Top court rejects killer’s appeal
The nation’s top court will not hear an appeal by convicted murderer Barry David Brown, leaving him with no other options to fight his case.
The Supreme Court issued a brief statement Thursday saying Brown’s leave to appeal application has been denied.
The decision was met with joy by his victim’s mother, who has been dealing with her daughter’s death for 15 years.
“He’s done. Well thank God,” Lily Belanger said when informed of the top court’s decision.
Belanger, whose daughter Corinne Belanger was slain in 2001, was confident when Brown went before the Alberta Court of Appeal last year, but had concerns about his Supreme Court application for a new trial.
“I wasn’t worried up to that point, but when he filed with the Supreme Court, I was worried,” she said.
“I certainly am (relieved) it’s just been so many years now since Corinne died,” Belanger said, her voice cracking. “He’s going to have to live with this (crime).”
Brown’s Calgary lawyer, Jennifer Ruttan, had hoped to argue before the nation’s top judges that her client failed to confess during a Mr. Big operation.
Last July, the Alberta Court of Appeal said there was no authority in law which would permit an accused person who wasn’t testifying in their own defence to introduce such self-serving out-of-court statements in evidence.
“There is good reason for this,” the judges said, in a written ruling.
“If the law were to allow this kind of self-serving evidence at the instance of an accused, he or she could plant a defence in statements to others and then introduce those statements at trial without having to assert that evidence under oath and subject to cross-examination,” they said.
Brown was convicted in March, 2013, of first-degree murder in the April 15, 2001, shooting death of Belanger inside her northeast Calgary home.