Susan Clairmont: Judge says fatal fire was ‘a planned and deliberate crime.’ But did Richard Taylor do it?

Richard Taylor is either guilty of first-degree murder, or he's not.

The verdicts available to the six women and six men of his jury are limited, Superior Court Justice Toni Skarica explained before sending them out to begin its deliberations at about 12:45 p.m. on Wednesday.

While some decision trees" given to jurors on first-degree murder cases are complex, the decisions this jury needs to make to get to a verdict are streamlined.

That's because, according to the judge, the arsonist who set the fatal fire that burned Carla and Alan Rutherford alive had to have intended for the blaze to kill them or had to have known it would likely kill them.

The real issue in this case is whether there was an arson and whether Richard Taylor was the arsonist," Skarica said in his charge to the jury. He then narrowed that down even further by saying given the evidence ... the only question for you to resolve in my opinion is who is the arsonist ... Because I think it is fairly clear that the arsonist intended to kill Carla Rutherford and Alan Rutherford."

It is pretty obvious that this is a planned and deliberate crime by the arsonist," the judge said.

Planning and deliberation leads to first-degree murder.

The air of reality is there really are only two reasonable verdicts here," Skarica said.

That means the jurors cannot find Taylor guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter.

If they believe the Crown team has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Taylor was the arsonist, the deaths were caused unlawfully and that Richard Taylor had the state of mind required for murder (there was no evidence otherwise - he was not mentally ill or impaired) then they must find him guilty of first-degree murder. If they have reasonable doubt, their verdict must be not guilty.

Taylor, 46, is on trial for two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his mother and stepfather. The Crown says he stole into their Dundas home on July 9, 2018, while they slept, poured an accelerant on their bedroom floor and put a match to it.

Carla, 64, never made it out of the house.

Alan, 63, dragged himself to a neighbour's porch. He used his dying words to try to tell six people what had happened. He told some of them that Rich did it for the money.

Skarica gave the jury special instructions on how to consider Alan's dying declarations.

Alan Rutherford was not here to testify," the judge said. So he could not be questioned on what he said or what he meant to say.

Jurors were told to take into account Alan's physical and mental state when he spoke those dying words and consider that the witness accounts may be less reliable than other evidence."

They should ask themselves: Would witnesses have any reason to make it up? Could they be mistaken? Did they put their own interpretation on what he said?"

The trial heard Taylor was in debt and stood to inherit money from his mother.

A husband, father and former Hamilton elementary school teacher, Taylor testified during the month-long trial he was home asleep with his four-year-old son around the time of the homicides. There was no evidence to corroborate his alibi.

Jurors were to deliberate until about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday before going to a hotel for the night. Usually a jury works until later in the evening, however a major movie shoot outside the courthouse caused the judge to order an early finish.

Jurors will continue to deliberate until they come to a unanimous verdict.

Susan Clairmont is a justice columnist at The Spectator. sclairmont@thespec.com