Chan granted new trial after appeal
Had been sentenced to five years in prison for stabbing his father to death and nearly killing his father’s partner in 2015 in Peterborough
The Ontario Court of Appeal has set aside Thomas Chan’s manslaughter and aggravated assault convictions and granted him a new trial.
In March 2019, Chan was sentenced to five years in prison for the vicious stabbing death of his father, Dr. Andrew Chan, and the near deadly attack on Dr. Chan’s lifepartner Lynn Witteveen after being convicted in December 2018.
The court has heard that on Dec. 28, 2015, Chan consumed magic mushrooms before experiencing hallucinations and stabbing the couple because he thought they were the devil.
Chan’s legal team of Dave McFadden and Joleen Hiland appealed the manslaughter and aggravated assault convictions. Chan’s appeal, which was handled by Danielle Robitaille and Matthew Gourlay of Henein Hutchison LLP in Toronto, was heard in October 2019 with a decision rendered by the Ontario Court of Appeal on Wednesday.
Chan’s legal team says it’s pleased by the result and clarity with which the Ontario Court of Appeal dealt with the complicated legal issues.
“The court has reaffirmed basic concepts of criminal responsibility and the limits of Parliament’s authority to infringe upon fundamental legal rights,” Henein Hutchison LLP wrote in an email statement.
The appeal was based on the constitutionality of Section of 33.1 of the Criminal Code.
Chan’s argument was that the law unconstitutionally deprived him of access to the nonmental disorder automatism defence.
Automatism is defined as a state of impaired consciousness rather than unconsciousness in which a person, though capable of action, has no voluntary control over that action.
The section removes nonmental disorder automatism as a defence where the state of automatism is self-induced by voluntary intoxication and the offence includes an element of an assault.
Prior to the trial and after the verdict, McFadden challenged the law with trial judge Cary Boswell, but Boswell ruled the law to be constitutional.
However, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled the law unconstitutional, stating the trial judge committed several errors in coming to his conclusion.
“Most significantly, the trial judge misstated the object of s. 33.1,” the decision reads.
“A reasonable person in Mr. Chan’s position could not have foreseen that his self-induced intoxication might lead to assaultive behaviour, let alone a knife attack on his father and his stepmother, people he loved.”
Since Chan should have been provided with the opportunity to invoke the non-mental disorder automatism defence, the Ontario Court of Appeal set aside his convictions and ordered a new trial.
Chan was arguing for an outcome of an acquittal because the judge found him to be incapacitated, other than by reason of mental disorder, the automatism defence is satisfied.
However, the Ontario Court of Appeal didn’t agree.
The decision reads that the judge made no finding that Chan was not acting voluntarily. Instead, Boswell concluded that as a result of psychosis induced by intoxication, Chan was incapable of knowing his actions would be considered wrong according to moral standards of reasonable members of society.
“This is not a finding of nonmental disorder automatism,” the decision reads.
“A person can lack the capacity to know their acts are wrong, yet still voluntarily choose to engage in those acts.”
Chan remains out of bail awaiting a new trial.
“The public should know that the application of the automatism defence is extremely narrow and therefor rare,” Chan’s legal team added in their statement.
“The underlying facts in this case remain a profound tragedy for Mr. Chan and his family, which no court decision can hope to remedy.”