Bacon murder trial to continue
Judge rejects bid to suspend charges against trio based on case delays
A week into the Jonathon Bacon murder trial in Kelowna, the judge has ruled it will continue.
Justice Allan Betton on Monday rejected the defence bid for the case to be dismissed because it has taken too long to come to trial.
“The application for a judicial stay, on the basis of unreasonable delay, must be in the circumstances of this case dismissed,” Betton said at the start of proceedings in B.C. Supreme Court.
Betton did not give his reasons for rejecting the application, saying he would release them at a later, unspecified date.
Defence lawyers for the three men accused of killing Bacon had cited a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that serious criminal cases should be concluded within 30 months of charges being laid unless there are exceptional circumstances.
The men charged with murdering Bacon outside the Delta Grand hotel in August 2011 — Michael Jones, Jason McBride and Jujhar Khun-Khun — have already been in jail for more than four years.
There was an air of expectation in the specially fortified courtroom on Monday as the judge said he had reached a decision on the defence motion to dismiss the case, first made when the trial began in late May. Betton said he needed more time to write his reasons. “I fully appreciate the scrutiny that is likely to be given to them,” he said.
When testimony resumed, Crown counsel David Ruse called Delta hotel security chief Gary Maltby to the stand. Maltby said he was off duty the day Bacon was killed, but was quickly called to the hotel and handed over security camera footage to police.
The Grand has multiple cameras throughout the property, court heard, which includes the hotel proper as well as the adjacent Private Residence Club.
The accused are charged with murdering Bacon as he and companions were about to drive away from the hotel’s front entrance in a white Porsche Cayenne.
Two other witnesses, Lorna Hinz and her husband Gerard, described how they had just pulled into a parking spot on Cawston Avenue across from the Grand when they heard what both of them believed at first to be a number of firecrackers going off.
Seconds later, a vehicle Lorna Hinz described as a large SUV roared past the couple, heading east on Cawston. Using her husband’s notebook, Hinz wrote down the vehicle’s licence plate as either CNN 998 or CMN 998.
Gerard Hinz testified he saw the vehicle speeding up behind them in his rear-view mirror and then watched it proceed quickly down Cawston.
Asked by Ruse what he first made of the situation, Hinz said: “I thought it was just another one of those darn Kelowna drivers tearing the place up.” The trial continues.