‘Culture of complacency’ delayed Ibrahim Ali murder case: lawyer

The lawyer for Ibrahim Ali, the man found guilty of killing a 13-year-old girl in Burnaby, B.C., said a “culture of complacency” by the Crown and the court has created so many unnecessary delays in proceedings that the verdict should be stayed now. .

Kevin McCullough presented the arguments on day two of a hearing in BC Supreme Court in Vancouver in an application in Jordan filed on Ali’s behalf.

A Jordan motion seeks to have the charges dropped for failing to meet the 30-month deadline to go to trial, as set by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 2016 case R. v. Jordan.

Ali was found guilty of first-degree murder on December 8, 2023. He now faces a mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

The girl’s body, whose name is withheld, was found in Burnaby’s Central Park in July 2017. Ali was arrested and charged about a year later.

McCullough said issues not associated with the accused caused delays of nearly 60 months, about double the Jordan standard.

He said a decision by Judge Lance Bernard to reject a request for an adjournment brought by Ali’s original defense team in August 2020, along with issues of court mismanagement, effectively “doomed” the case to Jordan’s deadlines.

Ali’s original lawyer withdrew from the case and was replaced by McCullough and his team in September 2020.

“It’s not lost on me that I’m asking this court to go back and look at what this court did,” McCullough said.

“It is clear that this case is one where the Crown did not take adequate steps to move the matter forward quickly, and secondly, that the court did not manage the case to move it forward quickly, according to Jordan.”

Crown counsel are expected to make arguments against Jordan’s application when the hearing resumes on Monday.

Ali pleaded not guilty on April 5, 2023, after about three years of preliminary proceedings.

Once at trial, there were several delays that caused it to drag on for eight months, including problems with Ali’s mental state, problems securing a regular interpreter, the death of an expert witness before -could complete his testimony, illness and COVID-19. among jurors and threats of violence against Ali’s lawyers.