A new trial has been ordered for the man found guilty of murdering Japanese student Natsumi Kogawa in 2016.
In a 2-1 decision, the B.C. Court of Appeal granted William Schneider’s request that he be retried for the crime, agreeing that some of the evidence heard during the original trial should not have been allowed.
Schneider was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 14 years in November 2018, after being found guilty of second-degree murder the month before. He was also handed a 3.5 year sentence for interfering with a human body, to be served concurrently.
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Kogawa, 30, was on a student visa and came to Canada in May 2016. Her body was found in a suitcase in the bushes of the Gabriola Mansion in Vancouver’s West End in September 2016.
While Schneider had pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, he entered a guilty plea to the interference charge near the end of his trial.
In his appeal, Schneider argued the original trial judge erred in allowing his brother’s recollection of an overheard phone conversation between Schneider and his wife to be entered into evidence.
Schneider’s brother had testified he heard Schneider ask his wife if she had seen the news of Kogawa’s disappearance. Without hearing the other side of the conversation, the brother then heard Schneider say, “I did it” or “I killed her.”
Two of the three appeals court justices agreed with Schneider that the pieces of conversation overheard by the brother should not have been presented as evidence for the jury to consider.
Those judges concluded that because the brother did not hear the wife’s side of the conversation, he had no way of knowing what Schneider was responding to. They also noted the brother could not exactly recall whether Schneider said “I did it” or “I killed her.”
“Lacking these key pieces of context, there is nothing that would allow a jury to determine the meaning of the utterances in a way that is not dangerously speculative,” Justice Richard Goepel wrote in the decision.
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In her dissenting opinion, Justice Joyce DeWitt-Van Oosten found the conversation was “logically relevant” to the case. She also noted that the original trial judge properly instructed the jury to consider the “frailties” of that evidence, and to ignore it entirely if they found they could not trust the brother’s recollection.
All three justices agreed to dismiss Schneider’s other arguments in his appeal that the original trial judge improperly instructed the jury on other matters.
Over the course of the trial, the court also heard psychiatric, personality and behavioural assessments that found Schneider’s drug and alcohol habits could make him a continued risk to the public.
It also heard audio recordings of his conversations with police. He has admitted to putting Kogawa’s body in the suitcase, but maintained he did not know how she died.
A pathologist was not able to determine a cause of death, and there was no DNA evidence linking Schneider to the death. Autopsy results revealed traces of anti-anxiety medication in her system.
His defence argued that after the student died, Schneider panicked and made poor decisions.
During Schneider’s sentencing, emotional victim impact statements were heard from Kogawa’s mother, brothers and friend. Her mother Emily described her life following the murder as a “living hell,” and said Schneider’s failure to apologize was unforgivable.
Schneider did ultimately apologize to Kogawa’s family following those statements, saying, “I’m just so sorry for your pain.”
— With files from Simon Little