Ontario Appeal Court orders new murder trials in plot to kill parents
CBC
Ontario's top court has ordered a new first-degree murder trial for a Toronto-area woman who was convicted in a murder-for-hire plot against her parents.
Jennifer Pan, then 28, was sentenced in 2015 to life in prison with no parole for 25 years for first-degree murder, and life for attempted murder in a 2010 attack that left her mother dead and her father with a critical head wound.
Her three co-accused — her on-again, off-again boyfriend Daniel Wong, Lenford Crawford and David Mylvaganam — were convicted on the same charges.
Pan and the three men appealed and on Friday, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered new trials for the first-degree murder convictions.
The court says the trial judge erred by suggesting to the jury only two scenarios for the attack — one in which the plan was to murder both parents and another in which the plan was to commit a home invasion and the parents were shot in the course of the robbery.
The Appeal Court says the trial judge should have given the jury second-degree murder and manslaughter as other possible verdicts in the death of Pan's mother.
The court dismissed the appeals on the attempted murder convictions.
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