Mike on Crime

THE CANADIAN PRESS
OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada has restored a guilty verdict against Kelly Ellard in the Reena Virk murder.
In an 8-1 decision, the court overturned a 2008 British Columbia Court of Appeal decision in a case that has dragged on for more than a decade.
Ellard, now 26, was twice convicted in the murder, with both verdicts overturned on appeal.
One case ended in a hung jury and a mistrial.
In the last case, the appeal judges threw out the jury’s 2005 guilty verdict because they felt the trial judge didn’t properly instruct the jurors on some inconsistent statements by a Crown witness.
Writing for the majority of the Supreme Court, Justice Rosalie Abella said the statements in question should not have been admitted in evidence, but were essentially harmless.
“These statements were of no consequence and their admission could not, in any way, be said to have had an impact on the jury’s deliberations,” she wrote.
Justice Morris Fish dissented, saying he would have ordered a new trial.
Ellard has been behind bars for seven years.
Warren Glowatski was convicted in 1999 of second-degree murder in the Virk killing and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for seven years. He has since been released.
Virk was 14 when she was swarmed by eight teens, beaten and later drowned in a Victoria park on Nov. 14, 1997.
She had been invited to “party” under the Craigflower Bridge that night when a dispute over another girl’s boyfriend landed her in the middle of a flurry of kicks and punches.
Evidence showed she escaped the initial frenzy, but then suffered another beating that left her with internal injuries that were compared to being run over by a car. She likely would have died from head trauma.
But she was then dragged into the Gorge — a tidal waterway running through Victoria — and held under water until she stopped breathing. Police divers found her body eight days later.