Bail granted to ex-pastor jailed in wife’s death
Three days after being sentenced to 15 years in prison for secretly drugging his pregnant wife causing her to drown in a bathtub, Philip Grandine has been released on bail pending appeal for the second time.
Two juries have now convicted Grandine, a former pastor, of manslaughter for killing 29year-old Karissa Grandine. She was 20 weeks pregnant when she drowned the night of Oct.17, 2011. Two judges have sentenced him to15 years in prison.
Grandine, now 33, has spent much of the past seven years on bail since he was charged, and has just shy of 12 years left to serve after being given credit for a year in custody and being on house arrest.
This week, Superior Court Justice Faye McWatt found Grandine secretly gave Karissa a sedative, one not prescribed to pregnant women, in order to incapacitate her so he could pursue an affair with his mistress and an obsession with porn. She called his actions “diabolical and violent” and “planned and premeditated.”
His first conviction was overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal due to error in the judge’s answer to a jury question.
A linked issue is the basis for his current conviction appeal, which Court of Appeal Justice Benjamin Zarnett has found meets the bar to allow Grandine’s release pending appeal.
The trial judge let the jury consider three ways by which they could find Grandine guilty of manslaughter. In addition to finding that he drugged her or made the drug available to her, the jury could have found that he was criminally negligent because he failed to stop her from getting into the bath despite knowing she had taken the drug and knowing the serious symptoms it caused in her, including disorientation and fatigue.
His lawyer, Michael Lacy, argued the trial judge should not have allowed the jury to consider one of those routes — which had been raised by the judge in the first trial — because it lacked a basis in evidence. He noted the trial judge admitted in her reasons for sentencing there was no evidence to support the theory that Karissa could have taken the drug herself and Grandine knew this and failed to stop her getting into the tub.
Zarnett found that the appeal surpasses the “low bar” of not being considered frivolous and “meets the requirement of general legal plausibility.”
The Crown argued that, in the public interest, the seriousness of the crime requires the sentence be enforced pending appeal. But Zarnett said public interest in this case lies in ensuring the conviction is reviewed and determined to be fair.
An appeal date hasn’t been set.