Appeal dismissed for B.C. man who used 'automatism' defence in karaoke club murder

The lobby of B.C. Supreme Court in downtown Vancouver is seen in a CTV News file image.

A man who claimed to be in a state of "automatism" when he killed a fellow patron at a B.C. karaoke bar has lost an appeal of his second-degree murder conviction.

Lloyd Jay So argued he was automatistic – meaning his consciousness was impaired and he had no control over his actions – when he stabbed Joong Kwan Kim to death on Sept. 18, 2017, but the trial judge rejected that defence.

Instead, Justice Janice Dillon found So stabbed the victim in a "fit of anger and humiliation" after losing a fistfight that he instigated after getting drunk at the Burnaby karaoke establishment.

"He rushed to the kitchen, took a knife that was out on a counter, and returned to the room," Dillon wrote in her 2021 sentencing. "He stabbed the victim and then followed the victim out of the room, continuing to stab him as he yelled 'die,' and then leaving the victim in a pool of blood near the entrance to the bar."

The judge sentenced So to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 10 years.

Grounds for appeal

So appealed his second-degree murder conviction on several grounds, including that Dillon failed to properly consider all the evidence related to his automatism defence.

The killer said the judge "misapprehended key aspects" of the opinion provided by a forensic psychiatrist, identified only as Dr. Tomita, who posited that So might have been in a dissociative state at the time of the stabbing, during which his actions would have been involuntary.

Tomita came to that conclusion, in part, because So suffered one or more blows to the head during the fight, which the psychiatrist suggested might have caused a concussion.

But Dillon favoured the opinion of a different psychiatrist, Dr. Lacroix, who believed So was capable of conscious, voluntary decision-making, despite his level of intoxication.

A three-judge panel from the B.C. Court of Appeal found no errors in Dillon's reasoning – noting, as the trial judge had, that Tomita's findings were coloured by the fact that So had not been entirely honest with him.

Need for 'accuracy and truthfulness' 

The court heard that So failed to disclose a previous road rage incident that resulted in him receiving a driving prohibition, downplayed the amount of alcohol he consumed on the night he killed Kim, and omitted the fact that he started the fight that preceded the stabbing.

"From a jurisprudential perspective, the law recognizes that automatism is easily feigned and, in the absence of evidence establishing a documented history of automatistic-like dissociative states, expert evidence will often be dependent on the accuracy and truthfulness of the account of events related to the expert by the accused," Justice Gregory James Fitch wrote in the appeals decision.

So also suggested Dillon had failed to consider all available evidence when determining whether he had murderous intent – but the panel noted the trial judge "reminded herself” on “no fewer than nine occasions” that she had to do so before weighing whether the Crown had proven intent beyond a reasonable doubt.

"Reading the judgment as a whole, I have no difficulty understanding why the judge decided as she did," Fitch wrote.

"I would dismiss the appeal from conviction."