Dennis Oland’s legal team has launched an appeal to New Brunswick’s top judge asking for a review of a recent decision that denied bail to the convicted murderer.
Dennis Oland has been in custody for more than two months, after a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder in the death of his father Richard Oland.
A New Brunswick Court of Appeal judge has already refused to release Oland on bail, but his lawyers have filed documents with the court asking Chief Justice Ernest Drapeau to review that decision.
Nicole O’Byrne, a professor at the UNB Faculty of Law, says their chances are slim.
“You rarely get people given bail when they’ve been convicted on a murder charge. It’s only happened 21 times,” she said. “To actually ask for a review of that, we’re getting to very rarified space here.”
In this decision, Justice Marc Richard conceded that Dennis Oland is not a flight risk and not a threat to public safety. However, Richard says that releasing Oland on bail would damage the reputation of the justice system, particularly after he was convicted of second-degree murder by a jury of his peers.
O’Byrne says that the Oland defence team will have to argue that the decision to deny bail was a mistake.
“And it can’t be, we don’t like the decision, so review it for us,” she said. “There must be something that the judge who heard the bail application didn’t take into consideration, or didn’t weigh the factors properly and that needs to be reviewed by the appeal court.”
To back up their case, Oland’s lawyers will be using many of the documents they submitted at the first bail hearing, including dozens of character references given by Oland’s family and friends.
Oland is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years. The appeal of his convention is unlikely to be heard until this fall.
With files from CTV’s Mike Cameron.
