After they receive instructions from Justice Gordon Lemon on Wednesday, the fate of Raja Dosanjh will be left up to six men and six women who make up the jury in his first-degree murder trial.
Closing arguments were made Monday in the murder trial for the man suspected of killing Comfort Inn manager Aly Sunderani at the Silvercreek Parkway North hotel on March 1, 2016.
On Monday morning, the 12 jurors heard closing arguments from defence attorney Julianna Greenspan, who is representing Dosanjh for the first-degree murder charge, and crown attorney Julia Forward.
Over 50 witnesses were called over the five-week trail, with jury deliberations expected to begin on Wednesday. All but three witnesses were called by the prosecution and, as he is legally entitled to do, Dosanjh did not testify during the trial in his own defence.
Dressed in a grey suit, Dosanjh blew a kiss to family as he was led into the court room Monday morning and he looked over at his family a number of times throughout the day’s proceedings.
Sunderani’s sister sat with supporters on the other side of the court room. She began to cry and left the room for a time in the afternoon when video of her brother being shot was shown to the court.
"That's my brother," she said quietly, before leaving the court room.
In the video, which was taken from inside the hotel looking out the front entrance, shows a black Range Rover pulling up in front, with one figure who is said to be Sunderani is seen collapsing shortly before another blurry figure runs past and out of view.
Sunderani died a day later in hospital. The crown is arguing that the figure seen running past in the video is Dosanjh.
A witness who is seen in the video and who testified earlier in the trial told the court the man he saw running away that day was white and balding. Dosanjh is of East Indian descent with darker skin and he has a full head of hair.
Another man who was staying at the hotel told the court earlier that he looked out his window and saw a man in a hooded sweatshirt run past his room.
In another exhibit presented to jurors, a photograph was shown of more than a dozen bullet casings found at the scene.
Greenspan said the evidence against her client is all circumstantial and does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dosanjh pulled the trigger.
An expert called earlier in the trial said DNA evidence found on the submachine gun that killed Sunderani was 3.7-million times more likely to have come from Dosanjh and two other sources than from three unknown sources.
During her closing argument, Greenspan noted the amount of DNA evidence found on the weapon was just one-quarter of a nanogram and the sample was destroyed in the analysis.
Even if Dosanjh’s DNA was found on the gun, said Greenspan, it does not prove he pulled the trigger. An expert called earlier in the trial said DNA has been shown to be transferred without direct contact through what is called ‘innocent DNA transfer.’
Greenspan also said the DNA could have been contaminated because it was taken after the weapon was removed from the scene by police.
In her closing argument, Forward said police arrived six minutes after the shooting and the weapon was not touched by anyone — including police — before it was expertly removed.
Police took precautions, said Forward, including wearing masks and gloves and not touching the grip or trigger when it was removed.
Forward said the DNA evidence was collected from the weapon before police discovered the rental car she said was used during the murder.
“You can be sure he is the shooter because there is no other reasonable explanation of how that DNA evidence got on the of the gun,” Forward told the court.
Forward played a PowerPoint presentation to the court which included stills from a surveillance video which shows Dosanjh placing a bag in the back of a rental car before the murder. She said that bag could have been used to transport the submachine gun used in the murder.
Dosanjh was wearing a hooded sweatshirt in the surveillance video from the car rental agency.
The Infinity QX60 SUV was picked up fromt he rental agency by Dosanjh under tanother name and GPS data collected by police after the murder show it was driven to the Comfort Inn at the time of the murder.
Although surveillance video shows the SUV was picked up by Dosanjh, Greenspan said that does not prove he was in the car at the time of the murder.
Greenspan acknowledged that Dosanjh often rented cars to be used to deal marijuana.
“Renting a vehicle is not proof of a murder,” said Greenspan.
Dosanjh’s brother-in-law Dalvir Passi testified earlier in the trial that the car was picked up from the rental establishment and driven to Passi’s house, when two six-foot-seven-inch tall white men with bald heads picked it up and drove off without them.
Forward said the two white men are fictitious and that Dosanjh committed the murder while driven to and from the scene by Passi in the rental car. She believes the witness at the hotel who said he saw a white balding man was mistaken, which she said is reasonable under the circumstances.
Taken together, said Forward, the DNA evidence, surveillance footage and eyewitness account of the other man who saw someone run by in a hoody all point to Dosanjh’s guilt.
Forward also noted other things for the jury to consider, including evidence that Dosanjh’s phone was turned off at the time of the murder — which she said was to avoid showing he was in Guelph — changing his March 3 flight to an earlier time to return to B.C. earlier and renting the car in another name.
Greenspan said the descriptions of height and clothing were too vague to convict a person and that DNA evidence on the weapon does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dosanjh pulled the trigger.
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