With closing arguments wrapped up Thursday, June 25, the jury is now out in a high-profile North Okanagan murder case.
Vitali Stefanski, accused of murdering ex-wife Tatjana Stefanski, will soon learn his fate in B.C. Supreme Court at the Kamloops courthouse.
The trial has been ongoing for a month, ever since Vitali pleaded not-guilty to second-degree murder roughly two years after Tatjana’s body was found down an embankment off a rural logging road outside Lumby, near where his bloodied Audi had been located by police.
Through winding trial proceedings that saw contentious cross-examinations, graphic autopsy photos and, last week, the departure of Vitali’s lawyer, Vitali has maintained his innocence, saying Tatjana stabbed herself while in his car on April 13, 2024, and that he had done everything he could to get her help.
The Crown has dismissed this account of Tatjana’s final living moments as “incredible,” a legal term meaning it can’t and shouldn’t be given any credence. In prosecutor Laura Drake’s closing arguments Wednesday, the Crown asserted that logic, common sense and human experience could lead jurors to only one conclusion: that Vitali stabbed his ex-wife to death.
Justice Brad Smith instructed jurors to head into deliberation Thursday evening. Before he did so, he gave them lengthy instructions based on legal principles and some specifics of the trial proceedings.
“In every criminal jury trial, there are two judges. I am one. Together, you are the other. I am the judge of the law. Together, you are the judges of the facts,” Smith told jurors.
“You must consider the evidence and make your decision without sympathy, prejudice or fear. You must not be influenced by public opinion. We expect and are entitled to your impartial assessment of the evidence. That was the promise you made and the oath you took or affirmation you gave after you were accepted by the parties as jurors,” the judge cautioned.
Smith reminded jurors that Vitali is innocent until proven guilty, and the burden is on the Crown to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he is guilty of second-degree murder.
“You are entitled to come to common sense conclusions based on the evidence that you accept. You must not speculate, however, about what evidence there might have been, or permit yourselves to guess or make up theories without evidence to support them. Deciding the facts is your job, not mine,” Smith counselled.
The judge went over the difference of direct evidence — saying by way of example that a witness may say in court that it’s raining outside — and circumstantial evidence, such as when a witness says they saw someone come into the courthouse carrying a wet umbrella.
“The evidence in this case is mostly circumstantial,” Justice Smith said.
Smith went into a lengthy overview of what this trial has witnessed over the past month.
He cautioned jurors not to give extra weight to the testimonies of two Mounties — who had told the court they’d heard Vitali confess to the murder after he emerged shoeless from the forest while they were towing away his vehicle with its bloody interior on Mabel Lake Road — just because they are police officers.
The judge continued his charge statement to the jurors, intertwining legal principles with the facts of the case as they’ve been heard in court.