Manitoba’s Court of Appeal ordered a new trial on a first-degree murder charge because the trial reasons did not adequately explain how evidence suggesting a fight, accident or self-defence affected proof of murderous intent. The court did not disturb the accused’s convictions for robbery and forcible confinement.
In R v. Musa, 2026 MBCA 72, delivered August 24, 2026, a unanimous three-judge panel allowed Issa Pa Musa’s appeal only on the murder count. Justice Marc Monnin wrote the reasons, with Justices Holly Beard and David Kroft agreeing.
A fatal stabbing during confinement and robbery
After a judge-alone trial, Musa was convicted of confining and robbing people at a residence and fatally stabbing a man there. The trial judge found an independent confinement connected to the murder, making the murder first degree. A co-accused’s separate convictions were not under appeal.
The evidence included accounts from people who had consumed substantial amounts of drugs and alcohol, stolen property found with Musa, statements attributed to him after the incident and recorded telephone conversations. The judge recognized significant credibility and memory problems among witnesses and assessed their accounts with different levels of confidence.
The sole witness who said he saw the stabbing had given a sworn recorded police statement and testified at the preliminary inquiry, where defence counsel cross-examined him. At trial he professed little or no memory of the incident or his earlier accounts. The judge admitted those earlier accounts after a separate hearing on their admissibility.
On appeal, counsel abandoned a challenge to that admissibility ruling. The remaining arguments concerned whether the judge properly assessed the witness’s ultimate reliability and whether all evidence bearing on the intention required for murder had been considered. Those were distinct questions: admitting an account does not settle what weight it deserves.
The credibility challenge did not succeed
Musa argued that the judge had not adequately addressed the eyewitness’s intoxication, false denials and inconsistencies with another witness about the sequence of confinement. The appeal court nevertheless found the judge had appreciated the risks and had scrutinized the account rather than accepting it automatically.
The court applied the caution associated with Vetrovec, which requires particular care with evidence from an unreliable or otherwise problematic witness. In a judge-alone trial, the judge need not recite that principle by name or follow a fixed formula. The important point is understanding the reasons for caution before deciding whether the evidence deserves belief.
Nor is independent confirmation an absolute legal requirement before such a witness can be believed. Here, the court found enough support for the trial judge’s assessment of the central events, including confinement, stabbing and robbery. Unexplained inconsistencies did not justify overturning that assessment given the deference owed to trial findings of credibility and reliability.
Evidence pointing away from murder needed an answer
The murder issue was different. Musa maintained that even if he inflicted the fatal wound, the required intent had not been proved and the appropriate verdict would be manslaughter. Statements attributed to him described a fight and suggested accident or self-defence. Those accounts were evidence to assess, not findings that any defence had been established.
The Crown argued that a struggle was speculative and that the surrounding evidence supported the trial judge’s conclusion about intent. It relied on the eyewitness account, the circumstances of the stabbing and Musa’s conduct afterwards. The appeal court accepted that trial reasons must be read as a whole and not dissected for minor imperfections.
But evidence favourable to an accused must be considered when assessing reasonable doubt even when it comes through the Crown’s witnesses rather than testimony from the accused. A judge does not have to believe that evidence before it can raise a reasonable doubt on a vital issue.
The trial judge used Musa’s statements to another witness and recorded calls to corroborate that he had inflicted the wound. The reasons did not explain whether the accompanying descriptions of a fight, accident or self-defence were accepted, rejected or capable of raising a doubt about intent. A change in Musa’s demeanour after the stabbing, which could suggest it was unexpected, was also not considered on that issue.
The judge had described a deliberate stabbing directed at a particular location with sufficient force. The appeal court found no evidence supporting those particular inferences about choice of location or force. The pathologist could not determine the participants’ positions and had acknowledged a scenario involving a fight; the eyewitness did not describe enough of the physical interaction to resolve the gap.
The trial judge had also accepted that Musa initially intended to confine and rob, not kill. The reasons therefore needed to explain the finding that the required intent arose later. The fact of the stabbing alone did not support the suggested change in intention.
A new trial, not an acquittal
The Crown’s preferred reading was that the judge had considered and rejected the statements favourable to Musa. The appeal court found that interpretation inconsistent with the reasons as a whole on an essential element of the most serious charge. Although judges need not discuss every detail, their reasons must permit meaningful appellate review of critical issues.
Because it was unclear whether all the evidence relevant to murderous intent had been properly considered, the murder conviction could not stand. The court set it aside and ordered a new trial on that count alone, while dismissing the appeal concerning robbery and forcible confinement.
The ruling did not acquit Musa, substitute a manslaughter conviction or find that he acted in self-defence. It also did not decide the abandoned hearsay-admissibility challenge or establish that problematic witnesses can never be believed. Its central limit was that accepting a statement as proof of who caused a death did not remove the need to address its potentially exculpatory parts when deciding intent.
