B.C. man sentenced to life for murder wins new trial over ‘intoxication’ defence

Police in New Westminster, B.C., investigate the death of a man who walked into a coffee shop with stab wounds in November 2021. (CTV News)

British Columbia’s highest court has thrown out a murder conviction and ordered a new trial for a man who had been sentenced to life in prison for the fatal stabbing of a 51-year-old man near Vancouver.

The B.C. Court of Appeal on Friday ruled the jurors who convicted Ryan Ross Crossley of second-degree murder were given “confusing and incorrect” instructions by the trial judge regarding Crossley’s defence that he was impaired by drugs during the 2021 slaying.

The trial judge erroneously gave jurors the impression that impairment was only relevant if the accused was so intoxicated that he “lost control of his thoughts and actions” during the crime, Justice Joyce DeWitt-Van Oosten wrote on behalf of the Appeal Court.

Those instructions created “too high of a threshold” for jurors to properly assess whether Crossley’s stated impairment cast reasonable doubt on his intent and culpability in the killing, DeWitt-Van Oosten found.

Gap in surveillance video

Crossley was arrested and charged with second-degree murder hours after the victim, Robert Powshuk, walked into a New Westminster coffee shop and collapsed after suffering multiple stab wounds in November 2021.

At trial, the court heard that Powshuk had been consuming drugs with Crossley and the accused’s brother when an argument broke out between them. Powskuk was stabbed six times during the altercation, which was captured on surveillance video.

The video showed that both Ryan and Curtis Crossley possessed knives during the fight, but a 40-second gap in the video left doubt about the level of Curtis’s involvement.

One knife found at the scene contained Ryan’s DNA on the handle and Powshuk’s DNA on the blade, while the other knife, which Curtis threw into a river after the assault, did not contain any DNA evidence, according to the court.

The doctor who performed the autopsy on the victim testified that either knife could have caused the fatal stab wounds.

Both Crossleys were initially charged with second-degree murder.

But before either brother went to trial, Curtis pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, convincing prosecutors that he kicked Powshuk during the argument, and sprayed him with bear spray, but did not stab him.

Brother accuses brother

Curtis was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison while his brother went to trial, where his defence lawyer argued that the gap in the surveillance video left open the possibility that Curtis also stabbed Powshuk and that those stab wounds were the ones that caused his death.

The jury was not told that Curtis had already pleaded guilty to manslaughter when they were tasked with deciding whether Ryan caused Powshuk’s death and, if so, whether or not he intended to murder the man when he stabbed him.

Crossley’s defence lawyer argued his client was “seriously impaired by drugs” during the altercation, citing video evidence showing him at times “sort of passed out,” and at other times “swaying” and staggering into the street, according to the Appeal Court’s summary of the evidence.

“Police officers testified that when they located the appellant approximately eight and one half hours after the incident, he was ‘on the nod,’” the summary states, referring to Crossley seeming to come in and out of consciousness due to his suspected drug use.

‘Error was not harmless’

The defence lawyer urged the jury to find reasonable doubt as to whether Crossley had the wherewithal to intend to kill or cause life-threatening injuries to Powshuk at the time of the stabbing.

In his final instructions to the jury, the trial judge explained that the onus was instead on the Crown to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defence of intoxication did not apply here, rather than on Crossley’s lawyer to prove his client was too intoxicated to have formed the intent to kill or cause life-threatening injuries.

The jury began its deliberations but soon returned to the courtroom with a question for the judge: How intoxicated does someone have to be before reasonable doubts about their intent come into play?

“Let me just put it this way,” the judge instructed. “You must consider whether the level of intoxication impacted Ryan Crossley’s mind to such an extent that it caused him to lose control of his thoughts and actions.”

The Appeal Court ruled the judge’s interpretation of the intoxication defence was “legally incorrect” and “substantially prejudicial” against the accused’s defence.

“It is the opposite of what the Crown was required to prove,” namely that Crossley had clearly developed the intent to either kill Powshuk or cause bodily harm that he knew was likely to cause his death, DeWitt-Van Oosten wrote.

“The judge’s error was not harmless,” the Appeal Court judge concluded, granting Crossley his appeal. “I would quash the conviction, set aside the jury’s verdict, and order a new trial.”