Mansour Jalali should be locked up in a federal prison by now for the brutal domestic slaying of Susan Chen.
But the wife killer has managed to play the system, causing delay after delay ever since he was convicted of manslaughter by Superior Court Justice Michael Brown more than 18 months ago.
Following emotional victim impact statements in June by the couple’s children and Chen’s mother, sister and friend, Jalali’s long-delayed sentencing hearing was scheduled for July. Instead, it was postponed because he wanted to hire a new lawyer and a rescheduled date was supposed to be set Wednesday morning.
That soon went off the rails when the convicted killer announced that he’d fired his lawyer and wanted to find yet another one. He toys with everyone, most especially the family of his victim.
Enough is enough.
Chen was a 40-year-old mother of five and dedicated registered nurse at SickKids who was anally raped and left to bleed to death by her abusive husband on April 3, 2019. In yet another act of cruelty, he allowed their daughter to discover her mom’s blood-soaked body in her Scarborough bathroom and call 911.
A forensic pathologist would testify Chen died of gastrointestinal hemorrhaging due to penetrating and perforating anal trauma caused by a blunt object. Her disgusting husband tried to claim that she’d done it to herself.
Court heard she’d endured years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her unemployed husband. In 2007, Jalali was arrested for domestic assault. Pregnant with their fourth child, Chen told police he put his knee on her neck, beat her and tried to force her mouth open when she refused his demand for oral sex and threatened to leave him.
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Like so many victims of intimate partner violence, she later recanted her accusation and the charge was withdrawn.
Her fears — and the beatings — continued.
Chen confided in friends and also told her daughter that Jalali had threatened to kill her. She also made recordings of his threats and sent them to her mom for safekeeping: “So at first, after I punch you in the stomach, you can’t breathe,” Jalali can be heard in one. “Then I’ll punch you in the head, and you can’t think, and then I’m gonna rap you like a dog. Not rap you, rape you. [inaudible] about it six, eight months ago you said I raped you, it’s gonna happen here now.”
Jalali claimed he was just joking. The judge found otherwise: “I also find that he meant what he said on the recordings and that he intended to threaten the deceased and did threaten the deceased with violence, including threats of sexual assault.”
Brown, though, acquitted him of second-degree murder, finding the prosecution hadn’t proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to kill Chen when he violently raped her. After the judge released his verdict in February 2023, the lawyers were supposed to meet the next month to set the date for his sentencing hearing.
Jalali fired his defence team and the delays began.
In the latest attempt, he fired his newest counsel and then seemed to change his mind again and told Brown he now wants to speak with him and get him to agree to follow his “instructions to the point.”
Crown attorney Dimitra Tsagaris was understandably frustrated and urged the judge to put an end to his “constant flip-flopping” and delay tactics and set a date for sentencing submissions.
“Purposely or not, Mr. Jalali at this stage is abusing the whole system. It’s unfair to the family who had to reschedule their lives,” she said. “There is a game being played.”
Brown agreed to set Jalali’s sentencing hearing for later this month — and then resumed the matter scheduled that morning in his courtroom: yet another man charged with killing his partner.