MILITARY DEFENCE
Self-defence claim in murder trial highlights army training practices,
Defence and prosecution clashed Monday over whether a Hamilton-area homeowner’s military training justified his fatal shooting of a man who broke into his truck.
Peter Khill, 28, admits he killed Jon Styres with two shotgun blasts in the early morning of Feb. 4, 2016, but he pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, saying he fired in selfdefence, believing Styres was pointing a gun at him.
Khill has testified that he spent four years as an army reservist and that he instinctively fell back on his military training when he saw a strange man on his property.
“Soldiers react proactively, that’s how they are trained,” Khill’s lawyer, Jeffrey Manishen, said in his closing address to the jury, comparing Khill’s actions to those of U.S. soldiers who subdued a gunman on a train in France in 2015.
“Mr. Khill said that’s why he acted the way he acted. To take control of the situation.”
The jury has heard that Khill fired because he saw Styres, 29, raise his arms as though he had a gun, and he thought his life was in danger, but Styres was not, in fact, armed at the time. Crown prosecutor Steve O’Brien argued in his closing address that Khill’s army experience should have taught him never to charge into an uncertain situation, and it does not justify him behaving rashly when “30 seconds of pausing, of calming down” would have pre- vented Styres’s death.
“The training in how to approach an enemy combatant and kill him — that he followed closely,” O’Brien said.
“But the other rules, he completely ignored: that civilian life is not a war zone, that soldiers must take time to genuinely assess the situation. And let me just say, everybody is required to take time to genuinely assess the situations if they can (as) there is not one law for ex-soldiers and one law for everybody else.”
Khill and his girlfriend awoke to the sound of banging outside their rural home on the morning of the shooting, and saw Styres inside their truck parked outside, the jury was told. Khill loaded his shotgun, left the home through the back door, and cut through a breezeway between the house and the garage to confront Styres.
But, O’Brien argued Monday, Styres did not pose a reasonable threat to Khill and his girlfriend while they were inside their locked home. The accused should have called 911 and waited for police rather than run out of the house with a loaded shotgun, the Crown said.
While jurors can find Khill not guilty of second-degree murder and convict him of manslaughter, they should acquit him outright, Manishen argued.
The case has garnered attention for similarities to a recent Saskatchewan case, in which white farmer Gerald Stanley was acquitted in February of murdering Colten Boushie, a young Indigenous man.
Manishen told the jury that race plays no part in the case, as Khill could not possibly have known Styres was Indigenous given how dark it was at the time of the shooting and how quickly events unfolded.
“He is no trigger-happy, callous, impulsive, rash individual who doesn’t care about somebody he’s had to confront,” he said. “(Khill) lived to defend his country and wanted to continue to live to defend his own life.”
Superior Court Justice Stephen Glithero instructed the jury to come to a decision “without sympathy, prejudice or fear,” reminding them to disregard anything they’ve heard about the case outside the courtroom or in the media.
The jurors are expected to begin deliberating on Tuesday.