Unsealed appeal decision sheds light on murder of Donald Chad Smith

Donald Chad Smith was shot to death while delivering a pizza in 2010 "for reasons so trivial as to beggar belief," an Appeal Court ruled in a recently unsealed decision that sheds new light on a case that has resulted in murder convictions for two men.

In surprising testimony earlier this month in Nova Scotia Supreme Court, Nathan Johnson told the the trial of co-accused Randy Desmond Riley that Johnson alone had pulled the trigger and was responsible for Smith's death.

This came even though Johnson had pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder at his own 2015 trial, and had unsuccessfully appealed his conviction earlier this year. He is currently serving a life sentence.

Despite Johnson's testimony, Riley was found guilty of second-degree murder Monday, after a Halifax jury deliberated his fate over the weekend.

Johnson's appeal was heard in January 2017 by a three-member appeal panel, but was sealed along with his trial in order to grant Riley a fair trial.

On Oct. 23, 2010, Smith was killed while delivering a pizza inHighfieldPark.

The appeal decision, written by Justice Duncan Beveridge, statesthat "for reasons so trivial as to beggar belief, Randy Riley decided a pizza delivery man, Chad Smith, deserved to die."

The Crown saidthis was because of a historical grievance between Riley and the victim a hammer blow to Riley's head when they were younger.

At Johnson's original trial there were two key Crown witnesses: Johnson's former girlfriend, Kaitlin Fuller, who was 17 at the time of the killing; and Paul Smith, a friend of Riley's who drove Johnson and Riley on the night of the murder.

Witness testimony 'meshed'

Fuller demanded money before agreeing to testify, believing she would only get money if Johnson was convicted, and gave evidence contradictory to what she'd told police, with details of her story changing over time.

Paul Smith, on the other hand, refused to co-operate with police until he himself was charged only then did he provide a statement incriminating Riley and Johnson.

Despite the unreliability of these witnesses, the decision notes that they weren't known to each other, "yet their evidence about the events of October 23, 2010 meshed."

Similar to what hesaid in Riley's trial, Smithtold the jury in Johnson's case that be drove them to get a "thing" a sawed-off shotgun.

Fuller told the court Johnson had said he called for a pizza to be delivered to a blue building in the north end of Dartmouth, a place Johnson chose because it was close to the woods and to his aunt's house.

Johnson told Fuller that he was the one who called the pizza place from a pay phone and that he disguised his voice.

Fuller recounted that Johnson waited out back by the woods for an hour or more, while Riley went to the blue building to wait for the pizza delivery. Johnson told her he heard "one shot, a bang" and Riley came running from the other side of the building with the gun. He gave the gun to Johnson and ran the other way.

Johnson then told Fuller that he took the gun, fled into the woods with it and put the gun inside "a tin pipe or something."

Police found the gun in a drain pipe the day after Smith's death. It had two shells, one spent and one unspent. The forensic pathologist confirmed Smith died from one shot to the chest with a shotgun.

'Conviction was inevitable'

Johnson's jury had difficulty reaching a decision, coming back with several questions and taking more than two days to decide.

Similarly, it took Riley's jury 29 hours of deliberations over five days to reach a verdict.

Beveridge wrote that there were three grounds of appeal: that the trial judge, Justice Joshua Arnold, erred in his instructions to the jury on party liability to first-degree murder, in admitting inadmissible hearsay evidence and in his instructions to the jury on how to use that evidence.

"If the evidence of Kaitlin Fuller and Paul Smith were accepted by the jury, there was overwhelming evidence that the appellant did many things that aided and abetted Randy Riley to cause Chad Smith's death," the Court of Appeal writes.

"The jury found that the appellant had done things that, at least in their view, amounted to a significant contributing cause of Chad Smith's death."

The appeal decision notes that the case was about the credibility and reliability of Fuller and Paul Smith, "not the nuances of an aider's liability for first degree murder."

"There is no realistic possibility the verdict would have been different, and given the extent to which the evidence of Kaitlin Fuller and Paul Smith were corroborated, conviction was inevitable."