‘Jermaine Dunkley pulled the trigger that night,’ says Crown as Michael Parmer murder trial concludes
Jermaine Dunkley, a crack dealer who appeared to witnesses as sketchy" and looking for trouble," shot Michael Parmer in an execution-style murder" outside an east Hamilton bar, argued a prosecutor in closing arguments Thursday in a first-degree murder trial that began May 10.
Parmer, 22, of Niagara Falls, N.Y., was killed after a night with friends on Sept. 8, 2005 at CDs sports bar on Ottawa Street North. The Crown argued that Parmer had flirted with Dunkley's girlfriend.
Dunkley wasn't arrested and charged with first-degree murder until 2017.
During the hearing on Zoom, assistant Crown attorney Andrew McLean showed notes taken by a Hamilton police officer, quoting a confidential informant: Germs (Dunkley) shot a guy right in the eye ... Took out his gun and shot him. Germs is a psycho." The informant added: They will kill me."
The informant - whose name is protected by a publication ban - was at the centre of the case in the judge-only trial before Justice Joseph Henderson.
Dunkley's lawyer, Nathan Gorham, suggested in court that the informant is the weakest link in the Crown's case for changing details of her account over the years. He suggested that she is a calculated, sinister opportunist," who told police what they wanted to hear.
McLean countered that the informant is a complex woman" who got the essential facts of what happened the night of the shooting correct.
It was 12 years before anyone was willing to go on the record to identify Mr. Dunkley as the one responsible for this killing," he said. As she said in her testimony, right is right and wrong is wrong, and Jermaine Dunkley pulled the trigger that night."
If anything, McLean suggested, Dunkley is the one with the credibility problem.
The prosecutor cited lies Dunkley told police - including denying he had been at the bar, then changing his story - and his criminal record, which includes assault with a weapon and a conviction for first-degree murder in Toronto that he is serving.
The judge will reveal his decision in the trial on Sept. 2. He will also address a Charter challenge to the case submitted by the defence, which is seeking to have the entire prosecution stayed.
The judge would only make a ruling on that Charter application if he finds Dunkley guilty of first-degree murder.
Jon Wells is a Hamilton-based reporter and feature writer for The Spectator. Reach him via email: jwells@thespec.com