The attorney for a man convicted of murdering a 13-year-old Burnaby girl is asking a judge to stop the jury’s decision due to unreasonable delays in getting the man to trial.
Ibrahim Ali has been in detention and charged with first-degree murder for over 63 months, which his attorney Kevin McCullough told a B.C. Supreme Court judge is more than twice the acceptable limit set by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Ali’s attorney made the so-called Jordan application in an effort to halt the proceedings because it took too long for their client to go to trial, a threshold set at 30 months by Canada’s High Court.
If approved, Ali would be released without a sentence.
Ali, who appeared by video wearing an orange sweat suit and medical gloves, was found guilty on Dec. 8, in less than 24 hours after jurors’ deliberations started, and he now faces a mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.
The body of the girl, whose name is protected by a publication ban, was discovered in Burnaby’s Central Park in July 2017, and he was charged about one year later.
There were about three years of pretrial procedures before Ali pleaded not guilty on April 5, 2023.
The trial experienced several delays for various reasons, including the mental and physical health issues of a defendant, the death of an expert witness before she could finish her testimony, cases of COVID-19 and other illnesses among jurors, as well as violent threats against Ali’s lawyers, which caused it to extend for eight months.
Related
- Genealogy test led to Ibrahim Ali’s arrest for murder, but methods spark ethical debate
- B.C. jury finds Ibrahim Ali guilty of first-degree murder of 13-year-old girl
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