Accused in fatal stabbing fit to stand trial
Improved health cited for suspect in store attack
Rohinie Bisesar is mentally fit to stand trial, but will plead that she is not criminally responsible because of mental illness in the stabbing death three years ago of a young woman named Rosemarie Junor.
After a brief hearing at Toronto’s downtown courthouse Monday, which included evidence from a forensic psychiatrist that Bisesar’s schizophrenia is in full or substantive remission after months of aggressive treatment, a jury found that she is indeed, as Dr. Ian Swayze testified, “satisfyingly, radically improved.”
That, of course, doesn’t mean that Bisesar was well on Dec. 11, 2015, the day the 28-year-old Junor was stabbed in a Shoppers Drug Mart in the city’s underground concourse.
She died five days after the attack. Bisesar, now 43, is charged with first-degree murder in her death.
Her lawyer, Robert Karrass, agreed with prosecutor Bev Richards that Bisesar is fit for trial.
Karrass said he and Bisesar “accept the evidence of Dr. Swayze and, to a degree, this (Richards’ submission that “a fair trial can now take place”) is a joint submission.”
Swayze, a veteran forensic psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) who has done more than 1,000 such fitness assessments in his 21-year career, told the jurors and Ontario Superior Court Judge John McMahon that Bisesar was “acutely unwell” when he first saw her last year.
She had delusional thinking, believed that devices had been planted in her body and heard voices.
But Bisesar is “an intelligent person” and months of aggressive treatment and three anti-psychotic medications have achieved not a cure — schizophrenia is a lifelong illness — but a substantial remission.
For the “past many weeks” he has seen her, Swayze said, “she has been focused, organized and rational.”
“Is she fit to stand trial?” Richards asked.
“Yes,” said Swayze.
To be declared fit, a person must be able to understand the proceeding and the role of the key players, appreciate the consequences and be able to instruct a lawyer.
The jurors deliberated for about 20 minutes before returning with their verdict.
With that, McMahon thanked them for their service, saying that while it may appear their participation in the criminal justice system was very short, “It’s really important we see that people are mentally well so they get a fair trial,” and they were dismissed.
Then, with the consent of the Ontario attorney general, required because a jury trial is compulsory with a charge of first-degree murder, Bisesar was allowed to reelect her mode of trial and chose to proceed instead with a judge-alone trial, with the genial and patient McMahon at the helm.
Karrass told him he and Richards will be proceeding “by an agreed statement of facts,” which means they will both sign off on a formal recitation of what happened that day, as opposed to hearing from many witnesses, with Bisesar pleading that she isn’t criminally responsible because of her mental illness.
The court was crowded with family and friends of Junor, a newlywed who worked at a downtown medical clinic and was known for caring deeply about her job.
That day, she went out for a late lunch to run some errands when she was abruptly approached in the Shoppers and stabbed in the chest.
Bisesar’s trial, abbreviated because of the lawyers’ agreement about the facts, will begin Friday.
If she is found not guilty because of her illness, Bisesar will be treated and held in a hospital, as opposed to a prison.
If convicted of first-degree murder, she will serve the mandatory sentence of 25 years behind bars before being eligible for parole.