National Post (National Edition)
Oland verdict hinged on the colour of a coat
From the earliest days in Dennis Oland’s murder trial, the Crown faced an uphill battle to convince the jury a precarious balance of circumstantial evidence added up to a guilty verdict.
Nonetheless, in December jurors found the member of the clan that owns Moosehead Breweries Ltd. guilty of the second-degree murder of his father, Richard, 69.
On Monday, New Brunswick’s appeal court overturned the verdict, based on the trial judge’s lack of caution to jurors about how much weight to place on an alleged lie by Oland, 48, about the colour of the jacket he wore on July 6, 2011.
His lawyer, Alan Gold, said he hoped his client would soon be granted bail and released from custody.
Greg Marquis, author of the book Truth and Honour about the trial, said in a telephone interview it’s not surprising one piece of evidence could be so central, given the Crown’s case was a weave of evidence and “all was circumstantial.”
“It’s the combination of this and other things that come together as a package are very powerful combined with their (the jurors’) assessment of (Oland’s) credibility as a witness,” he said.
Marquis added after watching almost all the trial, he was somewhat surprised by the verdict and had to spend some time reflecting on what might have swayed the jury.
He concluded factors like Oland’s statement to police in a taped 2011 videotaped interview that he was wearing a blue jacket, later disproved by video evidence in the trial, may have been key as jurors struggled with who to believe about the evidence
“There were three or four things that if you believe he was innocent were just unfortunate coincidences. If you believe in his guilt then these things are part of the essential elements,” said Marquis.
As Chief Justice Ernest Drapeau noted in Monday’s ruling, there was “no smoking gun.”
From the preliminary hearing in Saint John, the Crown’s case faced intense attack from Dennis Oland’s lawyers.
When the first images of Richard Oland’s body lying face down in his office flashed up on a courtroom screen, the presiding judge saw a wide circle of the victim’s blood splattered around after 45 sharp and blunt force injuries to his head. The defence raised the sharp contrast between those startling visual images of the spattered blood and the minuscule stains on a brown jacket that contained DNA matching Richard Oland’s profile
No murder weapon was found. No blood was found in Oland’s car. There were questions about whether the stains were blood or some other substance.
Though there was evidence a ping was heard from Richard Oland’s cellphone in the general area of his son’s route to his home in Rothesay, the phone was never found and there was no clear explanation why Dennis would have taken it.
The defence said that just minutes after the alleged bludgeoning, Dennis Oland was calling his wife and within an hour he was videotaped shopping in shorts and a golf shirt.
He was also heard calmly chatting with his aunt, the dead man’s sister.
Gold argued it simply made no sense that a quiet man without a strong motive would commit a horrific murder in a vicious, 15-minute outburst, then calmly leave without extensive physical evidence linking him to the crime.
Marquis said in his book’s closing chapter he devised scenarios of an “innocent Oland” and a “guilty Oland” — in the guilty scenario he had to imagine Oland doing things such as covering his vehicle or himself with materials that prevented any sign of blood.
He said he came to believe the jurors disbelieved Oland’s testimony in his defence. He said factors like Dennis Oland’s “alleged lie” in the videotaped police interview may have played a role.