A jury was urged to find Jesse Norman Sweder not guilty of murdering Peter John Letendre nearly seven years ago, as a trial that has lasted 10 weeks entered the closing argument stage on Monday.
Sweder took credit for the killing while talking in a Fort St. John bar to an undercover police officer posing as a full-patch biker, but during the trial the court heard Sweder did so as an act of bravado and self aggrandizing, not because he actually pulled the trigger.
Letendre was found shot to death during the early morning hours of Dec. 11, 2004 outside Victoria Towers, killed with four shots to the back from a nine-millimetre semi-automatic pistol.
It's the second trial Sweder has faced on the matter after the previous one, held 18 months ago, ended in a hung jury.
Defence lawyer Jim Heller reminded the jury they must conclude beyond reasonable doubt that Sweder committed the act to find him guilty and asserted the evidence Crown prosecution has presented, combined with testimony of witnesses called on Sweder's behalf, shows otherwise.
Heller cast doubt about the description of Sweder given by witnesses who put the accused at the scene and pointed to testimony from six other witnesses indicating two others well known in the Prince George drug world also took credit for Letendre's murder.
"That's amazing," Heller said.
Five of those six witnesses were found by police and one was found in contempt of court three times and given increasing jail sentences after refusing to testify during the first trial over concern about the consequences of being a witness, Heller reminded the jury.
"People falsely confess to the most heinous things," Heller said. "Hard for us to appreciate in our lives that someone is going to walk around [saying they committed the murder] and that they're going to get some sort of credit.
"But we know that it's true. Everyone couldn't have pulled the trigger on Pete, it's just not possible."
Heller also noted that while others heard four shots, Sweder did not provide a count to the officer.
"Why doesn't he have a number?" Heller asked.
And Heller dismissed testimony of two key witnesses identified as being at the scene as coming from people who cannot be trusted in terms of their accounts of the events during the time in question.
He noted that the one witness admitted he was an enforcer who once cut off the finger of someone who owed a $35 debt and wore it on a string around his neck for a time and that the other had military training.
Both characterizations cast doubt about Sweder's claim to the undercover officer that he shot Letendre because the two others "jammed" as inconsistent.
He labeled an assertion that Sweder was motivated by threats to his family for shooting Letendre as "vague" and suggested Letendre was killed because of ties to the murder of Melanie Dawn Brown, found dead in her apartment in the 400 block of Ogilvie three days before.
Heller's closing arguments continue this morning.
