Appeal denied in philanthropist’s murder
One of four men convicted in Glen Davis’s death questioned jury selection
The province’s top court has denied the appeal of one of the four men in the murder philanthropist and conservationist Glen Davis 10 years ago.
A jury found Dmitri Kossyrine guilty of first-degree murder for hiring a killer at the request of his friend, Davis’s godson and cousin Marshall Ross.
Ross pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2011, admitting he plotted the murder to solve the financial problems facing his home renovation business, mistakenly believing he would inherit Davis’s fortune.
He brought in Kossyrine, a subcontractor he worked closely with, to find someone to kill Davis. After two failed attempts, Kossyrine finally hired his right-hand man Ivgeny (Eugene) Vorobiov, who shot and killed Davis in an underground parking lot in May 2007.
Kossyrine’s conviction appeal was one of many filed as a result of the now-retired Justice Eugene Ewaschuk’s preference for selecting a jury. He liked a selection method known as “static triers” rather than “rotating triers.”
Triers are used to pick juries in cases where there may be bias against the accused or when the case has had a lot of media attention.
Two people are selected from the jury pool to decide whether potential jurors can be impartial based on their answers to questions from the lawyers.
With rotating triers, the last two jurors selected to serve on the jury act as the triers — meaning one trier changes every time a new juror is picked.
With static triers, the same two people act as triers until the whole jury is picked. The accused gets to choose whether static or rotating triers are used.
In 2016, the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered new trials for two men convicted of second-degree murder because Ewaschuk denied their request to use “rotating triers.”
However, in Kossyrine’s case, the defence wanted to use static triers as long as they were properly vetted, Justice John Laskin wrote for the three-judge Ontario Court of Appeal panel. Laskin also rejected Kossyrine’s argument that one of the jurors was removed from the jury because of “disability-based discrimination.”
After the Crown’s opening address, both the Crown and judge expressed concern about whether Juror 11, a 70-year-old man on pain killers for a back injury and with a hearing problem, was able to follow and understand the proceedings.
Laskin found Ewaschuk had “ample reason” to discharge the juror and that the issue was not about accommodation for a disability, but about whether the juror was capable of doing the job.
Vorobiov, the shooter who was convicted of first-degree murder by a jury in 2011, is appealing his conviction. A hearing date has not yet been set. With files from Betsy Powell and Peter Small