Amid a torrent of emotion, a Toronto woman accused of using an axe to bludgeon to death her lesbian lover's possessive boyfriend walked free from a downtown courtroom yesterday afternoon, acquitted of first-degree murder.
The verdict from the seven-woman, five-man jury capped more than three days of tense deliberations.
Ashleigh Pechaluk, 24, and her parents embraced tearfully before stepping out into the bright sunshine to face a bank of microphones and television cameras.
Arrested the day of the murder, she spent more than two and a half years in custody.
But both she and her mother, Beverley Salton, said yesterday they never doubted the outcome and praised the skills and compassion of defence lawyers Peter Zaduk and Kristine Connidis.
"That's what got me through," Ms. Pechaluk told the media throng.
"It's been a long time - hard, stressful, not knowing what's going to happen, and there was always that bit of doubt," she said. "But I always knew it was going to be okay."
She had pleaded not guilty in the Oct. 27, 2006 slaying of Dennis Hoy, a 36-year-old GO Transit constable and long-time boyfriend of her former lover, Nicola (Nicky) Puddicombe.
Ms. Puddicombe is set to stand trial beginning Monday. She too is charged with first-degree murder in Mr. Hoy's death.
During Ms. Pechaluk's two-month trial, the prosecution alleged the two women killed Mr. Hoy so they could be together.
He was found bludgeoned to death by an axe in Ms. Puddicombe's bed in the Queensway apartment shared by the two accused.
The jury also heard that Ms. Puddicombe, now 36, was the sole beneficiary of Mr. Hoy's $238,200 life insurance policy and his pension proceeds, and that she had convinced Ms. Pechaluk that Mr. Hoy was a high-ranking member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, a killer and a drug dealer.
The jury began deliberating Monday afternoon, after Madam Justice Mary Lou Benotto gave them her final instructions.
"[Ms.]Puddicombe had Ashleigh Pechaluk believing she [Ms. Puddicombe]was being forced to have sex with Dennis Hoy," Judge Benotto said in outlining the case presented by lead prosecutor Maureen Bellmore.
"She wanted to pump up Ashleigh into a frenzy of hate, so that she could kill Dennis Hoy."
But after deliberations punctuated by a temporary impasse, when they returned to court to tell the judge they were deadlocked and were urged to go back and try again, the jurors concluded otherwise.
In doing so they accepted Mr. Zaduk's contention that although his client had talked with friends about getting rid of Mr. Hoy, even in the last days before his death, she never went through with the plan.
The Crown's case against Ms. Pechaluk was almost entirely circumstantial. The gory crime scene yielded no physical evidence against her: no blood traces, no fingerprints, no DNA.
And also central to the verdict, in all likelihood, was Ms. Pechaluk's decision to testify on her own behalf, which she did for close to three days.
Wary of the rigours of cross-examination by the prosecution, defendants in murder trials rarely take the witness stand. But Ms. Pechaluk remained calm and articulate, turning in a performance that observers found compelling.
"I just answered the questions as best I could," she said yesterday. "I wasn't really aware of anyone else in the room. You just try and get through it."
The stakes in the trial could scarcely have been higher.
Conviction for first-degree murder carries an automatic penalty of life imprisonment with little chance of parole for 25 years.
But Mr. Zaduk said yesterday he was certain all along his client was innocent.
"There's not a fibre of her being that made her capable of this [murder]"
He conceded it was a bad moment when the jury returned to the courtroom on Wednesday and announced that it was unable to reach a verdict, which under Canadian law must be unanimous.
"That really rips you, you have the sense that you have to go through all this again. I'm just really glad that justice prevailed in the end."
Ms. Salton and Ms. Pechaluk's stepfather, Keith St. John, attended the trial every day, seated in the left front row of the spectators' gallery.
Since their daughter's arrest, that was about as close as they had got.
"I haven't touched her in two years and seven months," Ms. Salton said after the verdict.
The moment when the jury pronounced Ms . Pechaluk not guilty "was amazing," Ms. Salton said, giving her daughter another hug.
" I never, ever doubted this would happen but it was more wonderful than I thought."
As for Ms. Puddicombe's trial, which will be prefaced next week by legal arguments, "We'll deal with that, we're not thinking about that right now," Ms. Pechaluk said.
"She'll have a fair trial."
She also commiserated with Mr. Hoy's parents, who were estranged from their son, did not attend his funeral and only occasionally visited the trial.
"I'm sorry for their loss," she said. "It's not fair."
Her first post-custody pleasure?
"Seafood," she said with a laugh.
Beyond that, she said her future will encompass working with children.
"It's a new slate, starting again, this is over for me now and I want to get on with my life," she said.
And in the embrace of her beaming parents, still pursued by the cameras, she walked quickly away.