Jury acquits Île-Bizard resident in fatal stabbing
It took a jury just a little more than an hour to acquit an Île-Bizard resident of the manslaughter charge he had been facing for more than two years.
The jury obviously agreed with defence lawyer Gregory Leslie’s argument that Steve Barnes, 34, was acting in self-defence when he stabbed George Berry during an altercation at Barnes’s home in 2015.
The trial at the Montreal courthouse began in early April.
“(It) was the fastest acquittal of my 25-year career as a lawyer,” Leslie wrote in an exchange of text messages.
The Crown’s theory was that Barnes did not take the necessary steps to avoid using violence to protect himself.
Leslie said he was surprised by how quickly the jury reached its decision on Thursday. “It was the right verdict and it proved the jury had a firm understanding of the facts and the law and came to a just and proper verdict,” Leslie wrote.
He also wrote that Barnes was “visibly emotional” and thanked the jury “with tears in his eyes.”
Leslie wrote that he wanted to “thank the jury for their vital role in participating in our criminal justice system and for deciding the case fairly.”
Remarkably, during a court hearing held at the Montreal courthouse last year, Barnes appeared impatient and told a judge he was ready to plead guilty in his case. Superior Court Justice Marc David asked Barnes to reconsider and advised him to wait to talk to Leslie before he did anything.
Leslie was unable to attend that hearing and, on that day, Barnes was represented by a lawyer who wasn’t familiar with the case.
When asked about that moment on Thursday, Leslie said Barnes was distraught at the time because he had just been informed he would have to wait another year, in detention, for his trial to begin.
Barnes ultimately opted for a trial and, during his closing arguments on Wednesday, Leslie said that, in his opinion, the only option the jury had was to acquit Barnes because he was acting in self-defence.
To make his point, he used the same baseball bat Berry used to attack Barnes, on the night of Nov. 14, 2015, before Barnes stabbed him once.
Leslie slammed the bat to a desk in the courtroom twice and asked the jury to imagine what they would do if they were struck on the head with the same bat.
What the jury didn’t know is that Leslie practised the motion of slamming the bat once, during a break, before they returned to the courtroom. He also gave a special constable in the room a heads up about what was coming, but Superior Court Justice Jean-François Buffoni, the presiding judge in the trial, was not aware.
“(Slamming the bat) was hopefully just as much of a shock to the jury as it was to Mr. Barnes when Mr. Berry approached him and hit him over the head with the bat,” Leslie wrote.
When Montreal police arrived after Berry was stabbed, blood was dripping from Barnes’ forehead.
The jury heard that Berry was a drug dealer who had grown frustrated with the fact Barnes owed him between $6,000 and $8,000 for drugs. They also heard evidence that Berry went over to Barnes’ residence in Île-Bizard with the intention to harm or even kill him.
Matthew Reidl of Pointe-Claire, who accompanied Berry to Barnes’s house on the night in question, is charged with being in possession of an instrument commonly used for break-ins and assault with a weapon or causing bodily harm to Barnes. The 27-year-old’s case returns to court on May 23.