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Gray’s fate rests with jury |
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Written by Sherri Gallant LETHBRIDGE HERALD
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Wednesday, November 25 2009, 9:34 PM |
As he recapped a defence built largely on reasonable doubt and unreliable Crown witnesses, criminal lawyer Balfour Der urged the jury in the murder case against Bradley Gray to believe that his client went out of his way to summon help for the man he is accused of killing on June 23, 2008.
George Shawnee Many Shots, 37, was the city’s second homicide of 2008.
Closing arguments were given Wednesday morning in Lethbridge Court of Queen’s Bench before the seven-woman, five-man jury — sitting for the past two weeks — and Justice D. K. Miller. Justice Miller is expected to charge the jury this morning to prepare them for their deliberations.
Gray, 30, has been in custody since he was charged with second-degree murder and aggravated assault, the morning after Many Shots died in an alley behind Gray’s north Lethbridge home.
During the trial Gray was branded a racist and admitted to being angry about what some aboriginal men had been up to in his neighbourhood.
“His frustration,” said Der, “is with people who are stealing things from him and fighting in front of his house, and a number of those people happen to be natives.”
Gray was angry earlier on the day of the murder because he’d caught two other aboriginal men ransacking his truck and stealing empty bottles from his yard. He was further angered by the slow response of police to his call. The Crown contends that anger likely helped fuel a later attack on Many Shots and his brother-in-law Percy Panther Bone as they walked by his house, and that Gray not only inflicted the fatal blows on Many Shots, but followed Panther Bone as he tried to flee and assaulted him, too.
Panther Bone, who has recovered from his injuries, testified during the trial that he saw Gray assaulting Many Shots, and that Gray chased Panther Bone down the street, pulled him to the ground and punched and kicked him, too. Der dismissed Panther Bone’s testimony, saying he identified the culprit as looking like Gray does now, with very short hair, when Gray had long hair on the night Many Shots died.
Likewise, Der urged the jury to discount the evidence given by Gray’s drinking buddy, Peter Lavoie, who testified he watched Gray attack Many Shots and Panther Bone as they walked along 5 Avenue North just before 10 p.m. that night.
“Before he said anything against Mr. Gray he was threatened (by police) with being charged,” said Der. “With getting life or 25 years in jail. He was threatened with having his children taken away from him and given to social services. Police will say things to people to motivate them to talk.”
Der said Gray watched Many Shots and Panther Bone fight and when Many Shots went down, Panther Bone kicked him before running off. Gray went out to look at Many Shots, found him unconscious and ‘snoring,’ and turned him on his side. Bloody foot prints in sock-feet were found leading from Many Shots to where Panther Bone was found. Neither Panther Bone nor Many Shots were wearing socks that matched the prints, and the socks Gray wore that night were never found.
Der said that after Gray went out to look at Many Shots a second time, he called 911 and, when the ambulance passed by, he called again to direct them to the site.
“If Mr. Gray wanted to murder this man in the alley, he went about it contrary to common sense,” said Der. “It’s not logical that he’s the culprit.”
In his summation, Crown Prosecutor David Labrenz suggested Gray’s dislike of native people gave him a powerful motive. He said Lavoie had no reason to falsely testify against him. And he dismissed the notion that Many Shots and Panther Bone were fighting each other, recalling testimony by a witness who saw the men together before the incident who said they appeared to be getting along well.
Labrenz reminded the jury that Gray told officers at the scene of the crime that he disliked native people and uttered, ‘we do nothing but put up with drunken f-ing Indians.’
Finally, the Crown questioned the credibility of Gray’s testimony as well, pointing out several contradictions in his account of that night.
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