Calgary man stabbed neighbour: Alberta’s top court puts end to all appeals

CALGARY – The Alberta Court of Appeal has dismissed two appeals in the case of a man who argued he was fending off an attempted sex assault when he stabbed his new neighbour 37 times.

Nicholas Rasberry was found guilty of manslaughter in the death of school teacher Craig Kelloway in May 2013.

Rasberry was originally charged with second-degree murder. He admitted at his trial that he stabbed Kelloway after the two men and their wives had spent time drinking at a barbecue at Rasberry’s Calgary home, but he said he acted in self-defence.

He said Kelloway, who was originally from Glace Bay, N.S., had threatened to sexually assault him and his wife.

Justice Robert Hall said he did not view the stabbings as “mere self-defence.”

“Rasberry stabbed Kelloway 37 times. In doing so, he broke one knife and had access to another. He broke a second knife and bent a third,” Hall said in his verdict in October 2015.

“It is important that the sentence denounces the crazy, excessive force used by Rasberry in killing Kelloway. The number of stabbings and slashings with the use of three weapons is a substantial, aggravating factor in this case.”

Alberta’s top court rejected a request that Rasberry be acquitted. The defence argued that the court erred by not fully accepting his self-defence claim.

“We are satisfied that the trial judge accepted Rasberry’s evidence to the extent necessary to ground the defence of partial provocation,” the three-member appeal panel wrote.

“The trial judge found the wrongful act as described by Rasberry, and the response to it, met both prongs of the test of provocation and the Crown had not proved otherwise.”

The panel also ruled that the judge acted properly in his finding that the severity of Rasberry’s attack on Kelloway was not reasonable.

The court also dismissed the Crown’s submission that Rasberry should be retried because his self-defence claim had no “air of reality.”

Rasberry remains free on bail until his appeal of his seven-year sentence is heard.

— Follow @BillGraveland on Twitter

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version said all appeals in the case had been dismissed and Rasberry would have to turn himself in.