Jury acquits Nunavut man accused of killing his brother

A Pond Inlet jury deliberated for nine hours Oct. 17 before finding a man not guilty of killing his older brother in 2011.

The re-trial of Ruben Arnakallak, charged with second-degree murder in the death of Esa Arnakallak, wrapped up in Pond Inlet last week after five weeks.

A summary of the trial’s proceedings are contained in an Oct. 22 written statement from Arnakallak’s defence lawyer, Alison Crowe.

Arnakallak’s first trial, in Feb. 2013, ended in a mistrial after one of the jurors revealed that he had personal information about the case, Crowe said.

Crown prosecutors accused Arnakallak of inflicting two fatal stab wounds to the neck of his brother, Crowe’s statement said, after the two men drank heavily and smoked marijuana together on the night of Nov. 24, 2011.

Both the Crown and the defence agreed that Esa died in his home. The issue was where he was stabbed. The Crown alleged Esa was stabbed by his brother and died, later that night, on his couch at home, Crowe’s statement said.

But the defence countered with the theory that another person inflicted the fatal wounds to Esa at his home.

“The largest amount of blood was where Esa was found [dead] on his couch and the floor around the couch, as opposed to lesser amounts at the fight scene,” Crowe’s statement says.

“This tended to show that Esa had in fact received the fatal stab wounds in his home, after he and Ruben had parted company.”

The alternate suspect, named at the trial but not in Crowe’s statement, threatened to kill Esa earlier the same night, Crowe said, and chased another man with a knife “that appeared to be the same as the murder weapon.”

Crowe called an emergency room medical expert during the trial who testified that the neck wounds on Esa would have resulted in heavy bleeding, quickly followed by collapse and death—and were inconsistent with the Crown’s theory that Esa died later that night at his home.

But an expert called by the Crown — the pathologist who performed Esa’s autopsy — believed that the wounds inflicted during the brothers’ fight were consistent with the fatal wounds.

The jury, however, must have found room for reasonable doubt when they settled on a not guilty verdict.

According to the transcript of a voir dire hearing held in Iqaluit prior to the first trial, Arnakallak consistently claimed he had no memory of the events of that night.

Voir dire hearings are held to determine the admissibility of evidence and cannot be reported by media until after a verdict is delivered.

In this case, the Crown sought to admit into evidence statements made by Arnakallak to police shortly after his arrest.

But the defence argued the accused was denied both his right to remain silent and his right to consult further with counsel.

Justice Andrew Mahar, who presided over the December 2012 voir dire, ruled some of those statements admissible but said at a certain point, the police interrogation should have ended and the accused’s repeated requests to return to his cell should have been heeded.

The voir dire transcript quotes from the police statement:

Arnakallak: I thought you said I can go to my cell anytime I want?

Const. MacDonald: Yeah well, you’re under arrest, so you have to listen to the police and I’m the police and right now, we’re gonna talk about what happened between you and your brother.

Arnakallak: I should start lying (?).

MacDonald: No, I don’t want you to lie. I want you to tell the truth.

Arnakallak: I am telling the truth. I’ve been telling the truth.

“The fact that the police initially misled the accused about their willingness to allow him to return to his cell is an important factor in determining the impact that the subsequent change in tactic had on the ability of the accused to exercise his free will,” Mahar said, in a ruling he delivered orally at the hearing.

“The combination of the accused’s emotional state and this tactic, which would have left him with the understanding that the interview was going to continue until he told them what they wanted to hear, render any subsequent comments by the accused involuntary and unreliable.”

The jury in Pond Inlet consisted exclusively of Inuit from the community, Crowe said.

“In a Nunavut community, trial by jury allows the residents of the community to come together to decide some of their community’s most serious criminal trials,” Crowe said.

“It is truly the voice of the community speaking on what most affects its members individually and collectively.”

She also said that Justice Neil Sharkey made a deliberate attempt to slow proceedings, for the benefit of the jury.

“Justice Sharkey’s decision to pace the trial to allow the jurors to absorb the evidence, aside from being an approach more in keeping with Inuit practice, was key to what I believe was a just and considered decision in this trial,” she wrote in an email.