http://thestarphoenix.com/opinion/columnists/oland-murder-conviction-less-than-convincing
Published on: January 5, 2016 | Last Updated: January 5, 2016 6:57 AM CST
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It usually is unwise to second-guess a jury verdict, but sometimes you have to wonder: What could they have been thinking?
Such is the case with the second-degree murder conviction in St. John, N.B. of Dennis Oland, 47, descendant of a family famous in the province for establishing Moosehead Beer.
Jury or not, the verdict does not make sense.
(here is part of the article)
Crime-scene carnage, according to uncontested expert evidence, would have left the perpetrator bespattered in blood. And yet Dennis when he left the meeting with his father appeared typically neat and tidy on security cameras and to witnesses. Police found no blood in the car he drove away from the meeting or on a portfolio or bag he had with him. The pants and shoes he wore likewise were devoid of blood.
Four nearly microscopic specks of the father’s blood were found on a sport jacket Dennis wore that day, but the father was a tactile man who chewed his cuticles and had suffered from a bleeding rash on his scalp. Four specks of transferred blood were more consistent with that explanation that with what amounts to an axe murder. Police blundering rendered suspect even those tiny flecks of evidence. The jacket had been handled when it was taken from Dennis Oland’s closet and stuffed into a paper bag by an officer without sterile gloves.
Prosecutors did not even try to explain how Dennis could have left the crime scene without blood all over him. How can they convict a guy of murder when they can’t explain how he did it?
If Dennis is guilty, he must have brought the weapon with him, there being no reason to believe his father kept a drywall hammer lying around his office. He must also have brought a change of similar clothing or some kind of coveralls that he slipped on, perhaps in the office bathroom, and then disposed of later. Either that, or he undressed in the bathroom, murdered his father and then put his clothes back on. How else could he have hacked a man to death with a drywall hammer without getting blood on his shoes, his pants and more than four minute specks on his jacket? To clean the crime scene took days for a disaster restoration team.
What usually makes the difference between first- and second-degree murder is planning. We are convinced Dennis murdered his father, jurors seem to be saying, but we’re not convinced he planned it. Except, if he did murder his father, he must have planned it. To come away with his clothes all but unblemished from a murder scene, where blood was liberally sprayed onto everything else in sight, takes some kind of planning. That would make him guilty of first-degree murder, not second-degree, as the jury somehow found.
That investigating police now themselves are being investigated by New Brunswick’s police commission for their lamentable handling of the case is not reassuring. Among other blunders, a back door to the office opening onto a back alley was left unlocked and unattended by police for days after the murder. By then they had used the door and smeared any fingerprints that might have been on it. Police conceded at trial that the back door was a more likely escape route for the killer than the front door that opened onto a busy street and through which Dennis had departed.
That was just the start of it. Almost unbelievably, attending police for two days used an office bathroom where the killer might have washed before it was examined, fruitlessly, for forensic evidence. Even worse, after contamination of evidence became an issue, an investigating officer testified that he was urged by a senior officer not to reveal that the senior officer had been unnecessarily present at the crime scene.
I am not saying Dennis Oland is innocent, only that his conviction leaves much to be desired. An appeal is expected.
lmacpherson@postmedia.com
