Shafia family murder trial likely to be put in jury’s hands today
Posted Jan 27, 2012 09:08:53 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
KINGSTON, Ont. – The case against three people accused of killing half their family over honour will likely be in the hands of a jury by the end of the day.
The jury in Kingston, Ont., has been hearing evidence in the Shafia family murder trial since Oct. 20, and now all that’s left before they start deliberating to consider their verdict is to listen to the judge’s final instructions today.
Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, have each pleaded not guilty of four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of three Shafia daughters and Shafia’s first wife in a polygamous marriage.
The bodies of the four were found June 30, 2009, in a car at the bottom of a canal in Kingston, where the Montreal family had stopped on their way back from a trip to Niagara Falls, Ont.
The Crown wrapped up its closing arguments Thursday, saying the accused “did what they each believed had to be done,” and telling the jury that it’s now their turn.
The end of the closing arguments were delayed for several hours Thursday after the courthouse where the trial is being held had to be evacuated due to a bomb threat.
When court did get underway in the afternoon, Crown attorney Laurie Lacelle told the jury in her closing address that the evidence is “irrefutable.”
“Shafia, Tooba and Hamed had decided that there was a diseased limb on their family tree,” she said. “Their decision was to trim the diseased limb and prune the tree back to the good wood.”
Lacelle urged the jury to find all three guilty in what the Crown has alleged is a quadruple honour killing of Shafia’s three daughters and his other polygamous wife.
“You know this was not an accident — it was murder,” Lacelle said at the end of her lengthy address.
“They did what they each believed had to be done. Now it’s your turn. Find them all guilty as charged. There is no other way.”
The Crown alleges it was a premeditated murder, staged to look like an accident after it was carried out. But the defence lawyers told the jury in their closing addresses that the evidence does indeed fit with the deaths being an accident.
