Woman to be tried third time for sex client’s death in 2010
The lawyer for a Calgary woman who has twice successfully appealed her murder conviction is surprised the Crown plans to prosecute her a third time.
“You know, it’s a real headscratcher,” defence lawyer Jim Lutz said Friday, after a four-week trial for Crystal Crowchild was scheduled for October, 2018.
“I really don’t know what the public interest is in this,” Lutz said outside court. “I really have to ask, what’s the public interest in prosecuting Ms. Crowchild a third time,” he said. “I must confess, I’m very surprised.”
Lutz said Crowchild is struggling with the prospect of facing a third murder trial.
“It’s hard to go to court three times on the same matter,” he said. “It’s stressful, because she could have been potentially looking at being released today if the Crown had chosen not to proceed.
“You go from thinking that there’s a prospect they’re not going to get prosecuted again to now you’re back into the same thing you’ve seen twice before.”
He added Crowchild had gotten her hopes up her legal troubles would be over. And Lutz said that while a trial is set to begin Oct. 1, 2018, he will be making an application in advance for a judicial stay based on unreasonable delay.
He noted Crowchild will have spent more than seven years behind bars if she remains in custody until that time.
“I’m going to assert her right to a trial within a reasonable time,” he said. “I don’t think seven years is a reasonable time.”
Last year the Supreme Court set hard guidelines for how long it should take for an accused to be prosecuted, saying a delay of more than 30 months for a Court of Queen’s Bench trial was unreasonable. That decision made no mention for cases which go to a second, or third trial.
“We’re talking over seven years in custody spent between remand and the penitentiary,” he said. “It’s certainly my intention to press that issue significantly.”
Lutz said he was available to conduct a four-week trial this November, or December, but the earliest date available for the court was nearly a year later.
“Given the fact that this is the third time we’re having this trial we really hoped it could’ve been done faster.”
Last month, the Alberta Court of Appeal ordered Crowchild to stand trial a third time for second-degree murder in the March 17, 2010, stabbing death of Aref Nassereddine.
Crown prosecutor Julie Morgan conceded Justice Ged Hawco erred in his instructions to jurors during Crowchild’s February, 2016, re-trial. Nassereddine, 64, was fatally stabbed by Crowchild in his southwest Calgary home.
Crowchild, who was 25 at the time, had met Nassereddine that morning in the East Village and agreed to go to his home for sex for $60.
During her second trial, she told court she had never before engaged in prostitution but needed to feed her crack habit.
After they had sex in his bed he asked her for oral sex as well, she testified. But Crowchild, who was only given $40, refused and began to leave the residence.
As she got to the back door, Nassereddine, still naked from the waist down, grabbed her, and she grabbed a knife from the sink nearby and repeatedly stabbed him.
Crowchild wasn’t arrested until April, 2011.