The jury in the Toronto murder trial of J.S.R. for the Boxing Day 2005 killing of teenager Jane Creba heard it will consider some lesser charges against the accused.
J.S.R. -- now 20, but a young offender at the time of the incident, so he cannot be fully named -- will still face a charge of second-degree murder and five weapons charges. But instead of six charges of attempted murder, the jury will be asked to find him either guilty or not guilty of the lesser offence of aggravated assault.
"This is a matter of law, and it should not influence the jury on the other charges," Justice Ian Nordheimer told the jury.
Aggravated assault is when a person "wounds, maims, disfigures or endangers the life of the complainant," according to the Criminal Code of Canada.
Attempted murder is when a person is deemed to have intended to kill someone.
The evidence in the case is all in. The Crown has closed its case and the defence has declined to call any evidence.
As a result, the Crown will present its closing arguments next Tuesday, with the defence following on Wednesday.
Next Thursday, Nordheimer will instruct the jury on the applicable law, and then the jury could begin deliberations in the case that for them, began in mid-October with the Crown's opening address.
A key issue in the trial will be whether J.S.R. fired a shot that night.
Police found a 9mm Ruger semi-automatic handgun on J.S.R. when they arrested him at Castle Frank subway station about 40 minutes after the gunfire, and evidence presented at that trial has linked that handgun to the crime scene.
However, there is no forensic proof that J.S.R. fired the handgun that night. At the very end of the Crown's case, it filed a joint admission that Louis Raphael Woodcock had been in possession of the gun up until the time the shooting started in front of a Foot Locker store a block or so north of the Eaton Centre.
The Crown has presented a witness who testified he saw someone vaguely resembling J.S.R.'s description firing a handgun that day, but the defence has tried to cast doubt on that person's credibility.
J.S.R. is not accused of firing the shot that killed Creba, but under recent advances in Canadian criminal law, he can be found guilty of murder if the Crown proves he participated in a gunfight and another person returned fire that struck and killed a bystander.
With a report from CTV Toronto's Chris Eby