AFP/Montreal
A former Canadian porn actor admitted at the start of his trial on Monday to killing and dismembering a Chinese student, but his lawyer blamed the gruesome crime on mental illness.
The court heard that Luka Rocco Magnotta, 32, has admitted to the underlying facts in the case, including killing 33-year-old Lin Jun.
But he formally pleaded not guilty to first degree murder, committing indignities to a body, harassing Canada’s prime minister and other charges that could see him jailed for life, if he is convicted.
The jury must now consider his state of mind at the time of the offences, and whether or not he is criminally responsible.
The defence said it would present medical files and expert witnesses to demonstrate the accused’s long history of mental illness, while the prosecution said it would show the crime was premeditated and not the act of a lunatic.
“Whether Mr Magnotta is exempt from criminal responsibility will be the matter for your deliberations,” defence attorney Luc Leclair said in opening remarks to the jury.
Magnotta is accused of using an ice pick to fatally stab Lin in May 2012, before sexually abusing and dismembering the man’s corpse, and then posting a video of the heinous act online.
Days after the killing, Montreal police discovered the victim’s torso in a suitcase by the trash outside an apartment building along a busy highway.
Lin’s severed hands and feet were sent in the mail to federal political parties in Ottawa - one of the packages was addressed to Prime Minister Stephen Harper - and to two schools in Vancouver. The head was found in a Montreal park months later.
Magnotta fled Canada, but was arrested in Germany in June 2012, following an international manhunt, and extradited. He was arrested in a Berlin Internet cafe, after stops in France and elsewhere in Germany.
As the trial got under way, Magnotta sat idly behind a glass enclosure in the cramped Montreal courtroom as Lin’s father looked on from one of only 13 seats in the gallery.
Prosecutor Louis Bouthillier called on the jury not to be swayed into believing that Magnotta must be insane in order to have committed such horrific crimes.
Bouthillier said this was a “planned and deliberate” murder, pointing to a December 2011 e-mail to a British journalist investigating cat mutilations, in which Magnotta purportedly said he wanted to videotape the slaughter of a human.
The defence said it would urge the jury to order in-hospital psychiatric treatment for Magnotta rather than life in prison.
If he is found not guilty by reason of insanity, he would land in a psychiatric ward until doctors deemed him fit for release.
The media dubbed him the “Canadian Psycho” after it was discovered that the soundtrack from the movie “American Psycho” was playing in the background of the video of the alleged murder that was posted online.
