New trial ordered for woman who pushed teen into C-Train
A woman convicted last year of pushing a Calgary teen into the path of a C-Train to his death is getting a new trial.
The Alberta Court of Appeal said that Natalie Pasqua, 28, received an unfair trial due to a combination of errors made by the trial judge.
Pasqua was convicted of second-degree murder in February in the death of Gage Prevost, 17. He died instantly of massive internal injuries when he fell between two C-Train cars arriving at the Eighth Street S.W. LRT station on Aug. 1, 2007.
"The trial judge erred in admitting the rebuttal evidence of the detective. It was collateral, prejudicial and incorrect," Justices Marina Paperny, Patricia Rowbotham and Keith Ritter said in a written decision released Monday.
"The error was compounded by the trial judge's refusal to admit the appellant's statements to the police. We conclude that, read as a whole, the instructions to the jury were unfair and unbalanced, and in particular, failed to adequately link the evidence to the appellant's main defence that this was an accident.
"The combination of errors is serious and resulted in an unfair trial. This was a miscarriage of justice which cannot be saved by [a section] of the Criminal Code."
The trial in 2008 heard that Pasqua and Prevost were arguing about a $10 drug deal when the teen pushed her onto the tracks. She climbed back onto the platform and the fight continued in front of rush-hour commuters.
Accused told court fatal shove was accident
Both jostled each other against a train that was just arriving, before Prevost fell between two cars and died.
In February 2008, Court of Queen's Bench Justice John Rooke sentenced Pasqua to life in prison with no chance of parole for 12 years.
Pasqua's lawyer Christopher Nowlin, who filed for a new trial in May, argued that the trial judge did not tell the jury that Prevost started the fight by pushing Pasqua first. He said relevant evidence was not heard at the trial, and that Rooke's lengthy instructions to the jury were not balanced.
Crown prosecutor Brian Graff argued that the judge's charge to the jury was appropriate and the second-degree murder verdict should stand.
Pasqua told the court the deadly shoving match was an accident and that she never intended to kill the teen. She said she was a cocaine addict but was sober at the time of the incident.