Nunavut appeal court panel upholds Iqaluit rape-murder conviction

Warning: This story contains details that some readers may find disturbing.

Jeffrey Salomonie of Cape Dorset, convicted in 2016 for the rape and murder of Daisy Curley in Iqaluit in 2009, has lost his appeal of that conviction.

That means Salomonie will continue serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, with a mandatory 25-year period of parole ineligibility

“We won’t have to call on the Crown for submissions. This appeal is dismissed. We will release our reasons at a later date,” Justice Frans Slatter said after a brief deliberation by a panel of three judges at the Nunavut Court of Appeal in Iqaluit on Feb. 11.

Salomonie’s lawyer, Scott Cowan, presented arguments for the appeal for over an hour before Slatter, Justice Kevin Feehan and Justice Jolaine Antonio, all visiting from the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench.

Cowan’s arguments focused on the premise that Salomonie, who was drunk at time he committed the murder, had blacked out during the killing and therefore could not be held criminally responsible.

In an agreed statement of facts, Salomonie admitted that he killed Curley.

Salomonie, 52, testified at trial that he remembered many events leading up to and after the beating, but not the beating itself.

But the appeal judges agreed with Chief Justice Neil Sharkey, Salomonie’s trial judge, who found Salomonie’s lack of memory not credible.

“You’re asking us to accept that Salomonie blacked out at just the right moment,” Antonio said to Cowan.

Police arrested Salomonie in 2011, two years after he went to Curley’s home in the Happy Valley neighbourhood.

There, Salomonie beat Curley with a hockey stick, causing 17 lacerations to her scalp and face, before sexually assaulting her, Sharkey found after Salomonie’s 2016 trial.

This was “basically an unresisted assault,” as Curley only had one defensive wound on her hand, Sharkey said.

Salomonie then got on a plane for Cape Dorset. Curley’s brother found her body inside the home five days later, according to testimony at the trial.

At Salomonie’s sentencing, Curley’s family remembered her as a loving, sincere person.

Cowan said Salomonie’s attack was senseless and chaotic, but Sharkey was wrong to conclude that Salomonie knew what he was doing during the attack.

That’s because Sharkey made his own conclusions about alcohol’s effect on Salomonie without calling evidence, the lawyer said.

“It is clear that the person who inflicted these injuries did so with the presence of mind to target the most vulnerable part of her body [her head] where he could do the most damage,” Sharkey said in his decision.

Cowan argued it was a leap for Sharkey to conclude that the types of injuries Salomonie inflicted showed Salomonie knew what he was doing.

The effects of alcohol follow a curve: as you drink more, you remember less, until you black out, and then memories return after the blackout. This is well-documented and researched, Cowan said in his failed argument.

Sharkey used a common-sense understanding of alcohol’s effects to reject Salomonie’s selective memory argument, the appeal judges found.

The appeal panel also rejected Cowan’s argument that sex was consensual and occurred before the beating.

That means that Salomonie committed first-degree murder, which is a conviction usually reserved for a pre-planned homicide. Second-degree murder is a homicide that occurs more spontaneously, such as in Curley’s death.

But when murder occurs at the same time as another violent offence, such as sexual assault, the conviction is automatically raised to first-degree murder, according to Canada’s Criminal Code.

Cowan also argued that there was not enough evidence to prove that the sex was nonconsensual.

But the crime scene photographs and blood-splatter evidence left no doubt in Sharkey’s mind at trial.

“Any reasonable person who looks at this photo can come but to only one conclusion … ‘this woman has been beaten and sexually manhandled,’” Sharkey said.

Cowan argued that each piece of blood-spatter evidence could support a different conclusion.

But judges must look at the total evidence to come to a conclusion, instead of explaining each individual piece of evidence on its own, Justice Antonio said.

Salomonie will continue serving a life sentence in a federal penitentiary for his first-degree murder conviction. He won’t be eligible to apply for parole until 2036.