Court hears bid to overturn conviction
Cowell’s family wants tougher sentencing
The family of Tania Cowell is holding out hope the Ontario Court of Appeal will overturn a jury verdict giving her killer a manslaughter conviction instead of the more punishable second-degree murder one.
A panel of three appellant court judges heard the appeal Wednesday of Haiden Suarez Noa’s conviction in November 2015.
Suarez Noa admitted stabbing Cowell, his partner and the mother of his then five-monthold son, in their Stoney Creek apartment in March 2013. He said he’d “lost it” when she threatened to leave him and keep their son from him.
Cowell, 36, was stabbed 11 times, but Suarez Noa only remembered stabbing her twice. Afterward, he took a picture of her body and left with their son to spend the night in Guelph before turning himself in to police the next day. Suarez Noa was sentenced in January 2016 to 11 years in prison, but with time served awaiting trial, he could apply for parole and be out next year, says Cowell’s family.
The Ontario Attorney General’s appeal on behalf of the Hamilton Crown’s
office argued the trial judge erred in allowing Suarez Noa’s lawyer to present testimony from forensic psychiatrist Dr. Julian Gojer — and by allowing Suarez Noa to use the defence of provocation.
Both allowances were sticking points for the Hamilton Woman Abuse Working Group, a coalition of 20 Hamilton agencies who showed up in large numbers at Suarez Noa’s sentencing. They gave an unprecedented victim impact statement on behalf of the community under a new measure recognizing that the effects of crime can be farreaching and cause harm or loss to a community as a whole.
Natasha Dobler, a member of the group, said then that members were “horrified and infuriated” at the message being sent to abusers that “they could literally get away with murder.”
On Wednesday after the appeal, Julie Cowell — who shares guardianship and is raising Tania’s son, Bailun, with her husband and Tania’s brother, Ivon — reiterated the concern. She said the family hopes the appeal panel knows “it’s not OK to do what he did and set a precedent” on provocation.
The court has reserved judgment for a decision in the near future.
Julie Cowell said she prefers not to go through a new trial, “but if it means keeping him behind bars longer and away from my son, I’ll do it. There is no bringing Tania back. This fight is for Bailun … We’ll tell Bailun we fought for your mom as hard as we could.”
In the appeal, the Crown’s Philippe Cowle argued Gojer’s trial testimony weighed heavily on the jury’s decision to reduce the conviction to manslaughter. After deliberating three days, it took only two-and-a-half hours after reviewing Gojer’s evidence to return with the manslaughter verdict, he said.
Gojer’s evidence “was heavily, heavily in favour of the defence.” The judge — Superior Court Justice Robert Reid — erred when he allowed it because it was unnecessary and prejudicial, Cowle added.
It also opened the door to an opinion that Suarez Noa could have been in a disassociated state of mind, and that provocation could have triggered the stabbing, Cowle said. In bringing up disassociation, Gojer used a term that “was loaded and confusing” and imparted an element that Suarez Noa didn’t intend to kill Cowell, he argued.
The panel told Suarez Noa’s lawyer it didn’t need to hear arguments against the Crown’s assertion that provocation should not have been left to the jury. So Heather Pringle concentrated her arguments on Gojer’s testimony, saying there was no error because the judge felt it necessary for the jury to hear evidence about what could have triggered Suarez Noa’s intense emotions that led to the stabbing. “Everything is relevant to his state of mind, including possibilities, and this had to be put to the jury” especially when the Crown says he’s lying, Pringle argued.