Murder didn't involve confinement of Lukas Strasser-Hird, lawyer tells Court of Appeal
Client: Nathan Gervais
Charge: Murder
Defence: murder didn’t involve confinement
Sentence: awaiting appeal decision
Calgarian Lukas Strasser-Hird wasn’t trapped by a mob in a back alley before he was swarmed, beaten and fatally stabbed by Nathan Gervais, the killer’s lawyer argued Wednesday.
Defence counsel Alain Hepner said Justice William Tilleman erred when he found Strasser-Hird was unlawfully confined in the alley behind a Beltline nightclub before he was pinned against a garbage bin and slain.
Tilleman ruled Gervais was guilty of first-degree murder in Strasser-Hird’s killing because the victim was confined before the murder occurred.
But Hepner told a three-member Alberta Court of Appeal panel that even if the deceased was confined when a mob chased him back inside the Vinyl nightclub in the early morning hours of Nov. 23, 2013, he wasn’t when staff let him out the back door.
Tilleman found Gervais was part of a group that got into an altercation with Strasser-Hird outside the front of the club before the deceased retreated inside.
While Strasser-Hird was being ushered out the back entrance, Gervais went to his car, retrieved a knife and then went around the block to continue the fight, Tilleman ruled.
But Hepner, in seeking a second-degree murder conviction, argued Gervais, who looped around the now-defunct 10 Ave. S.W. bar to the west and south to the alley, would not have known others had gone the other direction, effectively boxing the victim in.
“How would he have known his friends were going to come (the other way)?” Hepner said.
The lawyer said there was no evidence Gervais and the others had discussed approaching the alley from different directions to corner Strasser-Hird.
“There’s no evidence Gervais said ‘meet me at the back of the alley,’ ” Hepner said.
He said Strasser-Hird simply walked into an ambush and his client joined in.
“The attacking group goes after Lukas, puts him against the dumpster and then Gervais joins the fray.”
But Justice Brian O’Ferrall asked whether it was open to Tilleman to infer Gervais took the route he did, knowing the others would force the victim towards him.
“The fact that Gervais went to the west and everyone else went to the east I find compelling,” the appeal judge said.
“I took a lot from the fact he took that route, which was arguably a longer route.”
Crown prosecutor Julie Morgan added the evidence supported the finding Gervais set out to get the deceased and did so.
“The appellant was not going to let Strasser-Hird go home safely,” Morgan said.
The appeal judges reserved their decision.
Source: The Calgary Herald