Peterborough native guilty of manslaughter
Calgary jury rules he didn’t have intent to commit second-degree murder of woman
A native of Peterborough living in Calgary has been convicted of manslaughter in the 2014 stabbing death of a 39-year-old woman in Calgary
Scott Ferguson, now 25, did not have the necessary intent to commit second-degree murder when he brutally stabbed his girlfriend, Susan Elko, 10 times, a jury ruled late Tuesday.
Instead, the Court of Queen’s Bench jury found Ferguson guilty of the lesser included offence of manslaughter.
Jurors deliberated a little more than five hours before reaching their conclusion after hearing final arguments from Crown and defence lawyers earlier in the day.
Prosecutor Jonathan Hak, in his final submissions, said Ferguson should be convicted as charged.
Hak argued Ferguson killed Elko because it was, to him, the easiest way to get out of their tumultuous relationship.
“He was just done with her and he didn’t know how to extricate himself from the situation so he killed her,” Hak said.
“He put an end to the bad relationship he was in by killing Susie.”
Ferguson moved out west in 2011 to look for work and has a police officer brother, the trial heard earlier.
Ferguson was charged in the Sept. 14, 2014, stabbing death of Elko, 39.
Ferguson was 15 years Elko’s junior when the two began dating in 2013, in what Hak described as a doomed relationship.
The prosecutor said the accused clearly intended the victim’s death when he stabbed her 10 times in the neck after pinning her face down on their couch.
“He cannot escape the inescapable, when the defendant killed Susie he committed a murder,” Hak argued.
He dismissed suggestions Ferguson may have been too intoxicated to form the intent necessary to commit murder.
Hak showed the five-man, seven-woman jury video footage of Ferguson and Elko leaving their apartment building to go fishing and returning shortly before the woman was slain.
“There’s no staggering, no falling down,” he said.
“They’re both walking perfectly fine,” Hak said, of video showing the couple returning to the southwest apartment they shared before noon on the day Elko was killed.
“This is about 12 minutes before the murder.”
About 14 minutes after they arrived home, Ferguson was shown on the video leaving the building.
“The next thing we’ll see is the defendant leaving the building -out he goes, he’s not falling into anything,” the prosecutor said, as Ferguson’s image appeared on screen.
Ferguson in his statement to police admitted stabbing Elko.
Hak said the dexterity he showed also dispelled any suggestion Ferguson was too drunk to have intentionally killed her.
“The defendant got on top of her and stabbed her over and over,” he said.
“This was not an ‘oops I slipped,’ this was ‘I’ve had it up to here with you and I want you dead.’”
The accused was also able to drive to his boss’s home, turn over his work truck and cell phone and call 911 before waiting at a nearby 7-Eleven store for police to arrive, he noted.
But jurors accepted the submissions of defence lawyer Balfour Der that Ferguson did not have the necessary intent for murder when he killed his girlfriend.
Der argued several factors combined to take away his client’s ability to form the intent for murder when he stabbed Elko while they argued in the apartment.
“Our position is ... Scott Ferguson doesn’t go free, but he’s not guilty of murder, he’s guilty of manslaughter,” Der said.
Der told jurors a combination of provocation by Elko, who grabbed Ferguson’s folding knife during their fight, intoxication, fear, fatigue, anger, self-defence and instinctive reaction reduced his client’s criminal intent.
“It was a frenzied attack,” he said.
Jurors had to determine “what was going on in Scott Ferguson’s mind when these wounds were struck,” the lawyer said.
Jurors deliberated a little more than five hours before reaching their decision.
A date for Ferguson’s sentencing hearing will be set March 17.