Next moves in overturned Kelowna murder conviction remain unknown

The BC Prosecution Service is still determining its next move after a Kelowna man won his appeal of a second-degree murder conviction.

It’s been three weeks since the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned the 2020 conviction of Steven Pirko, who was previously found guilty of bludgeoning Chris Ausman to death while intervening in a 2014 conflict.

That means Pirko may have to be retried, though the BC Prosecution Service said Monday that it’s “still reviewing the ruling and expect to make a decision regarding the next steps as soon as the review is complete.”

No timeframe for that has been made available.

Regardless, the decision to reverse the decision has hit Ausman’s family hard.

Anne Hutton, Ausman’s mother, said they thought it was all behind them but the outcome of the appeal feels like “a bandage was torn off.”

1:19 Convicted killer, Steven Pirko’s sentencing hearing begins

“When the trial was over, we celebrated and could breathe again, and get the peace we needed,” Hutton wrote in an email.

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“It is like we are starting all over from day one. This brings up so many memories from Chris’s death and the trial. It is sad that the criminals, it seems, have more rights than the victim and family.”

The family, nonetheless, is strong in its resolve to stand united again, she said.

The three-justice panel of B.C.’s highest court said the trial judge “misdirected” the jury on the section of the Criminal Code that allows for the lawful defence of another, and failed to help jury members understand how the offence of manslaughter could apply.

In his ruling issued on Tuesday, Justice Gregory Fitch also said the judge’s final instructions about Pirko’s criminal record were “incomplete and deficient in law.”

Since January 2020, Pirko has been serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 11 years, but the Appeal Court ruling clears the way for a new trial, with a date yet to be set.

The trial judge’s errors “were not harmless,” says Fitch, and “cannot be cured” through other legal measures.

“The cumulative effect of the errors resulted in an unsatisfactory trial,” he says in the decision.