Shafia brother convicted of killing four women appeals to top court

A man convicted of murdering his three sisters and another woman is taking his case to the country’s top court, arguing new evidence showing he was a youth at the time of the deaths should not have been dismissed.

Hamed Shafia and his parents were found guilty in January 2012 of four counts of first-degree murder – killings their trial judge described as being motivated by their “twisted concept of honour.”

The bodies of Shafia’s teenage sisters and his father’s first wife in a polygamous marriage were found in a car at the bottom of the Rideau Canal in Kingston, Ont., in June 2009.

During an appeal at the Court of Appeal for Ontario – which he lost in November – Shafia had argued, among other things, that new evidence showed he was too young to be tried as an adult and should have been tried separately.

The appeal court found no reason to allow Shafia’s new evidence, which it said was not compelling.

But in an application for leave to appeal at the Supreme Court of Canada, Shafia’s lawyers argue the appeal court was wrong and had not applied a standard test – known as the Palmer test – for admitting fresh evidence.

“The Palmer test for the admission of fresh evidence has been the controlling authority for a generation ... If it had been applied by the Court of Appeal for Ontario in this case, the evidence would have been admitted,” Shafia’s lawyers argue in documents submitted to the Supreme Court.

“The approach taken by the Court of Appeal now introduces a troubling uncertainty into the scope and operation of the traditional rule.”