Murder charge stayed over long delay

WIFE KILLED

MONTREAL • Questionable choices by the Crown are cited as the main reason a murder case against a man charged with killing his wife was dropped this week.

The trial of Sivaloganathan Thanabalasingham, 31, was supposed to begin at the Montreal courthouse on Monday. He was charged, on Aug. 13, 2012, with the second-degree murder of 21-year-old Anuja Baskaran.

But on Thursday, Superior Court Justice Alexandre Boucher ruled on a motion filed by the accused’s lawyer, Joseph La Leggia, arguing that it took too long to bring his client to trial. The request was based on a decision made in July by the Supreme Court of Canada that set new limits on how long a person should expect to wait to have a trial in Canada.

The limit was set at 30 months for Superior Court cases. Thanabalasingham’s trial would have started 57 months after his arrest.

The Supreme Court decision factored in cases that existed before it delivered its ruling, and allowed judges the chance to consider several factors before deciding to end a trial, including the complexity of a case. Boucher ruled that Baskaran’s death did not involve a complicated investigation. Baskaran was killed inside the couple’s home and, according to evidence presented during the preliminary hearing, police recovered several bloodstained items from the duplex.

The written copy of Boucher’s decision was made public on Friday.

“While it can be argued that a murder trial before a jury is never a straightforward business, there is no indication that the present case is complex. No particular difficulty arises from the evidence or the issues to be debated. Complexity cannot account for the unreasonable delay in the present matter,” Boucher wrote.

He specifically criticized the Crown for trying to change the second-degree murder charge to one of first-degree murder based on “weak evidence.”

This caused what was supposed to be a 10-day preliminary inquiry into one held over 20 days spread out over a course of a year.

“The Crown did little to mitigate the lengthy delay and to fulfil its duty to bring the accused to trial within a reasonable delay.

On the contrary, the Crown made questionable choices that contributed to the delay when it initially charged the accused with second-degree murder and later attempted in vain, based on weak evidence, to have him committed on first-degree murder by the preliminary hearing judge.”

According to evidence presented in court before Baskaran was murdered, Thanabalasingham, who is from Sri Lanka, is not a Canadian citizen.

He has a criminal record for assaulting Baskaran on three occasions.

His criminal record calls into question whether the federal government could seek to have him removed from Canada.