Convicted murderer seeks appeal
Greenwood appealing conviction for 2000 murder of Hants County couple
Leslie Douglas Greenwood alleges judge erred during trial
Convicted murderer Leslie Douglas Greenwood is appealing his convictions on two counts of firstdegree murder in the slayings of a Hants County couple 18 years ago.
Greenwood is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years following his conviction this past February in Kentville Supreme Court. A jury found him guilty in the September 2000 deaths of Barry Mersereau and Nancy Christensen.
It was Greenwood’s second trial on the charges. He was arrested in 2010 and originally convicted in 2012, but in 2014 the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal ordered a new trial.
In his appeal documents, Greenwood provides four pages of handwritten submissions on how he believes Justice Jamie Campbell erred during the trial and during pre-trial motions.
Among those, Greenwood said Campbell should not have allowed an audio recording of the testimony of former provincial medical examiner Dr. Vernon Bowes from the original trial.
The jury was told that they were hearing the recorded evidence because Bowes now suffers from dementia, and that he had a memory test done in 2012 but the results are unknown.
Greenwood alleges that changes in Bowes’ testimony between the original preliminary inquiry and the first trial in 2012 should have “been a sign that something was wrong.”
He also said the judge erred in allowing his interview with police to be heard by the jury. It was edited to remove material the Crown and defence said could be prejudicial, but Greenwood wrote that the result was so mixed up that it didn’t make any sense.
Greenwood alleged that Camp- bell also made several errors in his instructions to the jury, including not giving a viva voce warning to the jury about the testimony of two witnesses, and letting the trial continue when Greenwood alleges he was injured in prison and suffering some memory loss.
He said he wanted more time to recuperate and get his memory back, but there was only a three-day break in the proceedings. He alleges that he didn’t testify at the trial because he felt he was not fully fit and his memory was not good enough.
No date has yet been set for the appeal. The Public Prosecution Service could not immediately be reached for comment.
The jury deliberated for only three hours in coming to their decision in February. Greenwood said when leaving court he was shocked at the short deliberations after 13 days of testimony, and said then that he would appeal.
Mersereau and Christensen were found dead on Sept. 10, 2000. A coaccused, Michael Lawrence, testified that he owed a $28,000 drug debt to Curtis Lynds, who he sold drugs for, and that Lynds told him he could settle the debt by killing the couple.
Lawrence testified that he didn’t know the couple, and that Lynds brought in Greenwood because he did know them and could get into the house without problems.
The plan, Lawrence testified, was that Greenwood would go in first and shoot the couple with a .357 Magnum revolver, and then come out before Lawrence went in with a .32-calibre and made sure they were dead.
Greenwood did not testify, but court did hear from him in an audio recording made by undercover police officers in late 2010. Greenwood said in the recording that he knew nothing about any plan to kill the couple, and he was only at their house to pick up cigarettes and marijuana. He said that after coming outside with those items, Lawrence went inside and he heard several shots.