The Supreme Court of Canada decision released Thursday agrees with a BC Court of Appeal decision last year that increased Darren Sandman’s conviction from second-degree murder to first-degree murder and imposed a minimum sentence of 25 years before he is eligible for parole. According to the Criminal Code of Canada, first-degree murder occurs when a murder is planned and premeditated, with every other murder, a second-degree murder. Sundman was initially convicted and sentenced in 2018 for the murder of 24-year-old Jordan McLeod, with the two men described in the high court ruling as “drug dealers with a mutual enmity”. “On the day of the victim’s murder, the defendant unlawfully locked him in a moving truck and assaulted him repeatedly at gunpoint,” the ruling states. “The victim jumped out of the truck when it slowed to make a turn, but was then chased on foot by the defendant and two of his accomplices.” When McLeod jumped out of the truck and ran, Sundman chased after him and shot him at least three times before an accomplice, Sebastian Martin, fired the fatal shot. The Crown appealed to BC’s supreme court after the judge ruled Sundman could not be convicted of first-degree murder because McLeod was no longer being held against his will when he was killed. In his decision, with eight other Supreme Court of Canada judges in concurrence, Justice Mahmoud Jamal upheld Sundman’s first-degree conviction, writing that “although [McLeod] he was not physically restrained outside the truck, he continued to be forcibly restrained through force, fear and intimidation.” Prince George resident Jordan McLeod was found by a dog walker on the Kaykay Forest Service Road near Prince George in 2015. (Prince George RCMP) When a killing is not planned or deliberate, it becomes first-degree murder if it is committed at the same time as one of several “enumerated crimes of sovereignty,” Jamal says. “Parliament treated the murder committed in connection with these crimes of sovereignty as particularly serious and as warranting the extreme punishment of first-degree murder,” the ruling said. McLeod was still illegally restrained when he was chased down and shot, Jamal says. “The unlawful restraint and killing were close in time and involved a continuous course of domination. As a result, defendant’s conviction for first-degree murder is warranted,” he says. McLeod was living in Prince George at the time of the killing on January 16, 2015. He was initially reported missing by police. His remains were found by a man walking his dog off the Kaykay Forest Service Road in March of that year. Two other men convicted of the manslaughter did not take part in the high court appeal. Martin, who turned 40 this year, fired the shot that killed McLeod. However, the court ruled that he did not participate in the unlawful restraint of the victim. Sundman’s younger brother, Kurtis, was also sentenced in July 2018 to just under eight years in prison for manslaughter.
