The trial of a man who confessed to killing four First Nations women will shift focus on Wednesday, as a Winnipeg judge hears arguments about his morality and mental capacity during the crimes.
Earlier this week, Jeremy Skibicki, 37, admitted to killing 24-year-old Rebecca Contois, 26-year-old Marcedes Myran, 39-year-old Morgan Harris and an unidentified woman whom Indigenous elders have named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, meaning Buffalo Woman. But during the late-stage admission in court, his attorneys said they want him to be found not criminally responsible for the first-degree murders.
Researchers, legal scholars and lawyers observing the case believe this relatively rare defence for Mr. Skibicki – commonly referred to as NCR – is expected to change the kind of evidence shown in court about the women’s deaths in 2022.
Before an NCR verdict is established by a court, an accused person must prove to be suffering from a mental disorder or some other incapacitation during the offence, preventing their ability to form the intent required to commit a crime.
“Lawyers are very reticent to raise the NCR defence unless they have a degree of confidence,” said Saul Simmonds, founder of the leading Winnipeg-based firm Simmonds and Associates, in an interview.
Timeline of slayings of four women in Winnipeg, demands to search a landfill for remains
A criminal defence lawyer since 1981, Mr. Simmonds has represented clients across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. Among the many trials he has worked on, the NCR defence stands out as a complicated test of the Canadian justice system, he said.
Any case with such a defence would need to pass the high bar of presenting psychiatric evidence that directly shows an accused person’s state of mind at the time of the offence, he added.
“There has to be significant evidence to prove that someone is not criminally responsible,” Mr. Simmonds said. “It’s not just whether or not you are mentally ill. It’s whether or not you understood the consequences of what you did at the time of the offence. Are you morally culpable?”
Police arrested Mr. Skibicki in May, 2022, after Ms. Contois’s partial remains were found in a garbage bin outside an apartment building in Winnipeg. More remains were later discovered at the separate Brady Road landfill in the southern outskirts of the city. She was a band member of Crane River First Nation.
In spring of that year, Ms. Harris and Ms. Myran, both from Long Plain First Nation, were killed before their bodies were dumped at Prairie Green landfill, north of the city, police said.
Police have not shared information about the whereabouts of Buffalo Woman’s remains.
Brandon Trask, an assistant professor of law at the University of Manitoba, said the NCR defence will likely shift the onus of proof away from the prosecution.
“There is a presumption in the Criminal Code that everybody is not suffering from a mental disorder so as to relieve them from criminal liability,” said Prof. Trask, who has been involved with hundreds of cases as a Crown prosecutor in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.
“We may see some pieces of evidence no longer presented in court now that the Crown does not need to prove that Mr. Skibicki committed the killings,” he said. “But in a case where you’ve got multiple killings, it is quite a challenge for the defence to show that NCR applied to every single act, so we are definitely still going to see a significant amount of evidence to that end from the defence.”
Mr. Simmonds said the evidence collection also changes with an NCR defence. “You’re not just looking at how a psychiatrist evaluates a person months after the event, you are also seeing what happened months before it,” he said. “Did you seek mental-health help? Because that makes this a different situation than for someone who hadn’t.”
Kelly Gorkoff, an associate professor and chair of the criminal justice department at the University of Winnipeg, said there has been an improvement in how society is viewing mental health, but that isn’t necessarily reflected in the courts.
“It’s not that justice doesn’t need to be served for these women,” she said. “But we need to rethink how that should happen. What is the right way to hold somebody responsible for this? Is it only retribution?”
These complications are why courts often prefer to have both the Crown and defence agree to an NCR verdict, Mr. Simmonds said.
Court of King’s Bench Justice Glenn Joyal is scheduled on Wednesday to dismiss the 12-member jury selected for the trial late last month after both sides agreed to a judge-alone trial. Opening statements are also expected that day.
Mr. Skibicki’s lawyers have received about 10 terabytes of information as part of the prosecution’s disclosure process. That includes videos and photographs, according to defence attorney Leonard Tailleur.
Temur Durrani