Verdict for Igloolik man charged with murder delayed to Aug. 3
Jerry Ulayuruluk charged in 2018 after death of woman who had been assaulted
Nunavut Judge Christian Lyons has rescheduled the decision for a second-degree murder charge against Jerry Ulayuruluk to Aug. 3. (File photo)
A verdict in the trial of Jerry Ulayuruluk, charged with one count of second-degree murder, won’t be delivered until Aug. 3.
Judge Christian Lyons told lawyers at the Nunavut Court of Justice in Iqaluit Tuesday, where the verdict was expected to be delivered, that he needed more time. Lyons didn’t give any further reasoning for the delay.
Ulayuruluk was arrested in 2018 after RCMP in Igloolik responded to a report of a woman who had been assaulted at a local residence. She was taken to the local health centre, where she died from her injuries on Oct. 26, 2018.
Ulayuruluk, who was 43 at the time, has been held in custody at the Makigiarvik unit of the Iqaluit jail since December 2018.
5 years to get to trial? That’s not right. What happened to the right to a fair and speedy trial?
Considering what as done, I really don’t care about the wait.
My general experience with the NCJ is that the judges are often very very slow in providing written decisions. Outside of the criminal context they issue very few judgments in writing also. If there is someone out there in Justice looking to give a summer student a job they can compare the hearing dates to the written decision dates on CanLii and provide some data and analysis that might back up my experience.
You’re mostly right.
A lot of it comes down to ineffective lawyers and difficulty in scheduling. This is more prevalent in the Civil division because they have a much higher percentage of lawyers who practice almost entirely outside the territory. It may have changed since we left but I know that civil court workers spend a lot of time trying to help southern lawyers operate in Nunavut.
But if it’s Justice Lyons, I knew him as a defense lawyer, then I’m inclined to assume there is a good enough reason for the delay.