MONTREAL — Though he certainly didn't say it to the jury, Luka Magnotta's trial judge doesn't think jurors will buy his insanity defence.
These and other facts were kept from the jury that was sequestered Monday to decide the fate of Canada's most notorious murder defendant.
Media were barred from reporting details of pre-trial motions, last year's preliminary hearing, and anything said when the jury was in recess.
That means they didn't hear Judge Guy Cournoyer say just last Monday that Magnotta's insanity defence wasn't very convincing.
"Could it bring a jury to the conclusion that he was incapable of knowing (morality)? My personal impression — it's not likely," he told both sides.
Magnotta's dismemberment video is at the centre of the case but the judge banned other visual evidence, saying it was prejudicial.
They include Magnotta's failed 2008 audition for Plastic Makes Perfect, a reality show that follows people through cosmetic surgery.
Smiling, confident and articulate, Magnotta said his lifelong obsession with his looks alienated his relatives and frustrated his friends.
"People would say to me all the time, even when I was a teenager ... 'every time you walk by a mirror, all you do is glance in it,'" Magnotta told a producer. "(They say) when you're in a restaurant you just take your spoon and just do a little ... look in it.'"
The porn actor claims he was disordered and schizophrenic when he killed Chinese student Jun Lin in May 2012.
Four years earlier, as a reality producer's camera rolled, the porn actor and model was lucid and goal-oriented.
He said he worked full time "whether it's doing films, or doing magazines, or Internet shows" in Montreal, Toronto and Los Angeles.
Judge Cournoyer said the video would have been devastating to Magnotta's claim that he was a lifelong schizophrenic.
"It's a game-changer," the judge told the Crown prior to banning the clip on Dec. 2.
"It comes as close as any piece of evidence to single-handedly decide the outcome of this case."
The jury is deliberating without a second incriminating visual.
During a Nov. 19 jury break, the Crown said that 10 days before he killed Lin, Magnotta posted a photo of a man who looks like himself holding an ice pick.
The picture, altered by a photo-editing filter, was part of an online promo for Magnotta's dismemberment clip "1 lunatic, 1 ice pick."
The promo features a hooded figure leaning forward, with a poster of the 1942 film Casablanca in the background.
The dismemberment video, uploaded two days after the killing, also has a Casablanca poster in the background as a hooded Magnotta stabs Lin with a screwdriver on Magnotta's bed, then saws off his arms and legs.
Defence lawyer Luc Leclair called the promo "extremely incriminating," adding "it proves first-degree murder, premeditation."
Even without the banned visuals, the Crown still has a filmed crime, DNA links and a defendant who admits to the offences.
Just before opening arguments began on Sept 29, the judge reminded Crown lawyer Louis Bouthillier the scales were tipped in his favour.
"You know that the only valid defence that (Leclair) has to offer is (insanity)," Cournoyer said.
Moments later, Magnotta's lawyer agreed: "There's no other defence."
The jury heard several examples of Magnotta's obsession with schoolgirl killer Karla Homolka but they didn't know he contacted Homolka's lawyer, Sylvie Bordelais, in December 2011 to receive professional advice.
That was six months before he killed Lin, and around the same time he e-mailed a British reporter to warn that a filmed killing was in the works.
Bordelais testified that she didn't give Magnotta any advice and that their discussions were covered by attorney-client privilege.
Other things the Magnotta jury didn't hear:
- Magnotta was hit with a disciplinary infraction on Oct. 17 at Riviere-des-Prairies jail related to obstruction. Magnotta, who gained 65 lbs. in jail, disobeyed orders to stop eating breakfast after he had been told to get into a waiting area to be transported to court.
- On Nov. 5, judge Cournoyer loudly blasted Crown psychiatrist Dr. Gilles Chamberland for smirking and frowning during testimony by defence psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Barth. Chamberland spent the remainder of the trial in an overflow room, stone-faced and out of the judge's sight.
