Trial jury enters deliberations in Jeanenne Fontaine manslaughter case

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This article was published 17/01/2019 (2072 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jurors are sequestered and deliberating in the case of two men accused of manslaughter in the March 2017 shooting death of 29-year-old Jeanenne Fontaine.

Justice Gerald Chartier gave the jury complex legal instructions Friday. He reviewed the evidence from 10 witness testimonies and explained the positions of the Crown and defence lawyers in a case that drew mentions of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Jeanenne Fontaine was a cousin to 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, whose body was found in the Red River in August 2014. Tina’s accused killer was acquitted after a jury trial in February 2018.

Crown prosecutors say Christopher Matthew Brass and Jason Michael Meilleur should be found guilty of manslaughter because they went to Fontaine’s home at 457 Aberdeen Ave. with a plan to commit robbery over a methamphetamine debt her boyfriend owed to Meilleur’s girlfriend.

Defence lawyers say there’s no evidence of a plan to commit robbery with a firearm. In order to find the two men guilty, jurors need to believe there was a robbery plan and Meilleur and Brass intended to help commit that offence, Chartier told the jury.

The trial took place over the course of two weeks. The jury was sequestered just after 1 p.m. Friday.

Jurors, however, did not hear Chartier reject a request to order the jury to acquit Brass.

Brass’s defence lawyer, Tara Walker, launched a motion for a directed verdict, arguing there was not enough evidence to support the prosecution’s theory Brass was the lookout by the door during the plot to rob 457 Aberdeen Ave., where Fontaine lived with her mother and brother.

Fontaine’s boyfriend, Monte Bull, was selling meth out of the house. However, Walker argued there was no evidence Brass knew about the debt Bull reportedly owed to Meilleur’s girlfriend and no evidence that clearly establishes Brass as one of the three men who showed up at the house the day Fontaine was shot.

“There’s no evidence that Mr. Brass even knew there was a debt. There’s no evidence before the court from any witness that there was any planning of a robbery,” Walker argued in the absence of the jury Jan. 15.

“We suggest that there just is no evidence in this case and the inferences that my learned friends (the Crown prosecutors) are going to ask are so tenuous and weak that, in this case, a directed verdict should be put in place.”

Walker argued a properly instructed jury acting reasonably could not possibly convict Brass and should be instead directed to acquit him.

Chartier disagreed. He decided the jury could consider the evidence from a woman (whose identity is protected under a publication ban) who knew Brass and testified he showed up at her residence looking upset and high and talked about a shooting and a fire. (457 Aberdeen Ave. was badly damaged by fire by the time first responders located Fontaine.)

Fontaine’s brother, Chuck, who was home at the time of the shooting, didn’t identify Brass, but provided a description of a thin, 5-10, “Native” man wearing black-framed glasses. Crown prosecutors argued the description matches Brass.

“In my view, all of this evidence taken together, if believed, could reasonably support an inference of guilt on the element of identity,” Chartier said.

On the morning Fontaine was shot, three men showed up at her house looking for her boyfriend. Chuck Fontaine testified he heard one of them say, “Monte f—ed up.” One of the men, who jurors heard was Mitchell, had a pocket knife in hand when he went through the house looking for Bull, and he later “masked up” and brandished a gun.

The Crown said it was “entirely foreseeable” someone would get hurt as a result of the alleged robbery plan, which it said implicated Meilleur and Brass — even though a third man, Malcolm Mitchell, fired the gun that killed Fontaine.

She was shot in the back of the head before the two-bedroom bungalow was set on fire.

Defence lawyers for both accused have argued only Mitchell is responsible for the homicide and there is no evidence of a robbery plot. During his statement to police, Meilleur told them he, Brass and Mitchell were at the house that day, and he saw Brass give a gun to Mitchell.

He said he didn’t ask the other two men to come with him when he went looking for Fontaine’s boyfriend, there was no plan to rob or hurt anyone, and he was outside when he heard a gunshot.

Jurors can’t use Meilleur’s statement to police as evidence against Brass, and they can’t use testimony from the woman who knew Brass against Meilleur. She testified Brass told her “Jay was supposed to” start the fire.

Jurors didn’t hear Mitchell had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for killing Fontaine. He was sentenced to life in prison after he admitted he pointed the gun at her and it went off while he was trying to steal a necklace from around her neck.

Brass was also sentenced to life in prison for the February 2017 murder of Bryer Prysiazniuk-Settee in Winnipeg.

He and Mitchell were co-accused in the May 2017 killing of 51-year-old Daniel DiPaolo in Regina. Brass pleaded guilty in that case, and is currently ineligible to apply for parole for 40 years.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay