Jury will hear closing arguments in Lee homicide trial Monday
The jury hearing the trial for three men accused of killing Reno Lee spent just a few minutes in the courtroom on Thursday before being told to head home.
The jury — now consisting of 11 people due to a number of issues that cropped up during the course of the trial — was expecting to hear closing arguments from Crown and defence counsel on Wednesday. Instead, they received phone calls from the sheriff ’s office telling them to come in on Thursday.
But rather than hearing arguments on Thursday morning, they learned Justice Catherine Dawson and legal counsel have spent the past few days discussing the charge the judge will put to the jury — a charge she now needs to write.
The charge will instruct the jury on the process of deliberating and the law they need to follow, and will go through some of the evidence they heard during the sixweek trial.
The jury will now hear closing arguments on Monday and Dawson said she anticipates reading the charge on Tuesday. Once jurors are charged, they will be sequestered to begin the process of deliberating.
Three men — Andrew Bellegarde, 24, Bronson Gordon, 33, and Daniel Theodore, 34 — are facing charges of first-degree murder and offering an indignity to human remains.
It’s alleged each of them played a crucial role in the April 16, 2015, death of 34-year-old Lee, whose dismembered body was found later that month in a shallow grave on the Star Blanket First Nation.