I want to make this perfectly clear:
Because I’m seeing a lot of people online taking Gerald Stanley’s side in this clusterfuck of a verdict:
1.) Canada does not have a Castle Doctrine that allows you to defend your property or possessions with deadly force. There is no stand your ground laws here. If you kill someone who is trespassing or stealing, that is grounds for a murder or manslaughter charge.
2.) Gerald Stanley was found not guilty to 2nd Degree Murder AND not guilty to manslaughter by the jury. Some people are claiming that the jury never examined both options, but they did. This means that the jury felt that Gerald Stanley had absolutely zero responsibility in Colten Boushie’s death even though Gerald Stanley clearly did kill Colten Boushie. This means the Jury saw nothing wrong with Gerald Stanley killing Colten Boushie. Gerald Stanley even admitted that he killed Colten to the RCMP. Even if Gerald Stanley’s story was correct and his gun misfired, that should be a charge of manslaughter. Its the very definition of manslaughter.
3.) There were major holes in Gerald Stanley’s testimony.
Throughout the trial, Stanley’s lawyer, Scott Spencer, postulated that the killing was the result of a “hang fire”—a delay between the time the trigger is pulled and when the bullet leaves the gun. “It’s a tragedy, but it’s not criminal. You must acquit,” he told the jury. Spencer encouraged them to put themselves “in Gerry’s boots,” arguing that the actions of Boushie and his friends were to blame for the escalated violence. Yet the Crown’s firearms experts thoroughly refuted the hang fire claim, saying not only that hang fires are extremely rare, but the firing discrepancy is usually less than a second, and there was nothing wrong with Stanley’s gun. (For a sense of how thin this aspect of the defence was, consider that, at one point, the judge had to prevent Spencer from using a printout from an online Reddit conversation while questioning the firearms expert.)
It’s hard to overstate the insult this threadbare argument came to represent to Indigenous people, reinforcing their sense that the white justice system would somehow find a way to exonerate Stanley. In the months leading up to the trial, hate-filled and racist comments flooded social media, much of it in support of Stanley and the rights of farmers, forcing then-Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall to condemn the exchanges. In 2017, the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities had voted overwhelmingly to lobby for the right to protect one’s self and property—code, many First Nations people felt, for “shoot Indigenous trespassers.” The Stanley verdict seems to legitimize these sorts of ideas, which are not upheld by law, and are supposed to be antithetical to Canadian values.
4.) Colten Boushie was unarmed at the time of the shooting (there was a gun inside the vehicle but Colten never used it and Stanley didn’t see it until after he killed Colten). Colten never physically harmed Gerald Stanley in any way (one of his friends punched the wife and mother), but Colten Boushie by all accounts was just sitting in his vehicle when he was shot in the head.
5.) It does not matter whether Colten and his friends were drunk, trying to steal property or acting disrespectful. None of that is worth killing over. If you’re trying to argue that Colten wasn’t ‘innocent’ so therefore it was ok for him to be killed, you are literally condoning murder, and embracing white supremacist arguments against First Nations people.
