Trial reveals details of Davidee Nowdlak’s death

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

An Iqaluit teenager may have been too drunk to know what he was doing when he beat a former city councillor into a coma two years ago, a Nunavut court heard this week.

Davidee Nowdlak, a 47-year-old former municipal councillor and legal aid worker, died in Baffin Regional Hospital in August, 2002, after a young man punched him in the head less than a month earlier, knocking him out.

Crown lawyers say the attacker also kicked Nowdlak several times in the head, and later beat the unconscious man with a glass Coke bottle while he lay motionless on the dirt road.

The 18-year-old man appeared before a judge in Iqaluit on Aug. 30 for the second half of his murder trial, which began in June.

The teen, who is being tried as a young offender and cannot be identified, faces second-degree murder charges in Nowdlak’s death.

Sitting between his two lawyers, the tanned teen wore a wrinkled shirt and tie, and sometimes a suit jacket, as he fiddled with a black pen and tore bits of styrofoam from a cup.

If convicted of murder or manslaughter, the stocky, square-faced man will likely serve his sentence in Iqaluit’s youth detention centre, instead of a federal adult prison in the South.

Lawyers argued in court this week about whether a teen with the same weight and drinking experience as the accused would have been able to form the intention to kill, after downing as many as eight beers and about 10 shots of vodka in two hours.

During the trial, medical experts said the accused teen would have been between three and five times above the legal driving limit for blood-alcohol content, if he drank that much booze. On an empty stomach, they said, this amount of alcohol would be enough to kill the person drinking it.

While questioning those witnesses, defence lawyer Michael Chandler highlighted evidence suggesting that the booze would have put the attacker in a state of confusion that made him moody and unable to make “appropriate” decisions.

Defence witness Bruce Miller, an expert on the effects of alcohol, said that someone who drank that much would be dizzy, clumsy, and have a hard time focusing.

Miller added that if someone like the accused teen drank that amount of booze, he would have blackouts.

“He didn’t have the memory to begin with,” Miller said. “It’s lost.”

But Crown attorney Michael Jones claimed the accused teenager would have been able to form the intent to kill, or cause injuries that would lead to death.

The accused man bowed his head as Jones described a scenario, related to Nowdlak’s deadly beating.

Jones said the attacker was an “opportunistic binge drinker” someone who drinks a lot whenever they get the chance, about twice a month for two years.

According to Jones’ description, Nowdlak’s drunken attacker first started yelling at him, around 2:15 a.m. on July 13, 2002, in Iqaluit’s 300-block, before throwing the punch that knocked him out. Jones said the attacker was able to step back and kick Nowdlak several times in the head.

Jones also said the attacker then told bystanders why he was beating the defenceless man.

The drunken attacker was angry with his victim because he thought the man lying on the ground had stolen a carving from his grandfather, Jones said.

A neighbour tried to restrain the attacker, Jones added, but then left to call an ambulance. He said the caller saw the attacker thumping the victim with a glass Coke bottle, which has been submitted as evidence in the trial.

Jones argued that those actions, plus reports that the youth shouted at bystanders for “ratting him out,” then hid behind a nearby building and watched the police and ambulance take the unconscious man away, all show that he knew what he was doing.

“The best indication we have of intent is action,” Jones told the court. “If someone kicks someone in the head, they intend to kick them in the head.”

Neither side has submitted evidence of what the accused teen’s blood alcohol level was when he encountered Nowdlak on the night of the beating.

Justice Earl Johnson will listen to closing arguments from both sides this afternoon, but has not indicated how long his verdict will take.

Nunatsiaq News asked the accused teen while he wandered the courthouse halls on a trial break whether he had anything to say to Nowdlak’s family, including his adult daughter, but the young man declined to comment and walked away.

Crown lawyers lost an appeal earlier this year to have the teen tried as an adult, arguing that he was only two months shy of his 18th birthday when the beating occurred.