Appeal overturns conviction in murder of city drug dealer

Ontario’s Court of Appeal has overturned a career criminal’s seconddegree murder conviction in the revenge slaying of a Windsor drug dealer.

The decision means that Richard Zoldi will stand trial a third time for the 2006 murder of Troy Hutchinson.

Zoldi was convicted of seconddegree murder in 2011 following his second trial. He launched an appeal based on the argument that the jury received confusing and incorrect instructions for deliberations by the trial judge Bruce Thomas, which “left an unconstitutional path to conviction.”

Jurors were told that along with deciding whether Zoldi was the actual shooter, they could also consider if aiding and abetting were other

possible ways he participated in the crime. Zoldi’s argument was that the instructions failed to make clear to the jury that an aider or abettor must have knowledge of the killer’s intention for murder. Appeal Court Justice J. Michal Fairburn agreed. “The trial judge was faced with a difficult task in charging the jury,” Fairburn wrote. “He had to address multiple challenging issues, including providing directions on how to approach the evidence of highly unsavoury witnesses, post-offence conduct, continuity, expert and eyewitness identification evidence.”

“The trial judge did an impressive job at bringing together a concise, comprehensive, yet comprehensible charge. Unfortunately, the charge took on an added layer of complexity when the appellant’s potential liability as an aider or abettor to the murder was placed into the mix.” Hutchinson was shot and killed early in the morning on Aug. 27, 2006, in revenge for a robbery that went wrong.

Court previously heard that Shane Huard and Zoldi were crack addicts with a penchant for ripping off drug dealers. On Aug. 24, 2006, according to details in the Appeal Court documents, Zoldi, Huard and a third man tried to rob some drug dealers.

It didn’t go as planned. Zoldi was stabbed in the shoulder. The robbers left empty-handed.

Two days later, a neighbour left a .22 calibre Browning semiautomatic handgun at Huard’s apartment. When the neighbour returned, Zoldi and Huard were there but the gun was missing. Shortly after they denied knowing where the gun was, they left the apartment. Zoldi was carrying a bag.

Huard and Zoldi later arranged for one of the drug dealer’s customers, Susan Sladic, to lure him to an east-end street on Aug. 27, 2006. Sladic testified that Zoldi pointed a handgun at her and demanded she set up a drug deal with the man he believed had stabbed him. “Sladic knew that the drug deal was a ruse to give the appellant access to that man,” Fairburn wrote in the decision.

When Sladic made the call another man, Hutchinson, answered the phone. Hutchinson said that he would deliver the drugs. Sladic told Zoldi that Hutchinson would be doing the delivery, but he wanted to go ahead with the plan anyway. Sladic said she thought Zoldi and Huard were only going to “bust” kneecaps. Zoldi, Huard, Sladic and two others drove to the meeting spot. Huard told Sladic to stay quiet “You ain’t seen nothin’ so don’t say nothing,’” he said, according the documents. Fairburn wrote that Hutchinson was shot in the stomach at close range, but no one saw who shot him. After a shot was heard, Hutchinson called out “murder” and fell to the ground. Numerous witnesses saw two white men at the scene of the shooting, but could only give general descriptions. After Hutchinson dropped to the ground, the men assaulted him, went through his pockets and ran away.

Not long after the shooting, Zoldi told someone that they had “got in a fight with somebody, beat someone’s ass,” according to the Appeal Court documents.

Zoldi and Huard’s first trial ended in a mistrial in 2009 after it was discovered that police did background checks on prospective jurors.

The following trials were severed. Huard was convicted of first-degree murder in 2010 and sentenced to life with no chance of parole for 25 years. He was the first of the two to launch an appeal, which was dismissed in 2013. After his second trial, Zoldi was sentenced to life with no chance of parole for 13 years. His appeal was granted April 19, when Fairburn ordered a new trial on seconddegree murder.