Judge rules on parole eligibility in fatal stabbing
Man who stabbed woman 126 times can apply after 12 years of life sentence
An otherwise “meek, kind and ordinary” man — who snapped wwhen he stabbed a co-worker and a one-time lover 126 times, kkilling her — will be eligible to apply a for parole after serving 12
years of a life sentence for second-degree murder, a judge has decided.
Last December, a Toronto jury convicted Nicholas Johnson, now 27, of killing Virgil Jack, 31, on Aug. 18, 2017, and leaving her dead, floating in a North York creek.
Prosecutor Allison MacPherson asked that Johnson be ordered ineligible to apply for parole for 17 years, arguing that case law for an “intimate-partner homicide” supported that range. Defence lawyer Tony Bryant argued 12 years was appropriate.
Superior Court Justice Faye McWatt said that while the attack was brutal, she rejected the Crown’s argument the case was one of domestic abuse or an intimate-partner relationship, saying she found Johnson and Jack’s contact “may not have been any more than one sexual encounter and a possible friendship through work.”
Summarizing the evidence heard at trial, McWatt said that within days of having sex with Johnson while his spouse was away, Jack falsely claimed she was pregnant. What followed was a barrage of angry texts and r ruses as Jack sought to destroy Johnson’s relationship with his spouse, who really was pregnant.
“The deceased wreaked havoc in the couple’s life,” McWatt said, reading her decision in court Tuesday.
The judge said she found it “startling” that Johnson was gullible enough to believe Jack “in this unfortunate escapade.” The explanation, she said, lies in a psychological report submitted by the defence that found he is “intellectually de- layed to some extent and obviously reacted with deadly results to the situation Ms. Jack created.”
The report found Johnson suffers from a mild to moderate level of “intellectual developmental disorder” and lacked coping strategies.
“He could not understand that her claim could not have been true when they had slept together only days before she announced the pregnancy to him and led him to nonexistent medical visits to get confirmation of her condition.”
McWatt noted that even at the time of the statements Johnson gave to police shortly after the crime, and then some months later, Johnson still believed Jack was pregnant.
Bryant said after court his client was pleased the judge accepted the doctor’s findings wwith respect to his intellectual disabilities and the impact they had on his decision making.
The tempo and content of text messages sent by Jack were “coming at a pace that would be very, very difficult to get a grip on,” Byrant said. Johnson, whom McWatt described as a “somewhat meek, kind and ordinary man,” had no criminal record, nor any contact with the criminal justice system until this offence. He was 24 at the time of the killing.
Jamaican-born, Johnson arrived in Canada at the age of 14 aand met Jack working on a fac- tory line at a computer parts company.
Bryant has already filed an appeal over how Johnson’s jury was selected.
Days before Johnson was supposed to be sentenced last winter, an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling in the murder trial of Pardeep Singh Chouhan found the judge had improperly applied new jury selection rules.
Bryant sought a mistrial, arguing Johnson’s jury had also been improperly selected — a motion that McWatt dismissed. Johnson has subsequently filed an appeal on that issue and is expected to join an estimated half a dozen other appellants in Toronto.
In May, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed to review the Chouhan ruling.
If it is left to stand, it could result in dozens of convictions having to be retried at a time when the court system is facing an unprecedented case backlog created by the global pandemic.