Congratulations, Poysyn. That’s a pretty big deal. 
Jury verdict at 7.30 CST.
Not guilty on all counts.
Well I’m surprised. I didn’t think the Crown had provided much evidence for the intent required for a murder 2 conviction, but figured manslaughter was pretty much a lock since Stanley’s account of a freak accident requires guns not to work the way that they actually do. I can only assume the Crown’s firearms expert didn’t adequately explain, or didn’t have an opportunity to explain, why that account was the next thing to physically impossible.
What a despicable verdict. Even if you take Stanley’s account 100% at face value he’s clearly guilty of manslaughter. Anybody irresponsible enough with a firearm to fire “warning shots” and ends up having it “just go off” and kill somebody has demonstrated clear recklessness.
Indigenous peoples are going to be outraged about this verdict, and they have every right to be. This is a very sad day for Canada.
IF you take Stanley’s account ONE HUNDRED PERCENT at face value, no, he is not guilty.
The question is whether you should, of course.
I’m not so certain. If you take his account at face value he’s still violating basic gun safety rules repeatedly. Plus even if you grant that an astronomically rare malfunction was followed immediately by a second, unrelated less rare malfunction, he should have noticed both as they occurred and he didn’t notice either. That’s negligence in my books, and negligence with a firearm causing death is manslaughter.
Basic gun safety rules are not laws.
I have to stress that taking his account one hundred percent at face value requires a great deal of, er, faith.
No, they’re not laws. But not following them may be negligent. Pointing a gun at someone’s head is negligent, for example. And if that person ends up dead because of it, that’s manslaughter. Stanley would have us believe that he had taken reasonable steps to ensure the gun was empty, but the steps he describes in conjunction with the alleged hangfire entail that those steps were themselves negligent. Based on his own account, he had three occasions on which he should have noticed the possibility of a hangfire - the misfire itself, the failure of the slide to be locked back when he thought all rounds in the magazine had been fired, the absence of ejected brass when he manually racked the slide (I don’t know if he testified that he manually racked the slide, but he did testify that the slide was back and there’s no way in hell the misfire kicked the slide back by itself), and when he obviously failed to visually check the breech after racking the slide. Oops, that’s four occasions.
I, of course, don’t believe his story. I don’t think there was a hangfire and I don’t think he unloaded the gun at all. I think he fired twice, and then assumed he was empty. Then when he leaned into the SUV to grab the keys he had his finger on the trigger, inadvertently pointed the gun at Boushie’s head, and then was jostled or something and accidentally pulled the trigger. That’s far more negligent than he admitted to being, but he still admitted to actions which amount to negligence.
My position is that if any of his “warning shots” had struck and killed a person. he’d clearly be guilty of manslaughter, and I’m not sympathetic to the position that hypothetical malfunction of the firearm would mitigate his culpability. Stanley chose to bring a loaded firearm and the possibility of deadly force into a situation that clearly didn’t call for. Stanley should face the consequence of that.
No, he is not clearly guilty of manslaughter, or else he would have been convicted . Its up to the crown to determine if the outcome of the trial requires an appeal based on something something.
From your description, Spoons, it sounds like Stanley was indeed guilty of accidentally killing Bouchie. I am very surprised at this verdict, but I don’t know all the facts. The optics of it are horrific, of course.
I don’t know all the facts either, Cat. I’m looking forward to reading the case when it is reported on Canlii.
The big issue will be the composition of the jury. There were no aboriginal people on the jury. That is something that needs to change.
I am tucked in bed wondering Why you guys are in the cold:dubious:
Well, yeah, Stanley admitted he did. The question is whether he was guilty of a crime, which that isn’t.
The case is definitely taking on a life of its own post-verdict, and my social media feeds are full of indignant people who are understandably upset but less understandably are saying things that are indisputably true; I’ve seen several people claim “Stanley wasn’t even charged with murder,” or that Bouchie and friends had just peacefully walked up asking for help.
There are three things that could have happened, in theory:
- The jury made the wrong decision.
- The jury made the right decision given the instructions the judge gave them, but the judge was incorrect in his instructions. (This is the least talked about possibility, but it’s a significant one.)
- The jury made the correct decision, in part because the prosecution did a shitty job.
- The prosecution actually did as good a job as could be expected, and the jury still make the correct decision.
Without close examination of the trial records, I don’t know how one could know for sure what happened. I think Stanley’s lying about what precisely happened in the moments just before Bouchie died, but “I think” isn’t a convincing position.
Of course even if the jury made the right decision, the optics of an all-white jury making this decision LOOK bad, and if Aboriginal Canadians refuse to accept this verdict, who can blame them? If my people had been screwed over big time by the system for time beyond living memory, the message “Hey, I know it looks like you got screwed again, but trust me, in this one instance the all-white jury made a good call, sorry about another one of your relatives being dead but better luck next time” would not exactly catch my fancy. Aboriginals aren’t going to trust a verdict like this because they have no reason at all to trust the system that made it.
The fact that the defense was allowed to use its challenges to wipe out any prospective jurors who were, or even looked, Aboriginal is frankly appalling - systematically speaking. You can’t blame Stanley’s lawyers from doing whatever they can to keep him out of jail; that’s their job. It would have been irresponsible NOT to. But the fact they can do it at all contributes to the mistrust of the system, and, to use the phrasing, it brings the administration of justice into disrepute.
QFT - it is ridiculous to me that there were no Indigenous People on the jury. Inexcusable, really.
I think Stanley was guilty of manslaughter, and am deeply bothered that he was found not guilty. At the same time, what I always tell victims of sexual assault, “Not guilty is not the same as innocent”.
I read somewhere (I forget where so can’t cite) from someone who was selected for Jury Duty on this case. They said there were a number of Indigenous People in the jury pool but he heard them all saying that if they were chosen they’d find Mr. Stanley guilty. In order to have a fair trial the jury has to be impartial, and that is why those individuals were not chosen.
I would imagine one could find people of ANY race who will decide beforehand how they’re going to vote. Some people are like that, be they white, black, red, blue, green or purple.