For the first time since he was charged eight years ago, Miguel Chacon-Perez walked out of the London courthouse without an accusation of murder hanging over him.
Recommended Videos
After a trial in 2018, a sentencing to life with no chance of parole for 10 years, a successful appeal to Ontario’s highest court and one of the most unusual retrial procedures ever asked for at the London courthouse, the Crown decided after a review of the case to withdraw the charge against Chacon-Perez.
Assistant Crown attorney Vanessa Decker invited Superior Court Justice Kelly Tranquilli to dismiss the second-degree murder charge Tuesday. She agreed.
The case that had lasted more than eight years was over in a matter of minutes. Chacon-Perez, a Cuban immigrant with a young family, stood with his defence lawyers and Tranquilli wished him luck. “I trust we won’t be seeing you again,” she said.
Chacon-Perez, now 35, nodded politely. His family, along with defence lawyer Richard Posner, who had defended him at his first trial, looked on with smiles and relief.
It was a far different reaction than after Chacon-Perez was convicted by a London jury in December 2018, when Posner called the decision “a textbook case of a miscarriage of justice” and “unreasonable.”
The family of Chad Robinson, 26, the much-loved and respected plumbing apprentice from Kitchener who was fatally stabbed in the heart during a melee in the parking lot of the Imperio banquet hall on Dec. 18, 2016, did not attend the brief hearing.
Chacon-Perez, who worked as a flooring subcontractor, has maintained his innocence from the start and pointed the finger at a former friend, Irvine Alex Aparacio-Chicas, who was with him at the Intact Renovations all-trades Christmas party as the person who stabbed Robinson in the heart.
The evidence at the first trial was aptly described by the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2022 as “a crazyquilt of snapshots of individual events” by witnesses, many of them who admitted they were intoxicated and gave conflicting testimony of what went on that night.
What sparked the fight was a comment made by one of Robinson’s friends who asked Robinson if Chacon-Perez was “the Kijiji man,” a nickname Robinson had used to describe Chacon-Perez selling a fish tank online that had been left behind in a rental unit that was being renovated.
That was an insult to Chacon-Perez who was miffed when he left the party with a number of his friends, including Aparacio-Chicas, but then made the fateful decision to return.
There was a fight in the parking lot involving several men. Robinson joined in once he saw his friend who had asked about the “kijiji man” was in the scuffle.
There were witnesses who saw Aparacio-Chicas shirtless and squaring off with Robinson. One witness said they saw something dark in Chacon-Perez’s waistband, but another witness didn’t have Chacon-Perez near Robinson.
But some witnesses said they saw Chacon-Perez at the back of the parking lot by the fence tossing a knife away. Robinson’s DNA was on the tip and Chacon-Perez’s DNA was on the handle.
At the trial, Chacon-Perez said Aparacio-Chicas had taken the knife from his tool box. He picked it up after his friend had dropped it and attempted to get rid of it.
The case was ordered to be re-tried after the Ontario Court of Appeal took issue with Superior Court Justice Michael McArthur’s response to the jury’s request to review the evidence of four witnesses whose evidence related to the identification issue. There were no transcripts and an audio review would have taken several days.
The judge told the jury to instead review his instructions and the outlines of the issues. A guilty verdict was returned 24 hours later. The appeal court said McArthur should have asked the jury to be more specific and give a reminder that it could ask more questions.
A retrial was ordered and it began late last year with Chacon-Perez pleading not guilty again. But there was an unusual twist. Because so much time had elapsed, no formal trial would be held.
No new evidence was called and Tranquilli, who was presiding over the case without a jury was asked to review in her chambers the original audio and transcripts of the lengthy first trial before the Crown and the defence made both written and oral closing submissions.
It was an indication that both sides agreed that there could never be any better evidence than what was presented at the original trial.
There were more developments before Tuesday’s stunner. The original Crown was now-Ontario Court Justice Adam Campbell, who was appointed to the bench to serve in Windsor in late December.
The defence’s written submissions had already been sent to Tranquilli last week and Tuesday had been set aside for the Crown to give its position. The surprise was that after the Crown’s own review of the case, the request was for the case to come to an end with a withdrawal of the charge.
Outside of court, Chacon-Perez declined to speak and directed all comments to come from his defence lawyer Gabriel Gross-Stein, who is a law partner with Posner at Posner Craig Stein in Toronto.
“I’m grateful,” Gross-Stein said. “In my view it’s the correct decision. Mr. Chacon-Perez has maintained his innocence this whole time. In my view the original conviction was a miscarriage of justice and I’m glad it’s been corrected now.”
He said that he hadn’t expected the Crown’s decision that he said must have been difficult.
As for his client, “I don’t know if it’s truly hit him yet that he has now been acquitted, been found not guilty. He has maintained his innocence right since Day 1…. I think he’s calm and sober-minded and grateful that things ended up as they should of, finally.”
He said Chacon-Perez has been out of custody on bail, first when he was charged, again seeking the appeal and again once the new trial was ordered. “Throughout that entire time under strict conditions, no incidents, nothing, not a whiff of a breach of bail. He’s been a totally contributing member of the community and I think everyone expects how that is going to be going forward.”
Gross-Stein added that there were “a myriad of problems in the case…including the fact that in my view someone else did this.”
“Someone else did this stabbing,” he said. “Of all of the witnesses who were at that party that night, not a single person saw Mr. Chacon-Perez stab the deceased,” he said.