Winnipeg man found not criminally responsible for beating 66-year-old roommate to death

A Winnipeg man has been found not criminally responsible for beating his roommate to death in 2022 after a court heard last month he was suffering from delusions at the time of the attack.

Jay Peter Penner, 35, was charged with manslaughter last fall in the September homicide of Son Minh Nguyen.

Penner and Nguyen were living together in a supportive housing complex for adults with mental disabilities on Home Street when Penner attacked his 66-year-old roommate because he believed he had psychic powers and was trying to harm him, Crown attorney Bryton Moen told a Manitoba provincial court on July 6.

Court heard police arrested Penner after he showed up at his mother's home with injuries on his hands following the attack.

"Mr. Nguyen did nothing to deserve this," Moen said. "And nothing we say or do here can ever bring him back or ever make up for the loss to the family."

Judge Victoria Cornick said she was satisfied Penner's counsel had established he should be found not criminally responsible for Nguyen's death a finding both defence and Crown agreed on.

"It is important to remember that this is not a 'get out of jail free' card,"Crown attorney Moen said.

"This is in effect an indeterminate sentence, in that Mr. Penner will remain under the care of the medical team potentially indefinitely, and he will be subject to continuing review and monitoring."

Rulings of not criminally responsible are rare in Canada.

Data from Statistics Canada's integrated criminal court survey shows that between 2006-07and 2020-21, they made up on average less than 1.2per cent of all decisions across the country, Marcella Cassiano, an assistant professor in the University of Winnipeg's criminal justice department, said in an email.

High-profile examples in Manitoba include the cases ofVince Li, who was found not criminally responsible for beheading a man on a Greyhound bus in 2008,and Earl Joey Wiebe, who was found not criminally responsible for killing his stepmother in 2000 in Niverville, Man.

History of schizophrenia

Penner's defence lawyer, Saheel Zaman, said his client has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and has struggled with significant hallucinations since 2014. While Penner had received treatment, that plan often included "trial and error" as certain medications he took stopped working, Zaman said.

He said Penner was surprised tolearn Nguyen had died.

LISTEN |What it means to be considered not criminally responsible and why it's an important part of our justice system:

"Mr. Penner feels very bad. He said that the deceased with respect to this matter was also somebody he got along well with," Zaman said.

"It was very difficult for him to hear the unfortunate circumstances that presented themselves and how the family has been impacted."

A report submitted to the court considered information gathered from a psychiatric evaluation, Penner's police statement and interviews with the accused's mother and a worker at the Home Street residence where the attack happened, all of which Cornick said supported a determination of not criminally responsible.

Victim 'the kindest soul':nephew

Families of both the accused and the victim were present at the hearing, including several of Nguyen's family members who flew in from Vietnam and listened to the proceedings through a translator.

Nguyen's nephew, Duy Nguyen, read a victim impact statement that described his uncle as "the kindest soul one could ever know" and "a remarkably resilient individual."

The nephew, who is living in Prince Edward Island where he's studying for a master's degree, said he remembers coming to Winnipeg with other relatives to visit his uncle in July 2022 just a few months before he was killed.

"Those were the most beautiful times of my life, when I experienced the joy of family reunion," he said.

Judge Cornick said she hopes Nguyen's family feels a sense of justice as the case against his killer comes to an end.

"There is a recognition that the act occurred, and so the family should walk away knowing that that happened here today that the tragedy has been recognized by Mr. Penner as having occurred, as him having engaged in the action," she said.

"It's not a matter of who did it. It's just a matter of what the consequence is."

Penner's first review with the Mental Health Review Board is scheduled for Aug. 14, a provincial spokesperson said.

At that point, the board will hear from a psychiatrist and potentially others on Penner's treatment team, "who will make a recommendation about whether he should be detained in hospital or discharged on conditions," the spokesperson said in an email.

The review board's disposition is supposed to come no later than 45 days after the verdict was delivered, but the court can extend the time for holding a hearing to a maximum of 90 days if it's satisfied there are exceptional circumstances that warrant it, the spokesperson said.