Case of fatal 2016 highway crash near Young, Sask. resolved with guilty plea from B.C. man
CBC
The case of a British Columbia man involved in a fatal 2016 highway crash in Saskatchewan was resolved after he entered guilty pleas to different charges earlier this fall.
Kiel Stewart got a four-year-and-three-month sentence — time served — when he pleaded guilty in Saskatoon provincial court in September to two counts of being party to the offence of driving with a blood alcohol level over the legal limit causing death and one count of causing bodily harm, prosecutor John Knox confirmed Friday.
Stewart, 34, is now on probation for two years, subject to a three-year driving prohibition.
The guilty pleas ended a court process that began with Stewart's conviction in November 2018 and subsequent sentencing in early 2019.
Stewart was given a six-year sentence in February 2019 after being found guilty of impaired driving, dangerous driving, impaired driving causing death and other charges.
Stewart was allegedly behind the wheel of a Mercedes sedan that crashed at a high speed, killing Adam Powell, 27, and Brett Busse, 28, and injuring David McCarthy.
Stewart appealed the conviction and it was granted on Oct. 13, 2020.
The Court of Appeal's decision to grant the appeal was based on a discrepancy of when and where witnesses saw the Mercedes and when those witnesses called 911 to report what they had seen.
The verdict was unreasonable because "the trial judge made findings of fact which were incompatible with evidence that she neither contradicted nor rejected," the Court of Appeal said referring to Shannon Metivier.
"I agree with that submission and would accordingly quash the convictions and order a new trial," Justice Brian Barrington-Foote wrote in the Oct. 23, 2020 Saskatchewan Court of Appeal decision.
That led to the latest trial on Sept. 20 of this year.
Stewart's defence had argued on appeal that no evidence was presented during the original trial about whether Stewart was driving the vehicle when it crashed in Young, about 75 km southeast of Saskatoon.
On Friday, Knox said that accepting the guilty pleas on the "party to the offence" charge does not mean the Crown is saying that Stewart was not driving at the time of the crash. Instead, the prosecution is silent on the point.
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