Second Bacon trial date could be set in late June
A date for Jamie Bacon’s second trial may be determined later this month.
Bacon, his lawyers and Crown prosecutors appeared before B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Wedge on Friday for a 90-minute pretrial hearing.
Wedge put the matter over until June 26, at which time the parties are expected to have a sense of how soon the new trial can be held.
Bacon is charged with one count of counselling someone to commit the murder of an associate. That associate, Dennis Karbovanec, was targeted in a shooting in Mission on Dec. 31, 2008. He survived with minor injuries.
Bacon was charged in the case six years later and finally went to trial beginning Feb. 4 of this year.
But after 16 weeks of evidence, the 12-person jury was deadlocked and told Wedge on May 25 that it could not reach a verdict. She declared a mistrial and adjourned the case to June 14.
During the first trial, jurors heard that Bacon wanted Karbovanec dead because Karbovanec was addicted to OxyContin, was increasingly erratic and neglecting their joint drug business. Witnesses, who can only be identified as AB and CD due to a publication ban, both testified that Bacon asked CD to shoot Karbovanec and provided the Glock .45 used in the murder attempt.
CD told jurors he was nervous because he had never killed before, but knew he had to do what Bacon suggested in order to clear a large drug debt he had with Bacon.
AB described what happened on New Year’s Eve 2008 when he, CD and others in their drug gang lured Karbovanec into meeting them on the ruse that they were all going to rob a marijuana growing operation.
They drove to a dead-end Mission street where CD pulled out the Glock and started blasting in Karbovanec’s direction. But the gun jammed and Karbovanec and a second associate named Matt Johnston managed to escape.
The credibility of both AB and CD was repeatedly challenged by Bacon’s lawyers, who portrayed the men as thuggish, drug-dealing liars who fabricated Bacon’s role in the murder plot to get themselves off the hook.