Alleged killer of Hawke’s Bay councilor’s wife has overturned conviction

A former Napier city councilman who was convicted of drowning his second wife in a Canadian lake had his murder conviction overturned and may go to trial a third time.

Kiwifruit Peter Beckett faces the prospect of a new trial after the British Columbia Court of Appeals found yesterday that the presiding judge and Crown prosecutors made mistakes during his second trial, which found him guilty of Laura’s murder. Letts-Beckett, according to the western Canadian news site Castañuela.

The elementary school teacher died more than 10 years ago while the couple were fishing one night in a small inflatable boat on a lake northeast of Vancouver.

Initially her death was reported as a drowning, Beckett claimed that she accidentally fell from the boat, but was arrested a year after she died and charged with her murder.

During the 2017 trial, Napier’s ex-man was charged with pushing his wife into the water and drowning her to collect a $ 200,000 accidental death insurance policy the couple had purchased just two months before the water tragedy.

He was convicted of first degree murder for drowning his wife after a previous trial ended in a hung jury. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison without the possibility of parole.

Beckett had appealed his murder conviction and lengthy jail term, hoping to obtain a full acquittal and walk away as a free man.

Instead, the murder charge still stands and it is now up to the Crown to see if Beckett will take the stand a third time.

Castanet said in his decision that Judge Lauri Ann Fenlon ruled that the presiding judge incorrectly instructed the jury that they could rely on the evidence that Beckett fabricated his story to the police as evidence of his “guilty conscience after the fact.” no independent evidence for Beckett’s story. it had been manufactured.

He had also been wrong to admit certain evidence during the trial, including “inherently unreliable behavioral evidence” – how a defendant acted during an event. This had “invited the jury to engage in undue speculation,” Castanet reported.

“Before the Crown can invite the jury to use their disbelief in the statement as evidence against the defendant, it must show by a different body of evidence that the statement was intentionally fabricated by the defendant,” Judge Fenlon said.

The Crown had told the jury that Beckett’s statement to the police was “the most important piece of evidence in the case.”

Castanet reported that the Court of Appeals also found that the Crown’s final jury submissions included “unproven facts.”

Judge Fenlon called the Crown’s case against Beckett “not strong,” but added that the jury’s verdict was not unreasonable. Therefore, the Court of Appeal has ordered a new trial, rather than the full acquittal that Beckett sought.

Beckett served a term on the Hawke’s Bay local council between 1998 and 200.

Previously, he ran a travel business that took groups from Napier to Cape Kidnappers when he was elected to the council. He did not seek re-election to the Napier City Council and moved to Canada, where he met and married Letts.