Appeal court tosses murder conviction of N.S. man who burned body of girlfriend

HALIFAX — A Halifax-area man who admitted to burning his girlfriend’s body but insisted he didn’t kill her has had his murder conviction overturned.

Paul Trevor Calnen was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Reita Louise Jordan in March 2013.

In a divided decision released Wednesday, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal tossed out the murder conviction due to insufficient evidence and inadequate final instructions to the jury.

On the night of her death, Jordan planned to leave Calnen. The sexual relationship, which appeared to have been fuelled by their joint use of crack cocaine, was coming to an end.

Text messages suggested she was a victim of domestic violence and wanted to move back home.

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When Calnen came home, Jordan’s bags were packed and he spied his laptop and jewelry among her belongings.

An argument broke out, and Calnen claimed his live-in girlfriend died after she took a swing at him in anger, missed, and accidentally fell down the stairs.

Calnen claimed he tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but decided she was dead.

Rather than call for help, Calnen claimed that he looked for crack cocaine and put Jordan’s body in his truck.

Over the following weeks, Calnen went to great lengths to destroy her body, moving her body several times and burning her body twice.

The Hammonds Plains, N.S., man pleaded guilty to burning her body and scattering her ashes in a lake, but maintained he did not cause her death.

Justice Ted Scanlan, writing for the majority, described what Calnen did to Jordan’s body as “horrific.”

But he said aside from the after-the-fact conduct, “there was no evidence, physical or otherwise, that contradicted the appellant’s version of the event.”

The majority decision said the trial judge should have granted a motion for a directed verdict and, in the absence of any new evidence, any retrial should not include the charge of second-degree murder.

“I am satisfied the jury was not properly instructed as to the limits on the use of evidence of after-the-fact conduct as it relates to proof of intent as required for conviction for murder,” the decision said.

But in a dissenting decision, the chief justice of the province’s highest court said there was sufficient evidence for the jury to decide on a second-degree murder charge.

Although Michael MacDonald admitted much of the evidence is circumstantial, he said it was still relevant.

“Consider the extraordinary lengths the appellant went to first hide (several times) and then destroy Ms. Jordan’s body by burning it, not once but twice.”

While the majority decision found that “with thought processes fuelled by crack cocaine” a person may conclude that they would not be believed if they argued they had nothing to do with a dead body found in their house, MacDonald dismissed this suggestion in Calnen’s case.

“I concede that the appellant initial decision to hide the body is not particularly relevant,” he said. “Having consumed cocaine, his actions may be equally consistent with the confusion and shock flowing from either him killing her unintentionally (manslaughter) or (as he proclaimed) an accidental death that simply occurred in his presence.

“But how does the appellant explain the obsessive, desperate, and even frantic efforts to make sure her body was destroyed? Consider the risks he took – going down wood roads – getting stuck – calling a tow truck with the body in his vehicle – starting a huge fire. These depict a desperate man.”

MacDonald said these extreme measures taken to destroy the body begs the question as to what Jordan’s injuries would reveal.

“We know that she died in his presence. We know that there was a confrontation. She was adding insult to injury by stealing some of his things, in the process of moving out. All this adds up to motive and opportunity.”

Calnen had been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 15 years for the second-degree murder conviction, which has now been set aside.

He was also sentenced to five years for indecently interfering with Jordan’s remains.

The Canadian Press

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