Two men accused of murder in what police believed was a case of mistaken identity were found not guilty by a BC judge.
Colin Raymond Correia and Sheldon Joseph Hunter learned the verdict a dozen years after the incident took place. The men, who were 41 and 30 at the time of their arrests in Alberta in 2018, had been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Leanne Laura MacFarlane and Jeffrey Todd Taylor.
MacFarlane, age 43, was found dead in the home, while Taylor was taken to hospital but did not survive.
Early on in the investigation, police said the shooting deaths at a home in rural Cranbrook, BC, in May 2010, were part of a targeted incident, but that MacFarlane and Taylor were likely not the intended victims.
That theory was echoed during Correia and Hunter’s trial by Crown counsel, according to the executive summary of the case, which was read in court Monday and posted online.
The prosecution told the court that the accused were expecting to find and kill a member of a rival drug group after the shooting death of a member of another group Correia was part of. Hunter was possibly a low-rung member of the gang, or he may have been involved in that he was a user or trafficker who did business with it, the Crown suggested.
The court heard Correia’s criminal intent was never in question. He admitted to conspiracy to commit the murder in 2012 of the same gang member police believe he was the intended target of the 2010 shooting, documents say. He was sentenced to 12 years behind bars for the conspiracy offence.
And the theory itself – that MacFarlane and Taylor were not the intended victims – appeared to make sense. The man police do believe was the target had lived in the home in the past, though not at the time of the shooting, and the people who were killed had no involvement in the drug trade “in any way or at any level,” Justice Arne H. Silverman said.
But, the judge said, the Crown’s case was largely circumstantial when it came to connecting the accused with the crime.
Witnesses who testified in court were unable to identify the shooters.
As for whether Correia and Hunter – both of whom were known to police when charges were approved – actually had any involvement, the judge said, “I am not satisfied that the two accused persons are innocent.
“However, I am also not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that they are guilty.”
One witness testified that he saw the accused shortly before and after the murders, telling the court that he drove them to an area where they could have then on to the house, but his credibility gone is “suspect,” the judge said.
That person was one of two witnesses who changed their versions of events “under the foregoing pressure from the police,” Silverman said. Those two are brothers and drug dealers, according to the judge, and were also “the heart of the Crown’s case.”
Additionally, Hunter had an alibi involving cellphone records that suggested he may have been in a different place at the time of the shootings.
Canadian law requires that courts give a verdict of not guilty if there is reasonable doubt, “therefore, I find both accused not guilty with respect to both charges,” the judge said.