A jury in Cayuga, Ont., is deliberating on whether or not Randall McKenzie and Brandy Stewart-Sperry are responsible of murdering Ontario Provincial Police Const. Greg Pierzchala.
Each have pleaded not responsible within the Dec. 27, 2022, roadside taking pictures of the 28-year-old officer, who responded to the co-accused crashing a stolen automobile right into a ditch outdoors Hagersville.
Their Superior Court docket trial started in late March and heard from a number of witnesses, together with a number of who had been on the scene of the taking pictures, police concerned within the response, and specialists on matters together with digital video, toxicology and DNA.
The 12 jurors started deliberating Thursday afternoon.
Throughout the trial, Crown prosecutors argued McKenzie shot Pierzchala, and Stewart-Sperry helped him. Neither of the co-accused took the stand.
McKenzie’s defence informed the jury there ought to be cheap doubt as as to if McKenzie was the shooter captured on the officer’s bodycam as he shot the person six occasions.
Stewart-Sperry’s defence argued she was not a participant within the crime and that prosecutors’ proof of her prepared participation was “nothing greater than hypothesis and conjecture.”
Justice Andrew Goodman charged the jury over two days, instructing them in apply the regulation as they decided their verdict. For McKenzie, the jurors have solely to determine whether or not they believed, past an affordable doubt, that McKenzie was the shooter, Goodman mentioned.
For his co-accused, the jury should weigh a number of elements.
The justice supplied members with a circulation chart taking them via a sequence of questions and asking whether or not Stewart-Sperry helped or inspired the shooter to commit first-degree homicide, or was engaged in a committing one other crime for which the taking pictures was a possible consequence.
The jury might attain a number of doable verdicts.
- They could discover McKenzie not responsible or responsible of first-degree homicide.
- They could discover Stewart-Sperry not responsible of first-degree homicide, not responsible of first-degree homicide however responsible of manslaughter, or responsible of first-degree homicide.
Jurors may deliberate into the night time Thursday and proceed within the following days in the event that they have not decided.
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