mr. Briscoe claimed he had told his accomplices. "Don't do it around me. I don't want to see nothing."
Judge Charron said that a person who assists a criminal is just as guilty as the principal offender, provided he realized that an offence was going to be committed.
"Briscoe's presence could lend courage to the attackers, discourage rescue, and give Ms. Courtepatte one more reason to feel helpless and lost and futile," Judge Charron said. "Even Briscoe's own statements to the police, on which the trial judge relied heavily, suggest that he had a strong, well-founded suspicion that someone would be killed at the golf course, and that he may have been willfully blind to the kidnapping and prospect of sexual assault."
All five persons in the group were charged with kidnapping, aggravated assault and first-degree murder. Last year, the Supreme Court of Canada raised the conviction of Stephanie Rosa Bird in the crime from manslaughter to first-degree murder.
The defendants all blamed one another for the murder, but testimony pointed toward Ms. Bird as being the one who used a wrench to deliver the first blow. Evidence also showed that she held the victim down while she was raped.
One of the participants, Michael Williams, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.