Canadian found guilty of murdering, dismembering Chinese student

MONTREAL (Reuters) - A Canadian man who killed and dismembered a Chinese student in Montreal in 2012 was found guilty of first-degree murder on Tuesday, with the jury delivering a verdict after more than a week of deliberating the gruesome case.

Luka Magnotta, 32, had admitted to killing and dismembering engineering student Jun Lin, 33, but pleaded not guilty on grounds of mental illness.

Magnotta was also found guilty of committing an indignity to a human body, publishing and mailing obscene material, and criminally harassing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other members of Parliament.

The prosecution had argued that Magnotta was "a man on a mission" and had carefully planned his acts.

The verdict came on the 8th day of jury deliberations.

Magnotta stood in the glassed-in, high-security prisoner's dock as the verdicts were read out. The jury foreman answered "guilty" in a firm voice as the court clerk asked what the decision was on each of five charges.

In a statement to the court afterward, the presiding judge, Justice Guy Cournoyer, said the case "was by all standards unique".

He praised the jury for their dedication and patience. "We have asked a lot of you but you rose to the occasion and indeed proved that real and substantive justice is a reality," he said.

The jury was shown a video of Magnotta's acts that he had posted online. The prosecution said that six months before the killing, Magnotta had emailed a British journalist to say he planned to kill a human and make a movie of it.

"We had good evidence of premeditation and that the crime was planned and deliberate, so I thought that we had a good case on that," Louis Bouthillier, the prosecutor, said. "There was never any doubt in my mind that the jury would find Mr Magnotta guilty of first-degree murder,"

The jury heard that Magnotta, a gay escort, had sought psychiatric help about a month before Lin's death. Magnotta's father, who testified at the trial, also has a medical history of schizophrenia.

The case gripped Canada in the spring of 2012 after Lin's body parts were found in the trash behind a Montreal apartment building and in packages mailed to political parties in Ottawa and to schools in Vancouver.

The mailed packages contained hands and feet wrapped in pink tissue paper as well as notes and poems.

(Writing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Andrea Hopkins in Toronto; Additional reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Peter Galloway)

WhatsAppFacebookTwitterLinkedinBeloudBluesky