Crown rejects manslaughter plea in Iqaluit murder trial

Crown lawyers, during the first day of a trial Feb. 1, have rejected a Cape Dorset man’s manslaughter plea in the killing of Iqaluit resident Daisy Curley.

Jeffrey Salomonie, now 48, is charged with the first-degree murder of Curley, who was found beaten and lifeless inside her mother’s Iqaluit home on May 24, 2009.

Crown lawyers informed Justice Neil Sharkey, who is presiding over the trial alone, that they will continue to pursue the first-degree murder charge.

“I can advise your honour that the Crown does not accept a guilty plea to the included offense of manslaughter,” prosecutor Doug Garson said.

“Simply, your honour, we expect the evidence that will be before you in the course of this trial will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Salomonie had the requisite intent to commit murder.”

Salomonie entered the courtroom Monday at Nunavut’s Court of Justice in a navy blue prison tracksuit and was repeatedly the target of unbroken stares from members of Curley’s family, who were in the courtroom.

Salomonie, suffering from hearing problems, had difficulty understanding the proceedings. That resulted in a slight delay, as clerks adjusted the audio equipment.

Lawyers submitted for evidence an agreed statement of facts that details the events leading up to Curley’s death.

“The killing has been admitted and the issue before me is whether or not, at the time the killing took place, Mr. Salomonie had the requisite intent to kill as required by the Criminal Code,” Sharkey said.

According to the statement, Salomonie, then a resident of Cape Dorset, flew to Iqaluit on May 18, 2009 to attend a medical appointment.

The following evening, he met friends at Iqaluit’s Storehouse Bar, adjacent to the Frobisher Inn where he was staying.

Mutual friends introduced Salomonie to Curley and the pair spent the remainder of the bar’s operating hours talking in private and consuming “a number of beers,” read the statement.

The two then went upstairs to Salomonie’s hotel room, where they continued to drink from a bottle of vodka he had acquired.

At some point, the pair took a taxi to Curley’s residence in Iqaluit, where they continued to drink the vodka.

It was at this residence, in the early morning hours of May 20, 2009, that Salomonie “caused Ms. Curley’s death by striking her face and head repeatedly with his fists, as well as striking her back and torso with a wooden hockey stick that was inside the residence,” according to the statement.

Curley’s family members — concerned they hadn’t heard from her in days — gained entry to her home and found her half naked body in the living room May 24, 2009.

During their investigation of the crime scene, RCMP officers lifted a fingerprint from the bottle of vodka found at the residence and positively matched it to Salomonie.

“I observed she had several blunt force injuries, mostly lacerations and bruises centered around the head,” forensic investigator Dr. Jeffrey Joseph Tanguay testified Feb. 1.

Tanguay performed the post-mortem autopsy on Curley in 2009 while working for Ontario’s forensic pathology team in Toronto.

The nature of the wounds, Tanguay testified, would not have resulted in instantaneous death, but he confirmed that bleeding and blood loss from the head trauma was “the major mechanism of death.”

Bruising found on the back of Curley’s left hand might also be classified as a defensive wound as she protected her head or torso, he stated.

DNA matching Salomonie was found by forensic investigators on Curley’s body, indicating sexual intercourse, but it’s unclear if the intercourse occurred before or after the attack.

Under cross-examination from defense lawyer James Morton, Tanguay admitted he could not definitively identify the type of weapon used to produce the bruising and lacerations found on the body.

Tanguay also admitted it’s possible that some of the bruising on Curley’s torso and back may have come from a prior injury.

And Tanguay was unable to elaborate on the extent of Salomonie and Curley’s inebriation on the night of the murder — only that alcohol was present in Curley’s body at the time of the post-mortem.

The key for the defense moving forward, Morton told Nunatsiaq News, will be to determine the level of Salomonie’s drunkenness at the time of the attack to establish the intent required for a first-degree murder charge.

The trial is expected to continue through the rest of the week. Salomonie is scheduled to testify in his defence Feb. 2.