Resources – Tim's Law

Salik Bin Sajid committed the act of first-degree murder but not responsible!

In a Brampton court, Justice Bonnie Wein found Salik Bin Sajid committed the act of first-degree murder but was not criminally responsible of killing his landlord, Mustaeen Siddiqi.

Sajid, who never testified in the case, was remanded into custody and will appear before a review board in the coming months.
“To a large extent the indicia of knowledge of moral wrong come from after-the-fact comments he made,” said the judge. “These do not contradict that there was an explosion in his mind that occurred at the time of the killing. They are of less significance in the assessment of knowledge of wrong than the overall reality that he was clearly suffering from a major mental illness. The act was entirely unmotivated and out of character, his victim was part of his persecutory delusion, and his illness in all likelihood prevented him from knowing that his actions were morally wrong.”

Sajid, a tenant living in the basement of the victim’s Warwickshire Way home, attacked and killed Siddiqi, 45, a married father of three, back on June 10, 2009, while he was repairing a window because Sajid didn’t like the way he looked at him. Court heard that Sajid, 25, delivered two stab wounds that killed Siddiqi.

The judge admitted she was struggling with certain aspects of the case, as there’s evidence in Sajid’s police interrogation interview, introduced as evidence by the Crown, that the accused knew what he was doing was “morally wrong. The fact that Sajid took and hid a knife on his person before the attack demonstrated some level of pre-planning that diminishes the strength of the argument that he did not have the capacity at the time of the event to know that it was morally wrong.

“It can never be known with precision what was in a person’s mind at the precise time of the offence. He is clearly a danger to society either way,” Justice Wein said.

Dr. Julian Gojer’s and Dr. Philip Klassen provided the expert testimony.

Facts of case originally reported by Mississauga.com

Whatever psychosis gripped Bouchard-Lebrun during the incident, was “self-induced”

The Supreme Court of Canada has clarified under which grounds an accused can use a defense of being in a psychotic state. Quebec resident Tommy Bouchard-Lebrun committed a vicious assault in October of 2005, in Mont-Joli, Quebec. Bouchard-Lebrun then claimed he was in a psychotic state after voluntarily taking drugs

Bouchard-Lebrun pushed a man down some stairs, and stomped on his head several times. Bouchard-Lebrun argued that he had an underlying mental disorder that was triggered by the drug use, and therefore should be found not criminally responsible for the attack. A Quebec court found that whatever psychosis gripped Bouchard-Lebrun during the incident, it was “self-induced intoxication” and could not be used as an excuse for his actions.

On appeal, Bouchard-Lebrun argued the “self-induced intoxication” amounted to a “mental disorder” under the Criminal Code, but the Quebec Court of Appeal rejected his argument. It said in its 2010 ruling that the defense of mental disorder was not available to an accused suffering from psychosis induced by drug use in circumstances similar to those in Bouchard-Lebrun’s case.

Now the Supreme Court has dismissed the argument, saying Bouchard-Lebrun could not establish that he was suffering from an underlying mental disorder, since he returned to normal once the effects of the drugs ran their course. The court concluded:

“A malfunctioning of the mind that results exclusively from self-induced intoxication cannot be considered a disease of the mind in the legal sense, since it is not a product of the individual’s inherent psychological makeup,”

If everyone who committed a violent offense while in a toxic psychosis was found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder, the judge said the scope of the defense would be too broad.

Life with Murder (Trailer)

This documentary features a son accused of murdering his sister and parents who must face the most awful decision any parent could have to make: whether to break with their son or accept him back into the family. With astonishing footage shot over a ten-year period, from minutes after the crime was committed to the present, the film follows the family’s evolving relationships.

Not Criminally Responsible: Quebec cases

The following is a list of Not Criminally Responsible cases from Quebec. A similar list should be compiled for other provinces. Searches for most perpetrators, except the most recent cases, returned no results.

– March 2011. Maor Attar, 19, was found not criminally responsible after stabbing his sister Shirel 51 times and bashing her head with a hammer. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, he was sent to Philippe Pinel institute for an indefinite period.“I have been living dead now for two years,” he said in a letter to Quebec Superior Court “All my treasure is gone. All the time and energy I put into myself amounts to nothing.”

* Presently placed under psychiatric care at the Philippe Pinel Institute.

-February 2010. Martin Rondeau, 33, was found not guilty by reason of a mental disorder after killing 80-year-old Estelle Lauzon, a member of the Catholic order of the Sisters of Providence, while he was having an epileptic seizure. Experts determined that Rondeau was in a state of dissociation when he beat the nun to death while he was living at a convent on de Maisonneuve Blvd. E. The crown prosecutor said he could find no precedent where an accused has used epilepsy, successfully or otherwise, as a defence in a murder case.

*Martin Rondeau was freed after two-and-a-half years behind bars

– May 2007. Dave Narine was acquitted by reason of mental illness in death of his father. Narine told police that Jesus had given him a disease to protect his children and he was in direct communication with God. Dave Narine’s two children, a boy and a girl whose ages are between 7 and 10, had been living with their grandparents.

*Narine had a lengthy criminal record stretching back to 1993.

– September 2003. Mélanie Belanger was found not guilty after she stabbed her three-year-old daughter to death and tried to kill herself. A judge ruled Belanger was mentally unstable and severely depressed at the time.