Court rejects appeal by Hunter Brown’s killer
Trevor LaPierre knew his actions were immoral despite mental illness, panel rules
Trevor LaPierre won’t be getting a new trial, despite a psychiatrist’s conclusion that the Kitchener man had severe schizophrenia and met the threshold to be found not criminally responsible for murdering Hunter Brown.
The Ontario Court of Appeal on Thursday dismissed LaPierre’s conviction and sentence appeals.
On the afternoon of Dec. 15, 2007, Brown, 74, was delivering Christmas cards to his neighbours on Glenwood Drive in Kitchener when LaPierre, 22 at the time, attacked him with a large hunting knife.
Brown was stabbed more than 40 times in the face and head, then left to die while LaPierre casually walked away. He said he killed Brown to please Satan.
LaPierre at first hoped to be found not criminally responsible of first-degree murder but pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2010 after psychiatric assessments found he was feigning or exaggerating signs of mental illness.
But while in prison, LaPierre got another psychiatric assessment — and it found that at the time of the murder, he had severe treatment-resistant schizophrenia that met the threshold to be found not criminally responsible.
Based on the assessment by Dr. John Bradford, LaPierre appealed his conviction and life sentence.
In a ruling on Thursday, Justice James MacPherson, writing for a three-judge Appeal Court panel, said he accepts Bradford’s conclusion that LaPierre had schizophrenia when he killed Brown. He also accepts there may have been a “casual relationship” between his illness and the killing.
“However, these two conclusions are not enough to establish that at the material time (LaPierre) was incapable of knowing that his conduct was wrong according to the ordinary moral standards of reasonable members of society,” MacPherson said.
“Dr. Bradford’s evidence was, overwhelmingly, directed to (LaPierre’s) subjective belief that his conduct was justified and not to his awareness of societal moral standards ... Accordingly, I would not give effect to this ground of appeal. I would not admit the fresh evidence because it could not reasonably be expected to have affected the result at the trial.”
The judge added that “due to the progressive and changing nature of major mental disorders, including schizophrenia, it cannot be definitively inferred that a condition described as severe treatment-resistant schizophrenia in 2010 existed in that form in 2007 when the killing took place.”
MacPherson said there is “compelling evidence” that LaPierre’s mental state deteriorated between an assessment in 2009 and his incarceration in 2010.
LaPierre’s actions after the murder, he said, belie a not-criminally-responsible defence.
“When (he) got home, he changed his tuque because he ‘didn’t want to go to jail,’ changed his jacket, and cleaned the blade of his knife and put it in a drawer. In the view of his father who spent time with him that evening, (LaPierre) seemed fine.”
LaPierre’s comments to police three days after the murder reveal he knew murder was immoral.
“I did the wrong thing,” LaPierre told an officer
“What was the wrong thing?” the officer asked.
“I did the wrong thing and killed him.”
LaPierre is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole until Dec. 18, 2024 — 17 years after his arrest.
“I see nothing in the trial judge’s reasons that would suggest that a 17-year period of parole ineligibility was unfairly imposed or too harsh,” MacPherson said.
“The recent fresh evidence does not change this conclusion.”
The judge called the killing “savage, unprovoked and inexplicable.”