- Leclair said Crown ballistics expert Gilbert Desjardins was cited by his professional order in the 1990s for fabricating evidence and lying in court. The defence demanded the Crown provide the disciplinary ruling. The judge refused to order the Crown to provide the documents but said the defence could seek them if they wished.
- Leclair threatened to move for a mistrial days into the proceeding over the Crown allegedly switching its line of questioning of Jun Lin's ex-lover, Lin Feng.
- Court will pay costs for Karla Homolka's sister, Logan Valentini, who travelled to Kitchener, Ont. from St. Catharines for Oct. 17 video testimony.
- Cournoyer, on Nov. 13, refused to let the Crown reveal that defence psychiatrist Dr. Joel Watts charged $26,000 for a 53-hour trip to accompany Magnotta back from Berlin. An exasperated Bouthillier called it an "outrageous" bill to "sleep on the plane," adding that Watts charged what some jurors earn in a year. The judge said revealing Watts's bill would "inflame the jury" and was not relevant to the case. A source told QMI that Watts didn't get all the money he was seeking.
- Luc Leclair submitted to the judge on Oct. 17 that he was upset jurors refused to say hello to him in the morning. "None of them have given me a polite greeting," Leclair complained. "As a matter of fact, they avoid me. They see me and they go stone-faced." Judge Cournoyer replied that "a criminal trial is not a tea party" and that "life is unfair."
- The Crown wanted to play the entire film Basic Instinct for the jury but the judge refused. Bouthillier said Magnotta's dismemberment clip mirrored the opening scene of the 1992 murder mystery. Judge Cournoyer said playing the film would have been overly dramatic. He also gave the film itself a thumbs down. "Playing the whole movie is unnecessary, time-consuming, and to be honest, I fell asleep last night trying to watch it," the judge told lawyers. "This is not a movie that stands the test of time."
- Leclair said the family that owns the Toronto-based Magnotta winery is seeing red about the fact that the defendant's legally changed name is the same as theirs. "They're less than happy and I was made aware of that," Leclair exclaimed.
GRANDMOTHER RISKED ARREST DURING TRIAL
Luka Magnotta's grandmother risked arrest at the same time that she refused to testify in his defence, the court heard in testimony covered by a publication ban until Monday.
Media can report this and other facts the jury didn't hear, now that the 12 citizens are sequestered to decide Magnotta's fate.
Magnotta, a former resident of Peterborough, Ont., and Lindsay, Ont., is charged with first-degree murder for killing and dismembering Chinese student Jun Lin in Montreal on May 25, 2012.
During legal arguments early in the trial, defence lawyer Luc Leclair twice mentioned to Judge Guy Cournoyer that he was being distracted by a legal problem in Peterborough, where Magnotta's grandmother, Phyllis Yourkin, lives.
Leclair said, "I'm fighting with another lawyer in Peterborough" and that "Mr. Magnotta is under tremendous stress."
Leclair also said he "doesn't want to see the grandmother arrested - that's ridiculous."
It wasn't immediately clear if the grandmother had been subpoenaed to testify. She didn't end up taking the stand.
Leclair made several references, in front of and without the jury, about the difficulty in persuading Magnotta's relatives to testify for the defence.
The killer's father did take the stand, and he was the only close friend or relative of Magnotta's to do so.
The jury heard that Magnotta has been close to his grandmother, who raised him under his birth name, Eric Newman, following his parents' divorce.
Magnotta told defence psychiatrist Dr. Joel Watts that he texted Phyllis Yourkin on the morning he killed Lin. However, in another part of Watts' report, the grandmother said she had no recollection of Magnotta contacting her at the time of the killing.
Watts' report also quotes Magnotta as claiming he talked on the phone with his grandmother "all the time" and that he was "closest to her and his dad."
Court previously heard that Magnotta called a number in Peterborough four times in the hours after his admitted killing of Lin.
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