Jury continues to deliberate in Napope manslaughter trial

After 20 hours of deliberating, a Saskatoon jury has yet to reach a verdict for Keith Clarence Napope, the 31-year-old man on trial for the robbery and manslaughter of 35-year-old Johnathon KeenatchLafond.

Napope is accused of participating in a drug robbery that led to Keenatch-Lafond being fatally stabbed in his chest on Nov. 17, 2014.

Jurors must decide if Napope stabbed Keenatch-Lafond or if he aided or abetted the person who stabbed him.

During more than a week of testimony, the jury heard how four or five men broke into the victim’s 20th Street apartment suite after he instructed his older nephew, Tyrone Lafond, to let someone in the building’s back door. Keenatch-Lafond had been running a small drug operation out of his apartment at the time.

The identity of the person who stabbed Keenatch-Lafond is a key issue, as Lafond testified the intruders were wearing masks. He told jurors two of the men had knives: one had two knives while the other carried one.

He said he saw the man with two knives stab his uncle in the leg and take his money and drugs.

Lafond testified he didn’t see that man’s face, but saw the face of the man with one knife when the intruder removed his mask. Lafond said he recognized the man two months later at St. Paul’s Hospital.

That man was identified as Napope.

Napope’s DNA matched samples taken from blood found in the stairwell, on the rear apartment building door and on a T-shirt that also contained the victim’s DNA, according to forensic evidence.

Justice Grant Currie told jurors they had three main routes to a manslaughter conviction: by finding Napope was either the “principal offender,” intended for his actions to help the principal offender commit manslaughter or planned to carry out the unlawful act of robbery or assault with the principal offender and in doing so knew that manslaughter would be a probable outcome.

Manslaughter differs from murder in that the offender caused a person’s death during an unlawful act, but without the intent to kill. The Crown must prove the unlawful act was objectively dangerous and would likely injure another person.

The foreseeability of death does not need to be established for a manslaughter conviction, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and a minimum sentence of four years if a firearm was involved.

Sentences in Saskatchewan generally fall between four and 12 years, depending on whether the unlawful act that caused death is closer to a near accident or a near murder.