Drunk defence rejectedEx-rugby player killed prostitute he found on CraigslistBy Susan Lazaruk, The Province · October 3, 2009A former University of B.C. rugby player faces an automatic minimum of 10 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder for the 2007 strangling of a prostitute in a Kitsilano apartment -- despite his defence of intoxication.
A jury of six men and six women delivered the verdict for Andrew William Evans in Vancouver Supreme Court on Friday just after 9 p.m. They had deliberated for a day and a half.
The family of the dead woman, Nicole Parisien, 33, originally from Vancouver Island, were "very pleased with the verdict," said family friend Nina Rivet.
Evans, 27, originally from Calgary, admitted killing Parisien on Aug. 27, 2007, after finding her sex-for-hire services advertised on Craigslist following a night of heavy drinking and drug-taking at the Roxy nightclub in downtown Vancouver.
He had paid $200 to have sex with her in an apartment in the ivy-covered green building at the southwest end of the Burrard Street Bridge, killed her, then noisily dragged her body, wrapped in bedding, down five flights of stairs and into some bushes.
Evans' lawyer, Peter Wilson, asked the jury to find the restaurant worker, who had gone back to drinking after years of sobriety, guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter because the amount of alcohol he consumed that night prevented him from forming the intent necessary to be found guilty of murder.
Manslaughter requires no minimum jail time before possible early release.
Madam Justice Catherine Wedge instructed jurors they had to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Evans meant to kill Parisien -- or intended to cause bodily harm that he knew would likely have caused death, with no regard to whether she could die.
During the address, the neatly dressed and groomed Evans showed no emotion, but occasionally glanced at his father and his weeping mother.
The jury heard that Evans, a former peer counsellor at UBC, drank heavily that night, took a partial dose of ecstasy and used marijuana. Friends pegged his drunkenness at eight or nine on a scale of one (sober) to 10 (comatose).
They recalled him being hyper, wild-eyed and energetic.
On his way home, Evans had a taxi stop at a convenience store to get cigarettes and while there, used a computer to take down two sex-for-hire numbers he found on Craigslist.
After Parisien questioned how much Evans -- who was unable to get an erection -- had had to drink, he "got terribly angry or hurt and flew into a rage and began hitting and choking her," then realized he had killed her, the jury heard.
Evans took a Greyhound bus to his parents' home in Calgary and told them he might have killed someone. He turned himself in to police and confessed.
The three-week trial heard that Evans started drinking when he was 12 and spent 11 months at a treatment centre beginning in 1999 when he was 17, and that his family believed he had remained sober from 2000 to 2007. One of his rugby teammates had never known him to take a drink.
slazaruk@theprovince.com© Copyright (c) The Province
