Witnesses against gang members were criminals, appeal court told

The judge presiding over the trial of three men convicted in a series of brutal gang slayings in Vernon more than a decade ago improperly instructed the jury in the case, a defence lawyer argued Monday.

Mark Jette told the B.C. Court of Appeal that the key Crown witnesses against his client, Leslie Podolski, and co-accused Peter Manolakos and Sheldon O’Donnell, were extremely unsavory criminals themselves.

Jette said the defence lawyers challenged the credibility of those witnesses in opening statements and throughout the 18-month trial, which ended with convictions in November 2012.

“We did have steady and concerted and careful attack on the credibility of a series of key Crown witnesses who were at the core of the case of the Crown such that there could not have been any misunderstanding at all with respect to the purpose behind the attack in cross-examination. The purpose was to discredit the witness generally,” Jette said.

Yet in his instructions to the jury, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bill Smart told jurors that if the defence lawyers hadn’t cross-examined a witness on a significant or important point of their testimony, the jurors could choose to believe it.

Jette told Justices Mary Saunders, Daphne Smith and Lauri Ann Fenlon that Smart was wrong when he said that.

“(Jurors) were given an improper instruction that allowed them to delve into who knows what to resurrect the credibility of one or more of these witnesses,” Jette argued.

“They are being told that if this undefined significant or important point was not challenged in cross-examination, that this is something that they could use ultimately to find that the witness was believable on that point.”

Jette said it is impossible to know if the jurors convicted the three men using unreliable evidence from the criminal witnesses because of Smart’s improper instruction to them.

The jury convicted Podolski of one count of first-degree murder, O’Donnell on one count of first-degree and two counts of second-degree murder, and Peter Manolakos of first-degree murder and one count of manslaughter.All three are serving life sentences.

The men were found to be part of a notorious drug trafficking gang operating in the North Okanagan called the Greeks, of which Manolakos was the leader.