The family of an Olds College student murdered outside the Texas Mickey bar two-and-a-half years ago said they were taken "back to Square 1" during an appeal hearing on April 2 for Jeffrey Leinen, the Calgary man convicted of the crime.
The family of an Olds College student murdered outside the Texas Mickey bar two-and-a-half years ago said they were taken "back to Square 1" during an appeal hearing on April 2 for Jeffrey Leinen, the Calgary man convicted of the crime.
"That’s the hard part about it even though it’s one of those events you’re never going to get over anyway," said Frank Van Humback, the uncle of Nicholas Baier, who was run down outside the bar on Oct. 29, 2010. "But it does almost kind of all of a sudden bring you back almost to when it happened. It’s difficult from that standpoint."
Humback said he was in court in Calgary on April 2 along with Baier’s mother Maggie, his wife, who is Maggie’s sister, and the mother of another student who was struck by Leinen’s pickup truck outside the bar, for the appeal hearing.
Leinen was convicted of second-degree murder in Baier’s death in December 2011, following a three-week trial where a jury decided he intentionally drove his truck into a crowd outside the bar.
Dan Skocdopole, another Olds College student, was also struck and injured during the incident and Leinen was found guilty of aggravated assault against him.
Leinen, who was in his early 20s at the time of the incident, was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole in 14 years and is serving his sentence in Edmonton.
On April 2, Leinen’s lawyer, Jennifer Ruttan, argued before a Calgary appeals court that the judge during Leinen’s trial, Justice Marsha Erb, had made several errors in her instructions to the jury and therefore Leinen should have a new trial.
In an interview with the Olds Albertan following her submissions for appeal, Ruttan said the judge erred in "not properly instructing the jury on the appropriate use" of evidence provided by a Crown witness who rebutted evidence from an expert defence witness.
She said the Crown’s witness wrongly relied on specific excerpts of evidence instead of being examined using hypothetical questions.
"There was no warning to the jury that that was inappropriate," Ruttan said.
The judge also provided improper instruction to the jury on the issue of Leinen’s "specific intent" at the time his truck plowed into the group of people at the bar, Ruttan said, adding there was "confusion in the jury charge about how the issues of panic, involuntary reflex and accident related to the issue of specific intent."
"These are three distinct issues that (the jury) had to decide and so the instruction wasn’t clear with respect to those issues."
Ruttan also said the judge did not include a warning for the jury to ignore "bad character" evidence presented during the trial that suggested Leinen "was more likely the type of person who would commit the offence" and, finally, the judge did not provide a sufficient review of the evidence in her instruction to the jury that "tied evidence to issues the jury had to determine."
"The trial judge has the obligation to review the evidence that was given in trial sufficiently for the jury to understand the legal issues they have to resolve and what evidence would be relevant to those issues," she said.
In a statement provided to the Albertan, Crown lawyer Josh Hawkes, who also made his submissions to the appeal court on April 2, stated there is no need for a new trial.
"The Crown doesn’t agree with the claim that the trial judge erred and that in any event, the case was so overwhelming that the court should uphold the verdict," he said in the statement.
The court has reserved judgment on the appeal and there is no timeline for when a decision on the matter might be released.
Humback said he was told the Crown and defence will likely receive 24 hours notice of the court’s decision.
Until then, his family has to wait.
"I guess (we’ll) keep on living the way (we) were."
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