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Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information purposes only.

Criminal law - Evidence - First degree murder - Whether post-offence conduct can constitute confirmatory evidence of the testimony of an unsavoury witness where the post-offence conduct admits of alternative explanations other than that provided by the unsavoury witness - Whether a trial judge must explicitly instruct a jury to consider a party’s subjective intent separately from that of the principle when determining a party’s liability for murder.

Crick was convicted of two counts of first degree murder. In regards to the first count, it was the position of the Crown that Crick and his nephew, M.L., and M.L.’s brother, R.G., had agreed to kill a man named Louis Gauthier. The Crown maintained that Crick was angry with Gauthier because Gauthier had been engaged in a homosexual relationship with his nephew, M.L. On the Crown’s theory, M.L. and R.G. actually committed the murder. Crick was involved in the planning of the murder with the two actual perpetrators. He drove them to the scene, urged them to “finish the job” during the attack, provided a false alibi and directed the destruction of evidence. Crick testified and admitted that he was at the scene with the two perpetrators and he also admitted that he was involved in providing a false alibi and destroying evidence. He admitted that his conduct made him an accessory after-the-fact. He denied, however, that he was a party to any plan to kill or hurt Gauthier or that he was in any way involved in the homicide. The second count related to the death of R.G. who was killed about six months after the death of Gauthier. It was the position of the Crown that Crick and M.L. became concerned that R.G. was telling people about the murder of Gauthier and, specifically, the involvement of Crick and M.L. By this point in time, the police suspected that Crick was involved. On the Crown’s theory, Crick and M.L. decided that the best way to silence R.G. was to kill him. Crick testified that M.L. murdered R.G. and that he had no involvement in the killing. He did acknowledge that M.L. told him about the killing and that he provided his car to M.L. so that M.L. could hide the body. Once again, Crick acknowledged that he was an accessory after-the-fact to the murder, but denied any involvement in the actual homicide or any plan leading up to the homicide. On appeal, Crick argued that his conviction should be overturned on the basis of the “Vetrovec” caution given with respect to M.L. and the jury instructions concerning Crick’s potential liability for manslaughter. His appeal was dismissed.