Dennis Oland arrives at the Court of Appeal in Fredericton on Monday, Oct. 24, 2016.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
An appeal court has granted Dennis Oland a new trial less than a year after his conviction for second-degree murder in the brutal 2011 killing of his father, Richard, a prominent Saint John businessman and former member of the Moosehead brewing empire.
The New Brunswick Court of Appeal ruled on Monday that the original trial judge erred in his instructions to the jury by failing to warn jurors against making inferences of guilt from a misstatement by Mr. Oland about what kind of jacket he was wearing on the day of his father's death.
Mr. Oland's wife, Lisa, and mother, Connie, held hands and wept when the verdict was announced. Moosehead Breweries executive chairman Derek Oland, uncle of the accused and brother of the victim, said in a statement he was "very pleased" by the ruling. "We continue to believe Dennis is innocent," he wrote.
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The case has obsessed New Brunswick, and especially Saint John, an economically hard-hit city where Moosehead was a source of local pride and a significant employer. The prominence of the family and the gruesome nature of the killing led many to call it the "Maritimes' O.J. trial."
Dennis Oland will have a bail hearing on Tuesday and is expected to be released pending his new trial. Chief Justice Ernest Drapeau noted from the bench that Mr. Oland has regained the presumption of innocence with the quashing of his conviction. He has been serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for 10 years and was led out of the courtroom in shackles on Monday, but received bail between his 2013 arrest and his conviction in December, 2015.
The bludgeoning death of Richard Oland has haunted the Maritime imagination since his body was discovered on the morning of July 7, 2011. He had 45 wounds on his head, neck and hands, and his Saint John office was spattered with blood.
No weapon was ever found, but police zeroed in on Dennis Oland after learning he was the last person known to have seen his father alive, and that their relationship was strained by money, high paternal expectations and Richard's eight-year affair with a local real estate agent.
Investigators also noted Dennis's false statement in a police interview that he wore a navy blazer on the day his father was killed. Surveillance footage showed that he was wearing a brown sports jacket, which was sent for dry cleaning the day after Dennis learned he was a suspect in his father's murder. Forensic testing found four small blood stains on the jacket, three of which contained Richard Oland's DNA.
Dennis's defence portrayed the discrepancy as an honest mistake, while the Crown called it a lie designed to mislead prosecutors. In his jury charge at the end of the trial, Justice John Walsh told jurors to decide which version of events to believe in light of all the evidence. The defence told the court Richard Oland habitually chewed his cuticles and had scabs on his scalp from a skin condition and may have touched Dennis at some time when he was wearing the jacket.
The appeal court's three-judge panel ruled unanimously that the evidence had no value towards a verdict unless it could be proven independently that Dennis was lying, and that Justice Walsh should have said so in his instructions.
"Significantly, the trial judge did not instruct the jurors that even if they found the appellant's erroneous statement was a lie, it had no probative value unless they concluded on the basis of other evidence independent of that finding, that the lie was fabricated or concocted to conceal his involvement in the murder of his father," Justice Drapeau said.
"The jurors might well have found the appellant lied about the jacket he was wearing and, in the closing moments of their deliberations, distilled from that … the clinching element for their verdict."
Nicole O'Byrne, a law professor at the University of New Brunswick, acknowledged that the appeal court ruling might seem "very semantic and confusing" to a lay person, but said she was not surprised the conviction was thrown out.
The court did not enter an acquittal, she noted. And since the judges found a legal error in a crucial part of the original proceedings, ordering a new trial was a natural step.
"That's not surprising – that's the remedy one would expect," she said.
Since Mr. Oland has regained the presumption of innocence, Ms. O'Byrne said she expected him to receive bail on Tuesday, although he will face the judge who denied him bail at an earlier hearing in February.
Arranging a new trial may be more complicated, especially finding an unbiased jury.
Eric Andrew-Gee