Brandon Phillips convicted
For the first time since his trial began a month ago, Brandon Phillips stood in the prisoner’s dock Friday, and not at the table next to his lawyers.
He lowered his head and looked to the floor as the forewoman of the jury presented the verdict, after three days of deliberations: guilty of seconddegree murder in the shooting death of Larry Wellman.
Behind Phillips sat his mother and other supporters. On the other side of the gallery were Wellman’s wife and children, in the same seats they had taken every day throughout the trial. Both parties declined interviews with members of the media after the court proceedings, and Phillips, when asked if he had anything to say as he was being led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, remained silent.
After the proceedings, his lawyers, however, didn’t mince their words.
“Well, how would you be?” Mark Gruchy responded when asked how his client, who had no previous criminal record, was feeling. “That’s the simple answer, I think.”
“Obviously Mr. Phillips is disappointed,” added Jeff Brace. “We’ve been spending a long period of time getting ready for this. We certainly had a degree of optimism with respect to certain issues regarding the evidence, but juries are notoriously unpredictable.
“I can’t overstate my overall disappointment with the outcome here today.”
Phillips’ case will be called in Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court again next Friday, when a date will be set to address sentencing. While a life sentence is mandatory with a second-degree murder conviction, the eligibility for parole can vary, from 10 to 25 years.
Justice Valerie Marshall, who will decide Phillips’ parole eligibility, asked the jurors for their recommendations on an appropriate time period within that frame if they wanted to provide them, and requested they consider Phillips’ character as well as the circumstance of the murder. The jurors provided their recommendations on paper, and they will be sealed from public view.
Brace and Gruchy say they feel good about their chances when it comes to parole.
“We’re not there, yet, but I feel very good we have an excellent argument for a lower parole eligibility period,” Gruchy told reporters.
The defence lawyers hinted at the possibility of an appeal application, but said they would take some time to contemplate and consult with Phillips before making any decision. Phillips has the final say on the matter, they said.
Crown prosecutors Mark Heerema and Shauna Macdonald — called in from Nova Scotia for the case, in an effort to avoid a conflict of interest given Phillips’ girlfriend at the time of the murder was Premier Dwight Ball’s daughter, Jade — told reporters they were pleased with the verdict, but it wasn’t a cause for celebration.
“The end of it is it’s not going to bring Mr. Wellman back, so there’s nothing particularly happy or something to celebrate today,” Heerema said. “But certainly there was a lot of effort in the RNC’S very thorough investigation and we are very pleased with the verdict.”
Macdonald said she and Heerema would determine what their recommendation on parole eligibility will be over the next few days, and will review the case to determine whether or not to appeal the second-degree murder verdict.
“It’s too soon to be thinking in those terms,” she said. “We certainly always review any verdict and any legal decisions that have been made along with our colleagues in appeals and that’s done over the next number of days after the dust settles.”
Phillips, 29, entered the Captain’s Quarters hotel on Kings Bridge Road in St. John’s just before midnight on Oct. 3, 2015, wearing a mask and armed with a loaded, sawed-off pump-action shotgun. After demanding money from the lone bartender, he was confronted by Wellman, who asked him why he was pointing a gun at the woman.
“Buddy, get the f---,” Phillips replied. “This one’s f---ing loaded.”
Surveillance video recorded the murder.
Wellman, 63, was a native of Corner Brook, a former firefighter and a construction project manager, living with his long-term partner, Linda Mcbay, in Goose Bay. The couple were in St. John’s house hunting and to visit Mcbay’s mother while Wellman was on a two-week turnaround from work, and had decided to go to the hotel bar for a couple of drinks and to play the VLTS because it was quiet there. Wellman attempted to stop the robbery, and Mcbay is seen and heard on video trying to get her husband away from Phillips.
“Save your husband,” Phillips tells her as she tries to pull Wellman away. “Save his life.”
In an apparent attempt to disarm Phillips, Wellman picked up a small table and thrust it at him, appearing to strike the gun. Phillips then shot Wellman in the groin, hitting his femoral artery.
“Now!” Phillips shouted after the shot, then, “Give me my f--ing money!” He stepped over Wellman, who was lying, bleeding, on the floor, to get behind the bar to try to get money from the cash register. He ended up leaving empty-handed.
Wellman died hours later in hospital.
The morning after the murder, police located a navy toque with eye holes cut in it on the street behind the hotel, which experts testified contained a single particle of gunshot residue on the outside and Phillips’ DNA on the inside. Upon executing a search warrant at 30A Quidi Vidi Rd., where Phillips lived, police seized the gun, wrapped in a hoodie and hidden underneath a couch cushion, as well as a pair of sneakers bearing Wellman’s DNA on the tread and Phillips’ on the laces and tongue. They also found, hidden in a knee wall next to a water and sewer pipe, a broken piece of wood that fit pieces found at the hotel and matched the gun.
Firearms expert Laura Knowles from the RCMP’S forensic lab in Ottawa testified she had examined the gun, and found it to discharge consistently when hit with a rubber mallet, without a trigger pull.
Phillips’ lawyers argued the gun had discharged accidentally when Wellman struck it with the table. Macdonald and Heerema pointed out Phillips had chosen to bring the loaded gun, and had been prepared to use it to get money.
An officer testified Jade Ball had been a person of interest in the case for a number of days, and was under surveillance along with Phillips on the day after the shooting. Her DNA had been collected from a castoff cigarette or gum, but was never tested and she was never charged with anything in connection with the murder.
Neither Jade nor Dwight Ball was called to testify at the trial, despite being on the witness list. Brace and Gruchy called no witnesses during the trial.
Phillips’ father, Eric Squires, is also serving a sentence for murder: he was sent to prison in 1998 on a first-degree murder charge for the stabbing death of Nina Walsh two years earlier.