Lawyers for Winnipeg man accused of killing 4 women argue media coverage has tainted jury

The majority of the people selected to start hearing evidence in the trial of a man accused of murdering four women in Winnipeg shouldn't be allowed to serve on the jury because they admitted they'd heard about the case before, an expert called by the accused's defence team testified on Tuesday.

Jeremy Skibicki's lawyers are pushing for his case to be heard instead by a judge alone, over concerns about the possible effects of pretrial publicity on the 12 jurors and two alternates selected last week.

"Once you've been exposed to pretrial publicity, you now take information in during trial in a manner that's different than you would have if you hadn't been exposed to it. You will not be aware of this process, because it's unconscious," Christine Ruva, a U.S.-based psychologist and expert on the effects of pretrial publicity, told court via video conference.

"It isn't necessarily that jurors are wilfully disobeying instructions. It's because of these cognitive mechanisms — even if they want to be a good juror, they may be unable to do so because of exposure to this information."

It's the second motion the defence has made to stop the trial from being decided by a jury, after Manitoba Court of King's Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal rejected a similar motion earlier this year.

Jurors have not yet appeared in court. They are expected to start hearing evidence on Wednesday, May 8.

Skibicki, 37, was again brought into court with his ankles shackled and sat silently in the courtroom Tuesday as Ruva testified. 

He has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in the 2022 deaths of three First Nations women — Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26, and Rebecca Contois, 24 — and a fourth unidentified woman, who has been given the name Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, by community members.

Roughly two years ago, in mid-May, partial human remains later identified as belonging to Contois were discovered in a garbage bin near a Winnipeg apartment building. The following month, police recovered more of her remains from the Brady Road landfill in south Winnipeg.

Police said their investigation determined the three other women had been killed between March and May 2022 — before Contois died. Myran's and Harris's remains are believed to be in the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg, according to police.

They have said they believe Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe was Indigenous and in her mid-20s, but the location of her remains is unknown.

7 of 12 jurors had heard of case

Ruva said research suggests exposure to negative pretrial publicity about an accused person leads to a better chance that person will be found guilty by a jury — and that the more of those stories a juror has seen, the more biased they'll be.

Of the 12 jurors picked to decide Skibicki's case last Thursday, seven said they'd heard something about the case before coming to court that day. One of the two alternates chosen for the jury said they'd heard about the case.

But beyond answering yes or no questions that included whether they had heard anything about the case, potential jurors were not asked how much coverage or what specific information they'd seen.

While jurors were given detailed instructions that included forbidding them from considering facts outside of what's presented in court during the trial — including media coverage — Ruva said that's not sufficient to ensure impartiality.

She also pointed out that hundreds of stories have been published about Skibicki's case since he was charged, many of which had what she called emotional headlines that used terms like "alleged serial killer," mentioned the accused's history of domestic violence or covered events like vigils for the women he's accused of killing.

The defence motion turns largely on the results of a public opinion poll commissioned in February by Legal Aid Manitoba, where Skibicki's lawyers work. Ruva testified that she worked with Skibicki's defence team to create the questions asked on that poll.

The Mainstreet Research poll, which was submitted as an exhibit during the hearing and then released to media on Tuesday, found 55 per cent of respondents recognized Skibicki by name, while 90 per cent had heard about a Winnipeg man who had been charged in the deaths of four women, some of whose remains are believed to be in a local landfill.

Ninety-five per cent of respondents had either a strong or somewhat negative opinion of Skibicki, while 81 per cent said they believe he is guilty.

When asked whether they believed the women's deaths were motivated by race, 62 per cent said they believed that was either likely or extremely likely.

The poll was conducted using live agent and text message recruitment between Feb. 12 and Feb. 15, 2024, interviewing 906 Manitobans. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. 

Court heard on Monday from Quito Maggi, the president of Mainstreet Research, who testified he's confident the poll his firm conducted used a sample representative of both Winnipeg and Manitoba.

Prosecutor challenges poll questions

Prosecutors continued to try to poke holes in the defence's motion, questioning the relevance of Ruva's testimony because it's based on research focused on the legal system in the United States.

That means she would have "no idea" if Canadian jurors would have similar biases because of differences in how juries are selected and how trials are reported on between the two countries, Crown attorney Christian Vanderhooft said.

Vanderhooft also challenged the poll's findings because of how some of its questions were worded — including one about whether people had a positive or negative view of Skibicki, which described him as "the man charged with the deaths of four women" after providing the details that some of the women's remains are believed to be in a landfill.

"It would be odd, don't you think, for people to have a positive opinion of that?" Vanderhooft asked.

"That question is designed to elicit the response that people have a negative view of that person. Because very few people are likely to say they have a positive view of someone being charged with killing four people."

The poll also asked questions about whether people believed the women's deaths were motivated by race and how they would feel about Skibicki being found not criminally responsible if it's proven he committed the offences — questions Ruva testified she and Skibicki's defence team tried to "hide" with other "filler" questions about various possible motivations and defences, because it was those answers they were truly interested in.

Vanderhooft also challenged Ruva's suggestions that extensive media coverage of a case makes it difficult to find an impartial jury, pointing to the trial of Raymond Cormier, who was acquitted in 2018 by a jury in the death of Tina Fontaine, a 15-year-old Indigenous girl who was found dead in the Red River in Winnipeg in 2014.

Another poll question, which asked whether respondents agreed that Skibicki's social media presence suggests he's racist, does nothing to uncover potential jurors' biases, the prosecutor argued.

"If the individual on his social media unabashedly declares that he's a white supremacist, then his social media suggests that he is a racist person," Vanderhooft said.

"That doesn't say anything about the bias of a juror. It just means that they saw him saying he's a racist, so they say, 'Yeah, it's suggested he's a racist.'"

The hearing continues before Chief Justice Joyal on Wednesday.