Man accused of 2021 beheading found not criminally responsible

Warning: This story contains graphic details of violence.

An Ontario judge has found a man accused of beheading one person and attacking two family members was not criminally responsible for his actions.

Jay Slade was charged with first-degree murder, indignity to a dead body, and assault in connection with a spring 2021 incident near Seeley's Bay, Ont., about 35 kilometres northeast of Kingston. 

On Wednesday, Superior Court Justice John Johnston ruled that Slade suffered from a major mental illness that caused him to experience commands to kill Colin Gill in the early morning hours of June 1, 2021.

Slade remains a danger to the public and should remain in custody, Johnston added. 

In November, lawyers made their competing arguments about Slade's state of mind on the day of the attacks. Defence lawyer Glenn Sandberg, who argued that Slade was not criminally responsible, compared the human mind to a house with form, function and everything in place.

But some homes have a very dark room with an inscription above the door stating "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," he said, a nod to Dante and the message above the entrance to hell.

"This is Jay Slade's room," Sandberg said. "Abandon rational choice and whatever tenuous grasp you once had on reality as the darkness of that room extinguishes the light which once illuminated the difference between right and tragically wrong."

Crown lawyer Keith Schultz countered that Slade failed to prove he was incapable of knowing what he had done was morally wrong, saying his evidence was "peppered with inconsistencies, contradictions and outright lies."

A 'very compelling' hallucination

Sandberg leaned heavily on the testimony of psychiatrist Julian Gojer and argued Slade had struggled with schizophrenia for years before the attacks, adding his client's condition would "wax and wane" with the use of cannabis.

Slade was responding to a "horrible command hallucination" from God to kill Gill in order to prevent "World War III."

In the view of the psychiatrist, his "moral understanding was significantly compromised by delusional thinking," said Sandberg, adding a command from God is a "very compelling" hallucination. 

"When you believe it's the voice of God, the morality in that is inherent," the lawyer continued.

Sandberg said the tools Slade used in the decapitation were arranged in a "somewhat ritualistic manner" along with Gill's head on the kitchen table, arguing that was also evidence that his client was in the grips of a delusion.

Sanberg said Gojer found Slade was not faking his condition, referring to past medical records for mental health treatment and the findings of a second psychiatrist who carried out testing and reached the same conclusion.

Internet searches about beheading

Schultz, the Crown lawyer, also began his submissions back in November with an analogy about a house — quoting a passage from the Bible about a foolish man who built his home upon a foundation of sand.

That house collapsed when besieged by rain and wind. When subjected to "rigorous legal analysis," Slade's defence similarly falls "with a great crash," Schultz said.  

Schultz ran over some of the disturbing remarks Slade had made to mental health professionals — that his mother and sister were "witches working for vampires," for example, and that Gill was their slave who needed to be set free.

Schultz said there was evidence Slade's actions were the result of reality-based motivations, including anger at his family members and his own "atypical and abhorrent beliefs."

The Crown lawyer then challenged the assertion that Slade decided to decapitate Gill because of a "spontaneous delusional belief in hallucination," pointing to Slade's internet search history. It showed he'd viewed content about beheading at least 10 times between 2015 and 2020.

Schultz concluded that any psychosis Slade was suffering was most likely caused by cannabis and wasn't sufficient enough to render him incapable of knowing his actions were morally wrong.

"Killing and dismembering someone by way of decapitation is a laborious and very particular way of going about it," said Schultz. "That's unlikely to have been something that he spontaneously chose to do."