NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. - Robert Pickton's supposed confession to police should be discounted because interrogators used lies to manipulate the pig farmer into admitting to murder, his defence lawyer said Tuesday.
In the second day of his summation, Adrian Brooks focused on undermining a key piece of Crown evidence against the accused serial killer -- statements the Crown contends amount to a confession.
"What are we talking about when we're talking about a confession?'' Brooks asked the jury. "This is something that is very important for you to think about. Is this something that somebody really knows and really understands?''
Brooks rattled off a list of lies he said police told Pickton when he was being interrogated following his arrest in 2002.
Among them were that satellites were hovering over the Pickton farm and that Pickton's blood was mingled with that of one of the women he was eventually charged with killing.
Police are allowed to lie during interrogations of suspects and during the trial they admitted to lying to Pickton.
The lies included Sgt. Bill Fordy telling Pickton that victim Sereena Abotsway's blood was everywhere and that Mona Wilson's DNA was found in a large a large bloodstain on the mattress in Pickton's motorhome on the farm.
Police also said a dildo carrying Wilson's blood and Pickton's blood was found. That was not true.
And they falsely claimed close friend Dinah Taylor had turned on Pickton.
Brooks told jurors they shouldn't dismiss those lies as being necessary for a major murder investigation.
During the trial, jurors heard that in his statements to police Pickton said he wanted to kill as many as 50 women and was caught by police because he was sloppy.
Brooks said Pickton was simply "parroting back'' things he'd been told by police, who then claimed it was his confession.
"What we're trying to get at is finding somebody who has the knowledge of the person who did the act,'' said Brooks. "A confession is a kind of information that comes from the knowledge of the person who was there.''
Brooks said police lied to Pickton and forced him into a corner by telling him his life was over and that he was going to jail.
"How is he going to react when he had few options?'' Brooks said. "He can't save himself.
"Watch the (interrogation) video and see how he responds ... He thinks he can make a deal; he thinks he can negotiate.''
Brooks said police manipulated Pickton by invoking things that mattered most to him -- the Port Coquitlam pig farm where he'd lived all his life, his friendship with Taylor -- and he responded by trying to protect them.
"These are the kinds of things when you look at it from his point of view, you start to see how they play into what's going to develop in this interrogation,'' the defence lawyer said.
But it did not amount to a confession, said Brooks.
Even when Pickton tells the police he's nailed to the cross, Brooks admonished the jury not to take that as a confession and to put it into context.
Pickton was eventually charged with the murders of 26 women and the current trial is on six of those charges in the deaths of Abotsway, Wilson, Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin, Brenda Wolfe and Andrea Joesbury.
The women disappeared from Vancouver's drug-infested Downtown Eastside.
The defence is expected to conclude its final arguments Tuesday.
