A former St. Albert man found guilty last month in the killing a Mountie in the Northwest Territories is appealing his first-degree murder conviction.
According to media reports, the defence team for Emrah Bulatci has filed appeal documents contending conversations that were secretly recorded while Bulatci was in custody weren’t properly obtained and should have been excluded from evidence during his trial. Before finding him guilty, jury members heard conversations Bulatci had with his girlfriend and relatives during visits at the North Slave Correctional Centre in Yellowknife.
In his appeal, Bulatci’s lawyer also alleges the judge failed to properly instruct the jury in several different aspects, according to CBC.ca.
There is no date set for the hearing of the appeal.
Before Bulatci’s trial, his lawyers had tried to have the recordings ruled as inadmissible evidence, show court documents from last March and April. The defence argued at the time that the recordings had been improperly authorized but the judge ruled police had demonstrated the necessity of the recordings for their investigation.
Without the evidence provided by the recordings, the Crown’s case would have been a circumstantial one relying to a great extent on unreliable witnesses, the judge wrote.
Bulatci was convicted Nov. 19 and handed a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years. He had been charged with the death of Const. Chris Worden, who was shot to death in October 2007 in Hay River, N.W.T.
Following the shooting, a massive manhunt for Bulatci led police to an Akinsdale home where they located Bulatci’s SUV. They eventually found the suspect in an Edmonton home six days after the shooting.
According to the Criminal Code, the intentional killing of a police officer brings an automatic charge of first-degree murder. At the opening of his trial, Bulatci offered a guilty plea to manslaughter but the Crown rejected the plea and proceeded to call dozens of witnesses during a four-week trial.
Bulatci testified that he initially fired two shots hoping to slow down Worden, who was trying to apprehend Bulatci for drug trafficking. Bulatci claimed two subsequent shots he fired that ultimately killed Worden were not fired intentionally.
