Crown counsel Chandra Fisher says the defendant and another man waited for the victim to return from work and had gathered guns and duct tape to lock him up before they murdered him.
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An escaped inmate charged with the first-degree murder of a Vancouver Island man needed martial arts training or worked alongside the other man who broke away from William Head prison, Crown counsel said Monday.
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Crown counsel Chandra Fisher told jurors at the James Lee Busch trial that he and James Armitage committed the murder together after escaping in July 2019.
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Armitage began the trial with Busch, but the BC District Attorney’s Office said the Crown is now prosecuting the two defendants on separate indictments.
They were “inseparable” as they waited for 60-year-old Martin Payne to come home from work, Fisher said in his closing arguments.
She said they gathered the weapons and prepared duct tape, all in a plan to get Payne’s banking information.
“What kind of ninja master would it have taken to use two different knives and an ax and inflict all those moves on Mr. Payne? The only reasonable inference is that both Mr. Armitage and Mr. Busch worked together.” Fisher said.
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However, defense attorney Ryan Drury called the Crown’s case “weak” and “speculative.”
“They are trying to sell you a detail of a murder involving Mr. Busch, when we say that the evidence they have presented is too inconclusive for anyone to boil it down to one detail. play.”
Payne was murdered on July 8, 2019, one day after Busch and Armitage left the William Head Institution. The prison was just five miles from Payne’s home in Metchosin, on southern Vancouver Island.
“Either they planned and deliberated in advance that they were going to kill him from the start, or they were planning to illegally confine him and ended up killing him in the course of that confinement, and Mr. Busch was an active participant.
on that,” Fisher told the jury.
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Any of those results would mean Busch is guilty under the law, he said.
Fisher asked the jury to consider whether the men intended to kill the victim, arguing that they needed Payne to “keep quiet, or else they’d go back to jail.”
“Even before the attack began, it is clear that it was designed to be carried out by two people,” he said.
“We know that Mr. Armitage and Mr. Busch escaped from prison, and we know that they intended to remain free. They needed a place to hide, they needed money, they needed transportation. What they didn’t need was a witness.”
Sitting on the other side of a glass barrier facing the victim’s family members, Busch wore a gray sports jacket and a blue collared shirt with a short, slicked-back ponytail. He sometimes winced, but held his head high as the prosecution spoke to the jury.
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Drury, who began his closing arguments for the defense later Monday, said the prosecution has not proven Busch’s involvement beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Escape from prison and then plan to evade attention by committing murder doesn’t seem like a great plan,” he said, suggesting Payne’s death was neither intentional nor planned.
“I say there is a substantial and overwhelming body of evidence supporting the conclusion that Mr. Armitage, acting alone, is responsible for the death of Mr. Payne.”
The defense continues with its final comments on Tuesday.
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