Twice-convicted Nunavut spouse killer appeals second trial verdict

Adrian van Eindhoven is escorted to an RCMP vehicle on Oct. 15, 2013, moments after a jury at the Nunavut Court of Justice in Iqaluit convicted him of second degree murder. (FILE PHOTO)

Adrian van Eindhoven, convicted in 2013 of second-degree murder for the 2004 stabbing death of his young wife in Rankin Inlet, appeared via teleconference in an Iqaluit courtroom Nov. 10 to appeal that conviction.

Leanee Irkootee, then 22, died in Rankin Inlet April 23, 2004 of a single stab wound to her heart, inflicted by a steaknknife.

She had also been severely beaten in the hours leading up to her death.

In documents filed with the court in March 2014, van Eindhoven said the judge who presided over his Iqaluit trial in 2013, Justice Earl Johnson, made two mistakes in instructing the jury just before the jury retired to deliberate a verdict.

“The judge erred by not telling the jurors immediately and forcefully… to ignore the majority of the Crown [prosecutor’s] closing argument, which was chock full of the Crown’s own opinions and interpretations of the evidence,” those court documents say.

Just before the jury retired to deliberate on Oct. 15, 2013, Johnson did instruct them to ignore parts of the Crown’s final arguments for being opinion rather than fact.

But in his appeal, van Eindhoven is asking the court to determine whether the judge’s instructions were “forceful” enough.

Secondly, van Eindhoven said in court documents that “the judge erred by waiting till after the long weekend to instruct the jurors to ignore the majority of the Crown’s closing arguments.”

And after the delay, the judge’s instructions to ignore parts of the Crown’s arguments weren’t “forceful” or “serious” enough, van Eindhoven claims.

Van Eindhoven appeared at the Nunavut Court of Appeal Nov. 10, wearing a hunter-green button-up shirt, a small white rectangle showing his inmate identity number, as he sat in an office chair at the maximum security Millhaven Institution in Bath, Ont.

Until recently, van Eindhoven has no had legal representation for his appeal, but the Court of Appeal, presided over by Justice Robert Kilpatrick, heard that Van Eindhoven now has two court-appointed lawyers: Daniel Santoro and Rob Nuttal.

This is the second time that van Eindhoven has appealed a conviction of second-degree murder and life sentence in connection with Irkootee’s 2004 death.

In 2007, a jury in Rankin Inlet found van Eindhoven guilty of killing his spouse after inflicting a savage beating on her.

But that conviction was overturned on appeal and van Eindhoven’s charge was dealt with at a second trial in 2013, when a jury again convicted him of second degree murder.

Now that van Eindhoven has legal representation, Kilpatrick gave defence lawyers until Jan. 8, 2016 to file a document called a “factum,” outlining the facts of the appeal from the defence’s perspective.

The Crown then has 30 days to file their own factum.

Kilpatrick scheduled to address van Eindhoven’s appeal again on March 9, 2016 in hopes of setting a future date for a hearing.