A gangster has been ordered by the B.C. Appeal Court to stand trial for a second time in the shooting deaths of a Cranbrook couple, killed because they had the misfortune of renting the house where the killers’ intended target used to live.
Prosecutors had appealed B.C. Supreme Court Justice Arne Silverman’s 2022 verdict clearing Colin Correia of the 2010 killings of Leanne MacFarlane and Jeffrey Taylor, both in their early 40s.
The appeal was a challenge to the lower court’s ruling that Correia’s confession to police was inadmissible.
Silverman ruled it wasn’t voluntary because the statements were induced by “police trickery” and Corriea had a “diminished ability to think clearly,” the Appeal Court said in its judgment.
The prosecution’s theory was that Correia and a co-accused were gang members involving in drug dealing, and they went to the Cranbrook home in 2010 to kill a rival gang member, Doug Mahon, not knowing the place had been rented to MacFarlane and Taylor, the Appeal Court said.
Correia had already served time after being convicted in 2013 for conspiring in an alleged murder plot against Mahon by hiring a third person to kill him. The hired killer didn’t follow through on the plan.
Correia had served a substantial part of his 13-year sentence for that crime before being released on parole. He was arrested and charged with the couple’s murder in June 2018, it said.
The reference to Correia’s inability to think clearly relates to evidence of two psychiatrists, one a defence expert, the other a prosecution witness, who both testified that when Correia was interviewed by police he suffered from generalized anxiety disorder, the Appeal Court judgment said.
Correia had testified during a trial on the admissibility of the evidence before the trial that he was anxious and confused during the interviews and “his head was a mess,” it said.
Silverman had concluded police used “trickery” because the police interviewers told him that he didn’t have to talk about the murders, but just about the offence of conspiracy for which he had been convicted, and “therefore would not have to worry about it being used against him because he had already been tried and convicted for that,” according to the judgment.
He concluded the “tactic by the police was a trick” because officers didn’t tell him he was going to incriminate himself on the murder charges if he spoke about the conspiracy.
But the Appeal Court ruled that police “clearly related the purpose of the interviews” to Correia, which was to gather information about the murders he had been arrested for. The ruling also said police didn’t offer him any hope of immunity if he co-operated, and that Correia “knew what he was saying, to whom he was speaking and his potential jeopardy for murder.”
The interview transcripts reveal “no evidence of police conduct that could reasonably be seen as ‘police trickery,’” wrote Justice Mary Saunders in the decision agreed to by Justice Peter Voith and Justice Ronald Skolrood.
“I conclude the judge erred in law when finding Mr. Correia’s inculpatory statements were inadmissible,” she said, in setting aside the acquittal and ordering a new trial.
The two victims had three children and had moved to B.C. in 2006.
In his verdict, Silverman said the couple were “tragically innocent” victims who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Silverman said the victims were not involved in the drug trade.
He had found that while Correia and his co-accused were not innocent, he could not be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that they were guilty.
Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know — add VancouverSun.com and TheProvince.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.
You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber: For just $14 a month, you can get unlimited access to The Vancouver Sun, The Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Vancouver Sun | The Province.