Article content continued

Nonetheless, Justice Denny Thomas painstakingly connected the dots, creating a timeline that showed where and when Vader and the McCanns crossed paths. There was no other plausible explanation, Thomas said, for the fact that Vader had so many of the McCanns’ possessions, including their two vehicles. No other explanation for the presence of their blood and DNA. No other explanation for the fact that Vader, a broke and desperate meth addict, suddenly had money for beer and cellphone cards.

Thomas ruled it was beyond a reasonable doubt that Lyle and Marie McCann, both in their late 70s, were dead. The only logical inference, he said, was that Vader had somehow killed them, perhaps in the course of a botched robbery.

But Thursday, there was no closure. No sooner had Thomas delivered his verdict — two counts of second-degree murder — than a legal controversy erupted.

Watching the live-stream of the verdict, University of Alberta criminal law professor Peter Sankoff was astounded to hear Thomas citing Section 230 of the Criminal Code to explain why he had come to the second-degree murder verdict.

Sankoff is a professor of criminal law at the U of A and co-author of Criminal Law, the textbook law students across Canada rely on to learn criminal procedure. He’s on sabbatical in Germany.

Even before Vader’s lawyers or the Crown could react, while the judge was still reading his ruling, Sankoff started tweeting that the verdict was a terrible legal error. His tweets set off a national legal firestorm.