If the crown only provided the forensic evidence and not any witnesses I think they get a conviction.
A person claims that the gun hung fire and that he accidently loaded 3 rounds into.
A person is did and the person who shot him admits to doing it.
That's the facts of the case that actually matter. State of mind and everything that happened before or after does not matter. It was not a self defense case. I think in a vacuum the above evidence has a conviction rate of 99%.
I suspect (and this is purely personal speculation) that the Jury used the self defense aspect that was all but raised in the testimony to justify this but not use as a defense led to the not guilty verdict. It was a very shrewd strategy of the defense to put the victim on trial and a poor decision by the crown to call the witnesses in the vehicle who were drunk at the time and unreliable.
Find another case where hang fire was successfully used to get reasonable doubt? I would be surprised to find it to exist. The Crown failed to keep the trial about the evidence and therefore reasonable doubt was created as the crown witnesses couldn't tell you what happened. Even though witnesses weren't really required to get a conviction.
|