National Post (National Edition)
Jury finds wife guilty of first-degree murder
Verdict returned after five hours of deliberation
Xiu Jin Teng stood absolutely silent and still — at the guilty verdict just read aloud by the foreman of her jury.
Teng was convicted Wednesday of first-degree murder in the February 2012 death of her husband, Dong Huang.
The jury returned after about five hours of deliberation.
She will be sentenced on Friday, but it’s an automatic life sentence with no chance at parole for 25 years.
Teng, who represented herself at trial, regularly shrieked “I need defence lawyer!” and blasted the judge for denying her counsel when in fact she went through lawyers like dung through the proverbial goose.
Since first being charged in March of 2012 in connection with her husband Dong Huang’s death, Teng had no fewer than five defence lawyers on the record for her, all of them paid through the public purse, via Legal Aid Ontario or directly by the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG) through what’s called a Rowbotham application.
These five included some of the biggest names in the defence bar — among them Chris Hicks, the legendary John Rosen and Bob Richardson and co-counsel Dan Moore.
Teng fired Hicks. She fired Rosen. She fired Richardson. She refused to sign an agreement for Moore’s funding, and so he too was removed from the file.
The fifth lawyer, Devin Bains, represented Teng for more than two years, ending in September of 2015 when he asked to be removed, over Teng’s objections but with the agreement of the Law Society of Upper Canada, because of what has been variously described as “an ethical issue” or “the nature of what went on between them.”
Another seven lawyers then appeared in court for Teng at her request — Anthony Moustacalis (she discharged him after less than two months); Douglas Baum (Teng wouldn’t say if she wanted to hire him); Jesse Razaqpur, who appeared one day to say Teng had contacted him but he didn’t have time to do the trial; Douglas Usher, whom she’d contacted (she won an adjournment to speak to him, but nothing further happened); Victor Gurgis; and early last September, the trial just weeks away, Teng got yet another adjournment to speak to Edmond Brown.
As prosecutors Josh Levy and Robert Fried put it in their response to Teng’s Section 11(b) Charter application — this is where an accused claims the right to a trial within a reasonable time has been infringed and demands the charges be stayed — Teng “fired lawyer after lawyer” and engaged in “legal malingering.”
The jurors, who began deliberating Teng’s fate at midday on Wednesday, knew none of that history. (It could only be reported after they were sequestered.)
All they knew was that multiple times, Teng ranted about her keen desire for a defence lawyer and the cruel judge’s alleged failure to give her one.
She made such an issue about it that late in the trial, the judge, Ian MacDonnell of the Ontario Superior Court, took the unusual step of telling jurors that it wasn’t “accurate” for Teng to claim she’d been denied a lawyer.
He was sharper in his final instructions to jurors this week, telling them emphatically that she has not been refused a lawyer, and that they are to ignore her claims.
MacDonnell denied Teng’s 11(b) application; she openly sulked about the decision and constantly attempted to reopen it.
By last summer, in any case, Richard Litkowski had been appointed as a friend of the court — an appointment regarded as a safeguard for an accused’s fair trial rights.
And at the attorney general’s office, officials had also decided they would oppose any further Rowbotham application had one materialized, arguing Teng had disentitled herself to further public funding by her own conduct.
More public money, MAG planned to argue, would “reward” Teng for her “unreasonable and abusive conduct.”
In other words, if her own egregious behaviour stalled her trial and yet she got the case tossed for delay, she’d be akin to the person who kills his parents and then throws himself upon the mercy of the court as an orphan.
Amusingly, in certain Toronto legal offices that have had a brush with Teng, she is wryly known as “the widow.”
She is one of what another Superior Court judge, Michelle Fuerst, once called “a new breed of self-represented accused” who is “argumentative, rude and disrespectful of authority” and “purposely forgoes counsel in order to cause as much disruption as possible to the trial, in the hope of derailing the proceedings.”
Their number is, if not legion, on the rise.
Teng, who just turned 41, certainly tested the considerable patience of the judge — and anyone who had to listen to her for any length of time.
She was shrill, imperious, breathtakingly aggressive: The jury saw only a fraction of it, though not for lack of trying on Teng’s part.
Repeatedly warned by the judge not to pull her histrionics in front of the jurors, she did anyway as often as she could.
She frequently berated MacDonnell as “illegal judge” and “evil judge.”
Once, when in the absence of the jury he mildly dressed her down, she burst into applause and cried “Good job!” She routinely defied him and began referring to him in front of the jurors as “Your Majesty.”
All this was complicated by the fact that Teng, like her late husband Huang, is a Canadian resident from China whose first language is Mandarin.
She was provided with an interpreter at public expense, but her high opinion of herself extended to her facility with English, and she usually insisted on addressing the court directly, leaving the interpreters idle.
Teng certainly is a quick study, but her heavy accent and limited vocabulary made it difficult to understand her.
The jurors mostly seemed to have her figured out anyway.
During her lengthy closing address, one of them so turned his body from her he appeared to be trying to clamber out of the jury box. Others looked annoyed or sleepy as she chanted her mantra: “Ms. Teng must be acquitted!”
But at least one, Juror No. 3, appeared vulnerable.
He is a retired cab driver whose views on the justice system so alarmed one of his fellows that he sent a note to the judge, asking: “If a juror has a problem with the Canadian justice system, is he or she suitable to remain on the jury?”
No. 3 sent a note of his own, citing “a serious issue of contention.”
Both men were called in, separately, for discreet questioning by the judge — what goes on in the jury room is considered sacrosanct, even from judicial prying — with only the lawyers and Teng present.
Like Teng, No. 3 has a generous view of himself. Only one other juror, he said, had been in Canada as long as him and none, he said, had his “wide range of experience.”
“I lived through the Susan Nelles case,” he told MacDonnell. “I lived through Guy Paul Morin.” (Nelles was a nurse wrongly prosecuted for baby deaths; Morin was wrongfully convicted for murder.) He said the cases “left an indelible impression on my mind about the administration of justice.”
He was called back again, with the judge asking if his views would “interfere” with his duty to judge the case fairly. No. 3 paused for a long moment and said no.
The judge asked if he was prepared to listen to the views of other jurors.
“That question is the root of the problem,” said No. 3. “Everyone’s opinion is valued, to a degree … Can I respect someone and his view, yes I can.”
He seemed to be hedging his bets, and MacDonnell asked, “… Are you able to participate in the process with an open mind?”
“I can participate, Your Honour,” said No. 3. “But I am a person of very strong views, well thought-out views.”
In Canada, verdicts must be unanimous: One dissenting vote equals a mistrial.