UPDATE: Gerald Stanley has taken the stand.
BACKGROUND: The defence has opened its case in earnest in the murder trial of Gerald Stanley, as they try to make the case that the incident was a freak accident in a panic situation.
In their opening statement, defence lawyer Scott Spencer indicated he would definitely call Gerald Stanley to the stand in his own defence.
But other witnesses dominated the morning at Queen’s Bench Court. The Stanley defence team called five witnesses: one from the Ranger Lake Bible Camp, two witnesses who testified they had experienced hang fire incidents, and two witnesses from the Fouhy farm that was vandalized earlier on the Aug. 9, 2016, day in which Colten Boushie was shot and killed.
The indication from the morning session is that the defence witnesses were moving faster than expected. Defence testimony had been expected to go on for a couple of days.
The defence had already called its first witness, firearms expert Sandy Ervin, on Friday afternoon. Spencer had deferred his opening statement to Monday for scheduling reasons to accommodate Friday’s expert witness.
Spencer started his remarks by thanking the jury for their attention to this matter, and called Colten Boushie’s death a “tragedy.”
He began his opening statement by saying this wasn’t a defence of property case, nor was it a self-defence case. In fact, “this is really not a murder case at all.”
“This is a case about what can go terribly wrong when you create a situation which is in the nature of a home invasion,” Spencer said.
For farm people, your yard is your castle, he said.
“Gerry didn’t go looking for trouble,” said Spencer.
He and his family were working on his ranch. But what happened is “they faced, essentially, intruders,” he said.
“You have to look at it from Gerry’s perspective, what he thought when he was faced with this sudden invasion. The fear, the unknown.”
This case comes down to what’s reasonable in that circumstance, he said. Spencer noted they didn’t have the luxury to wait for police assistance.
He noted the young people in the vehicle aren’t on trial, but “they created this panic situation” – a high intensity, fear-based situation,
Spencer said it is “reasonable” to fire warning shots at intruders who were trying to steal and crashing into their vehicle to “get them to just leave. That’s what it comes down to in many ways.”
He added this case is not about self-defence but there is a self-defence circumstance. This is not about property, but about injury. In this case, Spencer made the point that there was fear that Mrs. Stanley was going to be run over.
This case comes down to a “freak accident” in an “unbelievably scary situation,” says Spencer. “Nobody thought it would go this way.”
He also said “hang fires happen.” Referring to the proper procedures for waiting for possible hang fires, Spencer said Stanley “didn’t have the luxury” to wait 60 seconds in case of a hang fire.
He saw the lawnmower in front of the visitor vehicle, and believes his wife was under the vehicle, so “he’s got to do something. He can’t just stand around.”
“The vehicle is the weapon at this point in time,” Spencer said. “The tragedy is the gun just went off.”
Spencer made it clear Gerald Stanley would be one of the witnesses he would call.
“So, no games. Gerry’s going to testify. He has to explain it to you,” said Spencer.
Spencer wrapped his opening statement by pledging to fill the jury in on the facts over the “next couple of days.”
With that, Spencer called his first witness of the day, but it wasn’t Stanley.
Instead, Kim Worthington, executive director with the Youth for Christ organization who lives on an acreage near Waldheim, took the stand.
Worthington was at Ranger Lake Bible Camp on that Aug. 9 day. Worthington said he remembered this day, saying it was “a strange week.” Sunday was rainy, Monday was rainy, and then Tuesday a really nice day.
Seeing the vehicle was memorable. He and a group of students at the camp were at a paintball range in the community pasture.
There, he testified, he remembers seeing a Ford Escape “cruising by pretty fast.”
He noted the car, and the tire and muffler, was in really rough shape.
“It just left an impression,” Worthington said.
A lot of students were kind of chuckling about the state of the vehicle, he added. Worthington thought the vehicle was going between 80 and 90 km an hour.
There were no questions of the witness from the Crown.
Next up was Wayne Popowich. Popowich said on Saturday morning he was reading the news at the kitchen table and saw the news about the trial, where an expert witness had testified that a delayed fire couldn’t cause a bulge in a cartridge.
Popowich said he called up Spencer to say he didn’t agree with the expert.
He then described a hang fire incident that happened to him several years earlier. He described an incident south of Wynyard with his family when out shooting gophers. He aimed at a gopher using a .22 rifle, took a single shot, nothing happened, put the gun down, aimed again, tried again, nothing happened. Soon after, he grabbed another bullet, picked up the gun, pulled the lever over, and it suddenly went off.
“My eyes were burning, my ears were ringing,” said Popowich, who then noticed a bulge in the cartridge and that the casing had split wide open.
Spencer’s exam was brief; Burge’s questions focused on details of the incident. Popowich did say the incident “scared the crap” out of him.
The next witness called was Nathan Voinorosky, who also testified about his own hang fire incident.
“Do you know about hang fires?” he was asked by defence lawyer Dustin Gillanders. He did, he responded. Voinorosky then started reading from a manual, at which point the Crown stood up to express concerns. Gillanders says this wasn’t going to be “controversial.”
Voinorosky said he was a non-expert, then he started reading from a hunters’ safety manual about procedures in dealing with hang fires from a wildlife safety course, suggesting waiting for 60 seconds in such situations.
He then said he experienced a hang fire incident; he had lowered the muzzle of the gun into the ground and it went off. He estimated it was seven seconds from pulling the trigger to the firing of the gun. The gun he used, he said, was a Soviet-made semi-automatic.
Next up was Murray Fouhy, who lives on the Fouhy farm southwest of Maymont, who testified about the vandalism he had seen on his family’s property Aug. 9 by the group in the grey Ford Escape.
Fouhy described seeing tracks and damage to two trucks and an SUV. He said in one truck, which was standard transmission, he found his car keys in the ignition of that vehicle and considerable damage. The console was also open on his mother’s SUV. The overall damage was estimated around $4,000.
Fouhy was also asked to point out locations of a map of the area, including where the Ranger Lake Bible Camp was located in relation to his farm. There were no questions from the Crown and Fouhy was free to go.
Glennis Fouhy, his mother, who also lived on the farm, was next. She testified on what she saw that Aug. 9 day: a very loud vehicle that came across her lawn.
Originally she said she thought there had “been an accident” and something was wrong, and was going to call for help.
But then she saw them come across the lawn in the vehicle, and saw a young man get out of the passenger side and scoot into the garage where her car was parked.
Glennis did not recognize the vehicle that had entered their property, and described the person getting out as “a young native man, well-dressed and clean cut, but I did not see his face.”
The vehicle then drove back across the lawn to the other yard, and she heard a lot of banging of metal going on. The car then went down the driveway and headed west.
Mrs. Fouhy subsequently figured out what the banging was.
“I had seen there was damage to the truck,” said Fouhy, referring to their red Dodge.
There was also a Suzuki, where a door was open, but there was no damage there. The damage to the red truck was $4,000, she said.
It was around 5:05 p.m. that the grey Escape vehicle left. After it had left, she ran out and checked the vehicles, then tried to phone her husband and then called the police around 5:10 p.m.
She said she tried phoning the North Battleford detachment and finally called Biggar RCMP and got through. Mrs. Fouhy also described her reaction to the incident.
“I was terrified. I was afraid they’d come to the house, and then what?”
There was no cross-examination from the Crown.
Court adjourned at noon and was scheduled to reconvene at 2 p.m.; the anticipation is that Gerald Stanley may take the stand this afternoon.
