The Quebec Court of Appeal ruled the jury's instructions were "unnecessarily complex, but above all manifestly contradictory and prejudicial."
Randy Tshilumba, the man who was found guilty of first-degree murder five years ago in the death of a woman who was stabbed while she worked in a supermarket, will have a second trial.
The Quebec Court of Appeal ordered the new trial on Monday, after ruling the judge’s instructions to the jury in the first trial were “unduly long, unnecessarily complex, but above all manifestly contradictory and prejudicial to (Tshilumba’s) position.”
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Clémence Beaulieu-Patry, 20, was fatally stabbed by Tshilumba while she was working at the Maxi supermarket on Papineau Ave. and Crémazie Blvd. April 10, 2016. Tshilumba’s lawyer in the first trial, Philippe Larochelle, presented a defence arguing Tshilumba was delusional and could not formulate the intention required for a person to be convicted of murder.
Tshilumba, who is now 26, testified that he was convinced, months before he stabbed the victim, that “Clémence and her friends wanted to kill me.” There was nothing to suggest Tshilumba’s concerns were based in reality.
The prosecution presented evidence that Tshilumba carefully planned the homicide, specifically targeted the young woman when he was inside the store and knew that what he was doing was wrong.
The jury sided with the prosecution, finding Tshilumba guilty of first-degree murder on Oct. 20, 2017.
The Quebec Court of Appeal determined that Justice Hélène Di Salvo erred in her instructions to the jury before they began deliberating, specifically in how she told the panel to treat evidence of Tshilumba’s behaviour after he killed the young woman.
“While the jury’s verdict cannot be considered unreasonable, the contradictory instructions concerning (Tshilumba’s) behaviour after the homicide prevented the jury from globally evaluating the sequence of events as they should have,” the appellate court wrote in a 35-page decision.
Tshilumba went to the same high school as Beaulieu-Patry and her friends but he was not close to the group. Near the end of his fourth year of high school, his behaviour changed and his grades dropped.
During September 2014, he began having delusional thoughts about the young woman and her friends. He told his family he was afraid of them and even asked his mother if they could move.
The following year, during either October or November 2015, Tshilumba was working for a company that distributed products to supermarkets when he entered the Maxi where Beaulieu-Patry worked and spotted her. According to evidence presented at trial, he began to worry that Beaulieu-Patry was a spy and that she and her friends were planning to kill him.
Early in 2016, he began sharing his thoughts with a close friend who told Tshilumba that he was paranoid.
After he stabbed Beaulieu-Patry, Tshilumba hid inside the women’s bathroom of a Tim Hortons for seven hours and sent text messages to people he knew. In one message, he told a friend that he feared for his life because he believed the victim’s friends were out to get him.
pcherry@postmedia.com
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