Criminal lawyer questions police error in New Brunswick murder trials

A Fredericton Police Force vehicle in Downtown Fredericton, Friday, Feb. 5, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Stephen MacGillivray

FREDERICTON — The recent collapse of murder trials in New Brunswick due to a police error is both a failure in the justice system and a learning opportunity, says a criminal lawyer who represented a man charged in the two cases.

“We know the system is fallible, but we do not know how often it fails,” said the lawyer, Nathan Gorham, in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“It is important for anyone who has a stake in having a fair justice system to understand where the error occurred, and then understand whether the system has been recalibrated, hopefully, so that it works properly the next time, and this sort of error doesn’t happen again.”

Police in Fredericton admit to making an “error” that has called into question some evidence the Crown was expected to use in the cases.

The municipal police force also initiated an independent review, to be led by an Ontario lawyer, Ian D. Scott, who was the director of Ontario’s police watchdog between 2008 and 2013.

But officials from the police force, government, and an oversight body have not provided details about the error or explained what prompted a Crown attorney to request a stay of proceedings, which ended the trials.

The error had implications for one of the murder investigations, led by Fredericton police, as well as in a separate murder case led by the RCMP.

Five different people were previously charged in the cases, including Gorham’s client who was charged in connection with both of the murders.

The lawyer said the circumstances of the cases have cast a cloud over police actions as well as the entire justice system.

The Canadian Press has reviewed hundreds of pages of evidence, photographs, trial motions, testimony and hours of proceedings from these murder cases at a courthouse in Fredericton.

But many of those details are shrouded in secrecy due to a publication ban.

This means members of the public are left in the dark about how police acted and whether they are taking steps to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again, said Nicole O’Byrne, an associate professor at the University of New Brunswick’s faculty of law. This could also cause the public to lose trust in the police, she explained.

“Given the serious nature of the consequences of the stay of proceedings, people are rightfully questioning what elements of the police investigation went wrong,” she said.

For now, the collapse of the trials has meant that no one was convicted for the murder of 41-year-old Corey Christopher Markey in December 2021, nor for the murder of 27-year-old Brandon Donelan, who was killed a few weeks later in January 2022.

One woman sobbed in the courtroom in late June of this year as Justice Richard Petrie agreed to a motion from Crown attorney Jeremy Erickson, who asked for a stay of proceedings in the cases against the five people charged in the cases.

Fredericton Police Chief Gary Forward has apologized for the error and “the profound effect this will have on the victims’ families and those closest to the investigations.”

Fredericton police turned down a request for an interview with Forward.

“As this matter is now the subject of an independent review, the Fredericton Police Force will not be making further public comment at this time,” they said in an emailed statement.

The New Brunswick Police Commission chair Marc Léger called the independent review a “positive and necessary step.” He also said the commission will monitor the results of the independent review closely.

“If there are any matters identified by the reviewers that may constitute a breach of the Code of Professional Conduct Regulation, they must be brought to the attention of Chief Forward and filed with the New Brunswick Police Commission for appropriate action under the Police Act,” he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Justice Minister and Attorney General Rob McKee also declined to comment on the review.

“As attorney general, I was not directly involved in these cases,” he said in a statement. “However, I have been briefed and accept there is insurmountable evidentiary issues and will not be commenting further.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2025.

Hina Alam, The Canadian Press