‘Not Guilty’ Verdict In Murder Of Indigenous Man Draws National Criticism In Canada

On Friday, February 9, a 12-person jury in Battleford, Saskatchewan found 56-year-old Gerald Stanley ‘not guilty’ of killing 22-year-old Coulten Boushie, an Indigenous person from the Red Pheasant Nation. The decision has ignited outrage from First Nations communities across Canada, who took to social media to condemn the verdict and demonstrated in multiple cities over the weekend. It serves as a reminder of the Canadian colonial genocide of Indigenous peoples, and its lasting legacy on the country’s criminal justice system.

Boushie had been swimming and drinking with friends on August 9, 2017, the day he was killed. Evidence presented at the trial alleged that the group had tried unsuccessfully to steal a car on another farm after their SUV had a flat tire. Next, Boushie and his friends had driven onto Stanley’s property with the intent to steal another vehicle, according to Stanley’s lawyers. The ensuing altercation involved the group of Indigenous men, Stanley, his wife, and his son. It resulted in Boushie’s death from a point-blank gunshot wound to the back of his head, fired from Stanley’s pistol. Boushie died without exiting the vehicle.

At the trial, Stanley testified that he had fired two warning shots into the air before struggling to turn off the car Boushie was driving with the pistol still in his hand. Doing this, Stanley mistakenly fired the gun again, killing Boushie, he told the jury. One of his lawyers blamed the third shot on “hang fire,” the delay between when a bullet is fired to when it leaves the gun. However, experts testified that this delay is rare and very short—less than one second.

Friday’s ‘not guilty’ verdict was met with cries of “murderer” in the courtroom. Boushie’s family and his lawyers cited problems with the trial, illustrative of larger discrimination against Indigenous people in Canada’s judicial system. Chris Murphy, one of the family’s lawyers, said that a junior constable was first put in charge of the investigation, no forensic experts were called to the scene, and Boushie’s car was left uncovered in the rain for two days, washing away evidence.

Shree Paradkar, a columnist for the Toronto Star, wrote on Saturday that lawyers used “peremptory challenges,” the ability to reject potential jurors without giving a reason, to reject every Indigenous person who showed up. “Battleford, Sask., might as well be America from the 1950s,” she wrote, comparing the demand for Indigenous civil rights to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.

At a press conference in North Battleford hours after the verdict, Bobby Cameron, the Chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, criticized the trial. “In this day and age, when someone can get away with killing somebody, when someone can get away with saying, ‘I accidentally walked to the storage shed, I accidentally grabbed a gun out of the storage box and I accidentally walked back to the car and then I accidentally raised my arm in level with the late Colten Boushie’s head, then my finger accidentally pushed the trigger’—what a bunch of garbage,” he said.

Boushie’s mother, Debbie Baptiste, led a crowd of 100 protestors in her hometown over the weekend. “White people—they run the court system. Enough. We’re going to fight back,” she told those gathered, some holding ‘Indigenous Lives Matter’ signs. The area’s history includes such injustices as a pass system which required Indigenous people to get government permission before leaving their reservation. In 1885, a public hanging of six Cree and two Assiniboine men on dubious murder charges remains the largest mass execution in Canada’s history.

Across the country, Indigenous activists and allies reminded Canada that this past continues to have an impact on the present. In the provincial capital, Saskatoon, 1,000 people gathered as Janice Tootoosis, Boushie’s cousin, spoke. “We’ve all experienced [racism] one time or another and it’s horrible what [the jury] did. Not guilty for shooting a person? No matter what colour they are — it’s a shame,” she said. “Murder is murder. How can they say he doesn’t have to pay for that?”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke soon after the verdict at a press conference in Los Angeles. He framed the controversy as a national cause for concern, saying “Indigenous people across this country are angry, they’re heartbroken, and I know Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians alike know that we have to do better.”

#JusticeForCoulten spread quickly on Twitter over the weekend, with many more joining in the call for a large-scale change to Canada’s relationship with First Nations peoples.

Lucas Smolcic Larson
Follow me!

Related