The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal has thrown out, for a second time, the first-degree murder conviction of an Ottawa man who claimed he had no idea his friend planned to shoot the victim in the head.
Steven Gareau has been ordered to face a new trial – it would be his third – although the court ruling pointedly noted a retrial is “at the Crown’s discretion.”
The dead man, Sean Simmons, had been targeted in October 2000 because he’d had an affair with a girlfriend of a member of the Hells Angels.
The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that the trial judge mistakenly allowed the jury to hear about a second, earlier shooting, and mishandled wiretap evidence suggesting Gareau wasn’t aware of a murder plot.
Gareau’s first conviction for both murder and conspiracy to commit murder came in 2004, but it was overturned eight years later because of different legal mistakes by a different judge.
He was retried over seven months and convicted again in February 2014.