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B.C. Court of Appeal Upholds Robert Pickton's Six Murder Convictions in a 2-1 Ruling That Opens a Supreme Court Appeal

The dissenting judge would have ordered a new trial over the jury instructions on aiding and abetting, giving Pickton an automatic appeal to Canada's top court.

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Illustration of reporters with umbrellas outside a glass courthouse on a rainy day. Not an actual scene from the case.

Robert Pickton's six murder convictions survived his first appeal by a single vote. On June 25, 2009, a split B.C. Court of Appeal ruling opened his way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Pickton, a 60-year-old pig farmer, had been convicted on December 9, 2007, of six counts of second-degree murder. The Crown's case was that he killed the six women, sex-trade workers from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, at his farm in Port Coquitlam. They were Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey, Andrea Joesbury, Georgina Papin, Mona Wilson and Brenda Wolfe. On appeal he sought a new trial, challenging how the trial judge had instructed the jury and answered a question it asked during deliberations. The majority dismissed the appeal. Justice Donald, dissenting, would have ordered a new trial, finding that the failure to instruct the jury on aiding and abetting was an error of law amounting to a miscarriage of justice.

The split decision gave Pickton an automatic right to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, and his lawyer, Patrick McGowan, said the appeal would be based on the dissent. Pickton had been charged with the first-degree murder of 26 women but was tried on only six. The appeal court also ruled that if the Supreme Court ordered a new trial, he should be tried on all 26 charges. The Supreme Court of Canada heard the appeal on March 25, 2010, and affirmed the convictions on July 30, 2010.

CBC News reported that the split decision gave Pickton an automatic right of appeal, while Supreme Court of Canada records show his lawyers also filed an application for leave to appeal in September 2009.

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