Allan Schoenborn to face 'high risk accused' hearing, judge rules
Schoenborn's lawyer had argued high-risk accused law was not in place at time of crime
Crown lawyers will be able to argue that a new federal law designating some mentally ill patients as 'high risk accused' should apply retroactively to convicted child killer Allan Schoenborn.
A B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled on Wednesday that public protection is the top consideration in the case and has agreed to hear arguments about the possible application of Bill C-14 to Schoenborn.
Schoenborn was found not criminally responsible for stabbing his 10-year-old daughter and smothering his eight and five-year-old sons in their Merritt, B.C., home in April 2008.
A hearing scheduled for early next spring is supposed to determine if he will get the new high-risk accused status, under the terms of the Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act.
That designation would limit Schoenborn's ability to leave the Coquitlam psychiatric hospital, where he has been held since 2010, for visits.
But Schoenborn's lawyer Rishi Gill had tried to stop the hearing, arguing the high-risk accused status is based on a 2014 update to the federal criminal code that wasn't in place at the time of the offences.
The new 'high risk accused' designation, includes provisions stopping almost all absences from a psychiatric hospital — and has the potential to extend annual review hearings to once every three years.