The dismissal of a juror was not sufficient grounds for a judge to overturn the conviction of a murderer.
The B.C. Court of Appeal turned down an appeal on Friday, refusing to order a new trial for a Quesnel man who was sentenced to life without possibility of parole for the offence.
Michael Eric Cunningham was issued the sentence in March 2008 for the May 2006 stabbing death of Tyrone Joseph Clement during an altercation in Lebourdais Park in the town of 10,000 people 116 kilometres south of Prince George.
During the trial held the month before, the judge dismissed a juror after she expressed concern about seeing a van with an unknown driver parked near her home.
While heading off to court, the juror said, she noticed a dark blue van driven by a First Nations man on the short road where she lived, which struck her as odd.
She reported it to the sheriffs when she arrived at the courthouse, and when she returned home, noticed a box of garbage on the roadside where the van had been parked. She asked a neighbour to meet her daughter at the school bus and when they walked back down the woman's driveway, he noticed two bullet casings which he picked up and gave to her.
As a result, the juror asked that she be released from her duties but after talking to police she withdrew her request when court reconvened following the weekend break.
However, after interviewing the juror and hearing arguments from Crown and defence counsel, the judge found grounds to dismiss the juror but no reason to dismiss the entire jury as tainted.
In the appeal, Cunningham's counsel argued the judge did not conduct a sufficient inquiry to determine if the rest of the jury's impartiality was tainted and erred in not ordering a disclosure of the police records on the matter.
However, in a written judgment released last week, Justice Risa Levine found the judge did go far enough when she talked to police.
Appeal court justices Pamela Kirkpatrick and Kathryn Neilson concurred with Levine's finding.
