Defence lawyer urges jury to find Styres killing ‘lawful’

GUILTY OF SECOND-DEGREE murder. Guilty of manslaughter. Not guilty.

Those are the verdicts available to the jury as it decides the fate of Peter Khill.

But Khill’s own lawyer has told jurors to rule out manslaughter because it is nothing better than a “compromise.” Instead, they should acquit his client of any wrongdoing by determining he committed a “lawful” killing in self-defence and thereby find him not guilty.

“He acted to save his own life,” Jeffrey Manishen said in his closing address. “The law permits a person to defend himself.”

Khill has been on trial for seconddegree murder since June 11. On Monday, in a packed courtroom, the jury heard closing arguments and some of Justice Stephen Glithero’s charge. On Tuesday, the judge will finish his charge — including instructions on how to consider the “intent” of Khill when he blasted Jonathan Styres twice with a shotgun after finding him rummaging through his truck at 3 a.m.

After that, the seven men and five women of the jury will be sequestered and deliberating.

Khill, 28, admits to shooting Styres, 29, twice on Feb. 4, 2016, in the wee hours in the driveway of his Binbrook-area home.

The accused testified that when he confronted him, Styres quickly brought his hands up to “gun height,” causing Khill — a former military reservist — to believe he was armed with a gun. Styres did not have a gun. Khill’s intention, Manishen said, was to follow his training: “Confront, disarm and contain.”

The jury had heard testimony from Khill, his former commander and an expert that repetitive military training can cause certain responses to become “instinctive.”

When Khill ran out into the night wearing only his boxers and a T-shirt, he “acted without malice and without anger,” Manishen said. That is demonstrated after the shooting when he performed CPR on Styres, he said.

Khill wasn’t thinking about defending himself when he ran out of the house. Nor was he worried about protecting his truck. He just wanted to control the stranger on his property.

But when Khill thought Styres was about to shoot him, he shot first. In those seconds between Khill shouting “Hey! Hands up!” and the shots being fired, the self-defence mindset kicked in, Manishen said, reminding the jury the onus is on the Crown to prove it was not self-defence.

Manishen also touched in his closing on an issue that has drawn much attention to the trial. From the outset, the jury was told Khill is white and Styres was Indigenous.

Members of the jury pool were questioned about whether those facts would create bias in their ability to judge this case. Only jurors who answered no were selected. It is unclear if any jurors are Indigenous.

The only time that race was even hinted at during the trial was when Khill and his wife were asked by Manishen how far their Binbrook-area home was from Six Nations, where Styres lived.

In his closing, Manishen said he has no idea where Styres was before arriving in Khill’s driveway and that it was so dark outside that Khill could not know Styres was Indigenous. “Race cannot, it does not, play a part in your decision for this case,” Manishen said. “This case ... is free from any racial considerations.”

The Crown, in its closing address, said Khill displayed “a maddening catalogue of overreaction” from the time he woke until the time he fired the shots.

“This killing should never have happened,” Steve O’Brien said. “It didn’t need to happen. Jon Styres could have been taken to jail by police that night. Peter Khill could have taken his truck in for repairs and got on with his life.”

Khill just needed to “calm down” and none of this would have happened.

The accused should have called 911 to report someone trying to steal his truck rather than take matters — and a shotgun — into his own hands.

What Khill did, O’Brien said, was “the opposite of reasonable.”

“It involved immediate resort to a loaded shotgun” and it ended in “disaster.”

There is no doubt Styres had committed a criminal act by breaking into the truck.

“But he did not have to be shot to death for what he was doing,” O’Brien said.

Civilian life “is not a war zone.” Instead of calling 911, Khill took action that was “almost guaranteed to end in death,” the Crown said.

“Styres was helpless . ... In fact, he was dying and Peter Khill shot him again . ... He was on his back in the mud in his final moments. ... What Mr. Khill did to Jon Styres wasn’t just unnecessary and needless . ... What he did to Jon Styres was cruel.”