The Crown wrapped up its case Friday and the first defence witness has been called in the second-degree murder trial of Gerald Stanley in Battleford.
Feb. 2 was dominated by testimony about firearms, with two firearms experts taking the stand.
Returning to the stand was the Crown’s final witness, Greg Williams, the firearms expert who was on the stand Feb. 1.
After the Crown rested its case, defence lawyer Scott Spencer opened the Stanley defence case by calling their own expert witness on firearms, John Robert 'Sandy' Ervin. He was the only defence witness on the schedule for Friday.
The day of firearms testimony finishes a busy week in the Stanley case, with the trial moving along ahead of schedule and likely to be done well before the originally-scheduled Feb. 15 end date.
The first order of business Friday was a mid-trial instruction to the jury on aspects of the case. This included instructions on such things as the admitted statement of facts, previous convictions of witnesses, previous statements by witnesses, expert witnesses, and on evidence from preliminary inquiries.
After those were out of the way, Williams returned to the stand for a second day, with Spencer handling the cross-examination.
The Spencer cross-examination seemed to focus largely on the defence’s notion that the Tokarev semi-automatic pistol might have somehow malfunctioned or misfired in some way at the time of the Aug. 9, 2016 shooting incident that killed Colten Boushie.
He questioned Williams at length about various potential theories posed as possibilities for what could have happened, such as whether the pistol misfired, whether the ammunition could have malfunctioned, whether the barrel was obstructed and others.
At one point Spencer roasted Williams for not doing enough investigating of the gunpowder in the cartridge.
“Don’t you think it would have been pretty valuable to pull that gun apart and see if that Tokarev isn’t partially burnt in there?” Spencer asked, wanting to know if a hang fire was possible.
Williams responded he wouldn’t have expected that information to be useful.
“I wouldn’t have requested it, myself,” he testified.
“Wouldn’t you like to know if that gunpowder is defective in the actual cartridges?” Spencer responded.
When court resumed at noon following a morning break, the major drama of the session happened when Spencer turned his attention again to the issue of hang fires. A hang fire refers to a situation in which a firearm fails to fire immediately when the trigger is pulled. He asked Williams about researching hang fires, about finding someone who had had one and get the details of what their hang fire entailed.
“You agree with me?” Spencer asked.
Williams said he didn't. He said there is a “lot of lore about hang fires” and certain “myths” about them happening at the range. The best place to go for information was scientific research, and those are examples he quotes, he said.
“What if they’re not myths?” Spencer asked. “What if they’re true?”
Williams insisted he trusted these sources that have researched extensively and studied them from a scientific point of view.
“I wouldn’t trust just Wikipedia or outside sources of information,” Williams said.
At this point Spencer tried to enter into evidence an article from the Internet about hang fires, coming from Reddit.
Chief Justice Martel Popescul immediately expressed reservations about it.
"Are you trying to put in evidence that comes from the Internet from an unknown source?" he asked.
Spencer insisted the article should be put to Williams so he could give his expert opinion on it. But the Crown had a far different view of it.
“It looks like commentary following an article,” was the response of prosecutor Bill Burge, who called it “hearsay from unknown people with unknown experience and qualifications.” He added entering this into evidence was “wrong on so many levels.”
In response, Popescul called an early lunch break to discuss with counsel the whole issue of admissibility of the Internet article.
In the end the line of questioning was not entered as evidence. When the jury returned, Spencer immediately said there was no further questions; after a few Crown questions, Williams finally left the stand.
Soon after, prosecutor Burge stood up and said to Chief Justice Popescul, “My Lord, that’s the case for the Crown.”
With the Crown’s case complete, it was the defence’s turn to call witnesses.
Spencer indicated to the court he planned to call a number of witnesses, but in the interest of time he proposed calling his expert witness that day and pushing back his actual opening statement to Monday morning.
It was unusual, but the plan was agreed to and Spencer called his first witness: Ervin, who was qualified as an expert witness in firearms.
Ervin’s testimony focused on his own examination and testing of the firearm, as well as the cartridge case which contained what he described as a “significant misshapen bulge in the casehead of the cartridge.”
Testimony continued from Ervin throughout the afternoon. More defence witnesses are expected to be called Monday.
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