NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. - Legal arguments will continue in a British Columbia court today as the province attempts to have a “high-risk” designation applied retrospectively to a mentally ill man who killed his three children.
Allan Schoenborn was found not criminally responsible for stabbing his 10-year-old daughter and smothering his eight and five-year-old sons in their Merritt, B.C., home in April 2008.
Two years later, he was placed in custody at a psychiatric hospital in Coquitlam, B.C., but this past May the B.C. Review Board granted Schoenborn escorted community outings.
In September, the province's Criminal Justice Branch announced it had filed an application in B.C. Supreme Court to have Schoenborn declared a “high-risk accused.”
The high-risk label was created in legislation passed in July 2014, and Crown lawyers want to apply the law, reverse the community outings and have Schoenborn locked up indefinitely.
Schoenborn's lawyers are expected to argue today that the law should not apply to their client because it was passed more than four years after the verdict.
