Lawyers for Winnipeg man accused of killing 4 women plan to argue he's not criminally responsible
Jeremy Skibicki, 37, has pleaded not guilty to 4 counts of 1st-degree murder
Lawyers for a man accused of murdering four women in Winnipeg say they plan to argue Jeremy Skibicki is not criminally responsible in those deaths because of mental disorder.
"In the case you have before the court today, there are a number of agreements with respect to the case itself, and the defence is one of NCR [not criminally responsible]," defence lawyer Alyssa Munce said in court on Wednesday, during pretrial motions the week before Skibicki's jury trial is scheduled to begin.
"This isn't a case where we're looking at the evidence to determine whether or not Mr. Skibicki committed those offences. This is a situation where we're proffering a defence of NCR."
Lawyers for Skibicki, 37, and prosecutors in the case made their final submissions Wednesday on a motion filed by the defence to get rid of the jury that was chosen last week.
Instead, the defence wants the high-profile trial heard by a judge alone, citing concerns about whether jurors can be impartial given how much publicity has surrounded the case and the potential for unconscious bias.
"This is due to the evidence before the court that there is a reasonable probability that the potential jury pool was prejudiced, and that the jurors that we actually selected on Thursday are potentially prejudiced — and that the jury procedures that we have in place and that we used … are insufficient in eliminating that bias," Munce said.
WATCH | Lawyers to argue Jeremy Skibicki not criminally responsible:
She also argued that by not agreeing to allow Skibicki a judge-alone trial to begin with, prosecutors violated his Charter rights.
The Crown's consent is required for a judge-alone trial on certain charges, including murder.
Crown attorneys have pushed back against the defence's arguments, pointing to the fact that all the jurors selected told a judge they could be impartial, and that just under half said they had never heard about the case to begin with.
While the defence said they're not suggesting there shouldn't ever be jury trials in high-profile cases, a prosecutor said that's exactly what their argument amounts to.
"That's incompatible with the law. And so in my submission, that's why you have to dismiss this application," Charles Murray, who works with Manitoba Justice's constitutional law section, told Court of King's Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal.
It's the second motion the defence has made to stop the trial from being decided by a jury, after Chief Justice Joyal rejected a similar motion earlier this year.
He is expected to deliver a ruling on the latest defence motion on Friday. Jurors have not yet appeared in court. They are expected to start hearing evidence on Wednesday, May 8.
Opinion poll findings
The latest defence motion leans heavily on a poll Skibicki's legal team commissioned earlier this year, which found nearly all respondents said they had heard about the case, and a large proportion said they believed the accused is guilty.
Court heard earlier this week from two experts called by the defence, including the pollster whose company conducted that survey. He testified the sample used was representative of Winnipeg and Manitoba.
The defence also called a U.S.-based expert on the effect of pretrial publicity on jury verdicts, who worked with Skibicki's defence team to create the questions asked in the poll. She testified the effects of pretrial publicity can be extremely difficult for jurors to overcome.
Skibicki has been brought into court with his ankles shackled each day since pretrial motions began on Monday, and has sat silently as the hearings were underway.
He has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in the 2022 deaths of three First Nations women — Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26, and Rebecca Contois, 24 — and a fourth unidentified woman, who has been given the name Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, by community members.
Roughly two years ago, in mid-May, partial human remains later identified as belonging to Contois were discovered in a garbage bin near a Winnipeg apartment building. The following month, police recovered more of her remains from the Brady Road landfill in south Winnipeg.
Police said their investigation determined the three other women had been killed between March and May 2022 — before Contois died. Myran's and Harris's remains are believed to be in the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg, according to police.
They have said they believe Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe was Indigenous and in her mid-20s, but the location of her remains is unknown.
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