Supreme Court of Canada dismisses Crown appeal in Surrey Six murder case

A man convicted in the Surrey Six gang murders of 2007 will be getting another hearing after the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed a Crown appeal Friday morning.

The Crown had appealed a 2021 B.C. Court of Appeal decision that Cody Haevischer and Matthew Johnston should be granted an evidentiary hearing to go over allegations of police misconduct in the initial investigation.

The nation’s top court denied the Crown’s appeal, granting the hearing for Haevischer, which could pave the way for a new trial.

Johnston and Haevischer were found guilty in 2014 for the murders, which their trial heard was part of a gang turf war. The men, along with a key Crown witness known as Person Y, went to a Surrey highrise with victim Corey Lal as their main target, but his brother Michael Lal, Edward Narong and Ryan Bartolomeo were also in the apartment.

Edward Schellenberg, who was in the unit servicing the fireplace, and Christopher Mohan, the 22-year-old living across the hallway, were also murdered.

Eileen Mohan, the mother of Christopher, calls Friday’s ruling a “cruel decision.”

“Opening the trial again is like going back to the first day of the unknowns. We don’t know what the court will do or how it will rule again,” she told CityNews Friday morning.

She adds the situation has changed her attitude toward Canada’s highest court.

“Honestly, I have to say, my hope in the Supreme Court of Canada has been lost,” she said.

“I was hoping that they (the court) would be Christopher’s voice, but they became the criminals’ voice and that should not ever be, because it’s us who are left behind. It’s me, it’s his mom who is left behind trying to pick up the pieces of his life and my life and trying to live somehow.”

Read More: Supreme Court of Canada to release ruling tied to 2007 Surrey Six murders

Johnston died of cancer in December of last year. However, Johnston’s lawyer, Brock Martland, said he spoke with his client the day before he died and he wanted the Supreme Court of Canada to order a hearing “to show the public the extent of police misconduct.”

Lawyers for the two men told the Supreme Court of Canada that male investigators with B.C.’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team “exploited the trust of key protected female witnesses in order to have sex with them, including girlfriends of the men they ultimately charged.”

Haevischer and Johnston also claim prison conditions were “akin to torture,” forced to live in cells smeared with mucus, blood and feces, leaving them teetering “on the edge of sanity.”