deadmonton - the trial of michael white - december 5th, 2006
Liana White, 29, was stabbed to death July 12th, 2005.
Michael White, now 29, was charged with second-degree murder and offering an indignity to a dead body.
<< december 4th, 2006 | the michael white trial | december 6th, 2006 >>
Closing arguments in the trial of Michael White set the stage for the jury's role in determining the accused wife-killer's fate.
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Defence lawyer Laura Stevens told the court her client doesn't have what it takes to commit a murder and then lie about it.
"I will suggest to you there's no way to conclude he's a sophisticated, educated, cunning sort of person."
Stevens presented her one-hour and ten-minute final argument without the aid of notes.
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At the outset of her address, the lawyer told the court she usually feels nervous at this point in a case. However, speaking on the last day of her client's trial, she said she felt no such nervousness.
Stevens said the Crown failed to establish basic facts and and said their case against him was inconclusive.
She took to task the Crown's forensic evidence that didn't pinpoint the time, place or cause of Liana White's death.
"There is something very wrong with this picture," she said.
Stevens said if White murdered his wife and staged her abduction, he would have done a better job covering his tracks.
The lawyer said the parking lot where Liana's Ford Explorer was found abandoned was wide open and in plain view of nearby homes and the busy Castle Downs YMCA.
Garbage bags of bloody clothing and cleaning supplies were also found in an open field along a busy road.
"There have to be a thousand better places to get ride of evidence than an open field," Stevens said.
"He doesn't dump it somewhere sensible, he just brings it home.
"It doesn't make any sense."
Stevens charged police with becoming fixated on Michael White as their only suspect – based soley on a security tape taken from the rooftop of a bar.
"You can't convict anybody on the strength of that image. It's poor.
"Where is the blood?" Stevens asked the jury, echoing testimony from a U.S. analyst White's defence team used to close their case.
"If she had died in this house and lost the amount of blood they say she did, that place should have lit up like a Christmas tree," she said referring to the Luminol chemical police used.
Regarding White's explanation of a nosebleed causing blood to be present in the couple's bedroom, Stevens suggested "If he is lying, it should have been better than that.
"What if it's true?" she asked of the jury.
Stevens further said the Crown did not establish precisely how, when or where Liana died, and offered that her body may have been brought to where she was found by someone other than White who was under police surveillance at the time.
Stevens acknowledged White's actions were unusual and that his story to police changed later under oath in court. She blamed the discrepancies on Michael White's anguish.
"This is a man trying to make sense of a nightmare," she said.
The defence maintained White had no motive to kill his wife and recounted testimony from friends and family who described the couple as happy and looking forward to having their second child.
“If you took nothing else from [White’s] evidence, I suggest you take the fact he loved his wife,” Stevens said.
“He gained nothing from this. He lost everything.”
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Crown prosecutor Troy Couillard told the jury there was no reasonable doubt Michael White killed his wife.
He said there is no onus on the Crown to provide a motive and the Crown doesn't have to prove the circumstances of Liana's death "with medical precision."
Couillard itemized key items of evidence from the trial's four weeks of proceedings.
He said the bloodstains found throughout the house and in the back of the SUV do not suggest Liana had a nosebleed.
The bloodstains on the bedroom wall and White's clothes in the garbage bag were consistent with a stabbing, not a dripping nosebleed.
"These were not passive bloodstains dripping from a nosebleed," Coulliard said. "These were projected bloodstains.
"One single hit on the nose wouldn't do it. The story of Liana's nosebleed is just incredible. I suggest you reject it."
Couillard said scrapes and bruises on Liana's body suggested she had been dragged across a carpet and down a flight of stairs.
The prosecutor reminded the jury that White had never mentioned the nosebleed to police during numerous and lengthy interviews.
"He tried to come up with an explanation that just doesn't work," Coulliard said. "And now, a year and half later, he has tried to come up with another one."
About statements in the videotaped interviews and White's explanation "I was not in a right state, I was talking gibberish" when he made them, Coulliard painted a different picture.
"You don't see a confused rambling man. You see a man reasoning with a police officer."
With regard to the defence suggestion that Liana and Michael White were a happy couple without any problems, Coulliard offered some sage advice.
"We don't always know what is happening in our neighbours' homes. Domestic violence is a crime that occurs behind closed doors."
Coulliard summarised other elements of the Crown's case.
A security tape from Richard's Pub showed a Ford Explorer like Liana's driving in the direction of the parking lot where it was found.
A man resembling White was seen jogging by in the opposite direction, towards the couple's home, just minutes later.
White's July 13th, 2005 media interviews quoting him saying, "Liana, just stay where you are. I'll come and get you" caused police to tail him to a field where he picked up garbage bags of bloody evidence containing his wife's DNA mixed with his.
He was later part of a search team that found Liana's naked body four days later lying face-down in a ditch outside the area being looked at by police, an area one witness testified White was familiar with.
"It all points to Michael White," said Couillard.
"Is this because it's a tragic series of coincidences?
"It points to him because he's guilty. He killed her, and he meant to do it."
Justice Mary Moreau of Court of Queen's Bench was expected to charge the jury on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006.
The charge offers instructions on the interpretation of evidence, the elements of proof required for the offences facing the accused and how the jury should deliberate according to law.
The seven men and five women of the jury, plus two alternates, were told to bring pajamas and a toothbrush with them as they would be sequestered as soon as Moreau finished her charge.
The trial continued December 6th, 2006
Note:
On October 19th, 2006 Michael White's legal counsel advised the media that statements which appeared in earlier published reports, that a search party led by White found Liana White's body, were not accurate and that Michael White states that he did not lead the search team that found Liana's body.
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