The New Brunswick Police Commission is suspending its probe into the Saint John police’s investigation of the Richard Oland murder, pending Dennis Oland’s appeal which was filed on January 20.
In a statement released on its website, the commission says they want to make sure their investigation doesn’t impact the ongoing criminal proceedings.
Dennis Oland was convicted of second-degree murder on December 19. He will ask the New Brunswick Court of Appeals to allow the appeal, quash the conviction and direct a verdict of acquittal or order a new trial altogether. For the grounds of appeal, the document says that a verdict of guilty of second-degree murder was an unreasonable verdict in law and not one that a reasonable jury, properly instructed, could have judicially arrived at.
During his final instructions to the jury at Dennis Oland’s trial, Justice Jack Walsh reminded jurors that there was evidence that police didn’t secure the scene from too many unnecessary entries on July 7, 2011, as well, that officers used the washroom on the second floor outside of Richard Oland’s office for two days, didn’t make sure the back door to the alleyway was untouched until it was examined, and did not ask the pathologist if a drywall hammer could be the murder weapon.
Dennis Oland is scheduled to be sentenced on February 11.
