Outburst follows guilty verdict in Meika trial
CALGARY • For five weeks this spring, Brian Woodhouse sat silently in a Calgary courtroom, his arm around his wife, Kyla.
The pressure, he admitted Wednesday afternoon, just became too much when the verdicts were read out against Spencer Jordan and Marie Magoon, the pair accused of killing his stepdaughter, sixyear-old Meika Jordan.
“There were a lot of things I wanted to do,” said Woodhouse after the verdicts that mean an automatic life sentence with no parole for at least 10 years.
“I wanted to yell, I wanted to scream, I wanted to be obscene and go across that courtroom.”
In the end, Woodhouse chose only the two damning words that had been formally registered as fact by Justice Rosemary Nation moments earlier: child-murderers.
His outburst meant he defied the judge’s request to rein in emotion while she laid out her reasons for finding both accused guilty of second-degree murder.
Still, no one in the courtroom seemed shocked or surprised when Woodhouse made the declaration, in a voice that was audible but far from a yell, as Magoon and Jordan were led out by court sheriffs.
That was understandable, considering the horrible details the judge reiterated — information gleaned from days the Woodhouses had chosen to sit out during the trial’s more graphic moments — on Meika’s last three days of life, in a house with two other small children.
Providing an overview of her 38-page decision, Judge Nation outlined the key facts of the girl’s injuries, the actions of the two adults who were supposedly caring for her, and her findings on their intent to explain her guilty finding on the lesser charge of second-degree murder.
For those who did attend those particular trial days, it was a stark reminder of the brutality inflicted on a defenceless child who had arrived at the couple’s house, only days earlier, in good health.
Only three days later. on Nov. 13, 2011, the “happy-go-lucky” girl was taken to a Calgary hospital with bruises all over her body, a large third-degree burn on her hand, and extensive abdominal and head injuries. Clumps of her blond hair, which her mother had testified she loved to keep long and curly, were missing from her severely beaten head. She died the next day.
As Judge Nation read out the physical evidence of Meika’s torture, many in the courtroom — with the media sitting in the jury box because of there was standing room only — did their best to muffle sobs and shrieks.
Throughout the disturbing litany of abuses, Jordan and Magoon wore the same expressions they have had through most of the trial: Jordan, a groggy, slightly bored look; and Magoon, the stepmother who held Meika’s hand over a lighter so long it made the child scream in pain, beg for mercy and urinate on herself, the bynow familiar frown.
The judge rejected their lawyers’ contentions the injuries their clients inflicted were not-life threatening, with each accusing the other of the worst abuses.
She blamed both for the torture. She noted dragging a child by the hair up and down stairs, punching her with full adult force (Meika would have weighed about 50 pounds and was under four feet tall), as well as pushing her so hard she smashed her head on a tile floor, was something a person with common sense would know could lead to death.
Commending the extensive undercover sting operation — with several of those plainclothed officers in the courtroom — the judge nevertheless rejected the Crown’s contention the child was unlawfully confined, something that would have supported a finding of first-degree murder.
Although each accused “had clearly overstepped any authority they had to discipline the child,” she could not find support in Canadian case law that Meika had been criminally confined.
Outside court, the Woodhouses stood before a wall of TV cameras, pledging they would be back for sentencing and to read out their victim impact statements.
“We get justice for her, that’s what we’ve been striving for,” said the child’s mother as she dried her eyes.
Her husband, backed up by his ever-present Bikers Against Child Abuse crew, looked a bit sheepish when asked about his brief and uncharacteristic outburst, but did not apologize.
“Guilty is guilty,” he said of the final word by the judge on this saddest of criminal cases. “You’re both child-murderers.”