Crown rejects self-defence in Sugar killing

Frances Sugar’s lawyer maintains Sugar was terrified of her 34-yearold daughter Lindey when she stabbed Lindey to death on the side of a gravel road south of Saskatoon.

Whether or not the knife wounds to Lindey’s neck, arm and back were inflicted in self-defence is a central issue in Frances Sugar’s second-degree murder trial at Saskatoon Court of Queen’s Bench.

The 53-year-old mother and her daughter were arguing in Lindey’s car as they drove south of the city on a June evening in 2014 after a barbecue where people had been drinking. Frances later told police she was trapped in the car against her will for half an hour as Lindey drove out of the city, and when Lindey stopped the car and started to beat her, Frances defended herself, defence lawyer Kathy Hodgson-Smith argued Monday.

“What should she have done? Taken the beating and allowed herself to be the one in the ditch?” Hodgson-Smith said during her closing arguments.

Crown prosecutor Melodi Kujawa offered the jury a different perspective.

“This was murder plain and simple,” Kujawa said during her own closing arguments.

Kujawa readily admitted Lindey was “the aggressor” in the situation, and that she was the one who started the conflict with her mother on the drive out of the city. However, not once did Lindey threaten Frances’s life, she said.

“The threat was not to kill her, it was not to cause her grievous bodily harm … the threat was to beat her up and leave her to walk home,” Kujawa said.

She noted a forensic pathologist testified that the wounds on the back of Lindey’s arm were consistent with defence wounds from a knife attack. The stab wound on her back does not support the idea of self-defence, Kujawa added.

“What could possibly justify three stab wounds, including one to the back? Does that sound like self-defence?”

Kujawa noted the trial also heard evidence that the knife wound on Lindey’s neck was deeper than the length of the knife’s blade, which means it was pushed in. This showed emotion, Kujawa argued. “Fran was angry and stabbed her daughter to death needlessly,” she said.

Kujawa also contested HodgsonSmith’s argument that Frances was too intoxicated to make a decision. Kujawa suggested that after killing Lindey, Frances chugged a bottle of vodka that was found some distance away from the crime scene.

Kujawa said Frances had the wherewithal to close the knife’s blade, then throw it in the ditch after the stabbing. Frances appeared more intoxicated after she was back at RCMP headquarters than she appeared when she was first arrested walking down the road shortly after the stabbing because she had chugged the vodka, Kujawa added.

Frances’s statements to police were simply “self-serving,” Kujawa told the jury. She also questioned the reliability of defence witness Michael Firingstoney, who testified earlier Monday. Firingstoney, who was in a long-term relationship with Frances Sugar, told the jury he got into a fight with Lindey over a pack of rolling papers before Lindey and Frances drove off in Lindey’s vehicle with a man named Dennis Kissling, who witnessed the stabbing.

Kujawa pointed out inconsistencies in Firingstoney’s testimony and noted he never gave a statement to police and was relying solely on his memory of an event that happened more than two years ago. The trial is expected to continue Tuesday with the judge’s instructions to the jury.