A convicted Hamilton, Ont., murderer accused of intimidating a fellow inmate into suicide will be go to trial again, Crown prosecutors confirmed Monday.
Jeremy Hall’s first trial on second-degree murder charges in the hanging death of Kelvin Sawa ended in a mistrial after a jury failed to reach a verdict in June. The Crown had until Monday to decide whether to retry him.
Graeme Leach, an assistant prosecutor in the Crown’s Welland, Ont., office confirmed in an email Monday that the Crown had decided to do just that.
Hall, who was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder in an unrelated case in 2013, was awaiting trial in 2011 when he allegedly participated in the beating and abuse of Sawa, an accused child molester, in the Niagara Detention Centre, in Thorold, Ont.
Ontario Crown AttorneyA photo provided as evidence in the hanging death of Kelvin Sawa at the Niagara Detention Centre in Thorold, Ontario.
In the last 80 minutes of his conscious life, Sawa suffered at least two beatings and was punched, kneed, spat on and had deodorant forced down his throat.
Eventually, after returning to his cell, Sawa was handed a noose made from torn strips of bed sheet and allegedly told to use it. According to testimony at Hall’s first trial, Sawa tied the noose to his bed frame, slipped it around his neck and sat down. He lapsed into unconsciousness, was pulled from the cell by a guard and died without waking up.
Two men were charged with second-degree murder in Sawa’s death, Hall, who allegedly made the noose Sawa used, and Cale Rose, who admitted to tossing it into Sawa’s cell.
Rose pleaded guilty to lesser charges and agreed to testify against Hall at his trial last spring.
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The Crown argued at Hall’s initial trial that the large, heavily tattooed man ruled over the jail unit where Sawa died. Upon learning of Sawa’s charges — he was accused, but never tried or convicted of sexually abusing a teenaged boy — Hall allegedly followed him into the shower and beat him. He then, according to prosecutors, orchestrated but did not actively participate in a brief but intense period of savage abuse against Sawa that culminated in Rose tossing the noose into Sawa’s cell and allegedly telling him to use it.
Sawa, prosecutors argued, was effectively bullied into suicide. But their case against Hall as ringleader was complicated by several factors: Hall was nowhere near Sawa when he died and most of the witnesses who testified at the trial were convicts, drug addicts, the mentally ill, or all three.
After six days of deliberations, the jury in the Hall trial declared itself deadlocked and the judge declared a mistrial. No date has yet been set for his second trial.
• Email: rwarnica@nationalpost.com | Twitter: richardwarnica