A B.C. Supreme Court jury has convicted a woman of manslaughter in the fatal stabbing of a 29-year-old man in Vancouver’s Yaletown neighbourhood in the summer of 2022.
Lindsay Scott was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Justin Mohrman as he was walking near Smithe and Homer streets around 8:30 a.m. on July 11, 2022 when he was stabbed.
Scott pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Speaking to the eight-woman, four-man jury before it began deliberations before noon April 15, Justice Frits Verhoeven said they had to make a decision between second-degree murder or the lesser included charge of manslaughter.
What the decision came down to, the judge said, was whether or not Crown prosecutor Brendan McCabe had proven Scott intended to kill Mohrman.
If intent was not proven, then the verdict would be manslaughter, Verhoeven said.
A jury does not give reasons for its verdict.
As the female foreperson announced the verdict on April 16, Scott leaned her hands on the prisoner's dock wall, with defence lawyer John Turner patting her back.
Verhoeven thanked the jury for their service, calling it an important civic duty and a "heavy and difficult responsibility."
The case
On April 7, McCabe told the jury and Verhoeven Scott admitted “she did in fact inflict the fatal stab wound.”
Further, he said, the knife belonged to Mohrman and that his blood was on the blade and Scott’s DNA was on the handle.
The two main issues before the court, McCabe said, is whether she intended to kill Mohrman or if she recklessly intended to cause him bodily harm knowing it was likely to cause his death.
Witness Scott Lethbridge testified April 8 that he was sitting outside the Vancouver Public Library main branch when a woman approached and sat down next to him.
“She said she stabbed somebody in the heart,” Lethbridge told the court.
He said the woman also talked about “14 dead babies.”
There was discussion about Lethbridge’s statement to police that the woman had asked for money to buy opiates. He later adopted those statements under questioning from defence lawyer John Turner.
Lethbridge described the woman as nervous and said he gave her $20 so she would go away.
“She started running,” Lethbridge said. “She pulled her pants down. That’s when the city police arrested her.”
Verhoeven said Scott’s testimony included her not remembering much of the events of the morning in question. He said she recalled perhaps having done drugs earlier in the day, and that she had at times used fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine.
"She said she believed she was stabbing Mohrman in the shoulder," Verhoeven said.
Verhoeven did address the issue of a person being found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder in a crime but said it was not an issue in the case before the jury.
Case overview
McCabe gave an overview of the case before calling his first witness.
That began with a number of admissions of fact that do not have to be proven in court, including the admission Scott stabbed Mohrman, the knife, the blood and the DNA.
McCabe also told the court Scott yelled at and attacked another woman before the stabbing. That woman testified to those events.
It was shortly after that the woman approached Lethbridge.
Then, video showed a woman approaching Homer and Georgia streets. McCabe said Scott then exposed her buttocks and mooned approaching police.
Vancouver Police Department (VPD) Const. Gary Athwal was one of those officers.
He said Scott was uttering gibberish and yelling and screaming as she was taken into custody. He suspected she could have had some mental health issues at the time.
“She was not really understanding,” he said. “Miss Scott was looking through me of instead of at me.”
Under questioning from McCabe, Lethbridge, a volunteer at an addiction rehab facility, said he believed the woman was either under the influence of alcohol or drugs or had a mental illness.
Dates will now be set for sentencing.
