WINNIPEG -- Canada's highest court will hear arguments over a new trial that was ordered for a man convicted of killing a Manitoba teenager 30 years ago.
In October, the Manitoba Court of Appeal ordered the trial for Mark Grant in the 1984 death of Candace Derksen. The court said the original judge didn't consider some evidence that could cast doubt on Grant's guilt.
The Supreme Court of Canada has now granted Manitoba prosecutors leave to appeal that decision.
"Guess What? My prediction was correct," Cliff Derksen, the teen's father, wrote on Twitter shortly after the ruling was released Thursday. "Our case is going to the Supreme Court! Wow."
Derksen was 13 when she disappeared on her way home from school. Her body was found six weeks later, bound and frozen, in a storage shed not far from her Winnipeg home. Grant wasn't charged until 2007 after numerous tests on a piece of twine used to bind the teen.
Grant was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced in 2011 to life with no parole eligibility for at least 25 years. He has repeatedly denied killing Derksen.
His lawyer appealed the conviction. He argued the trial judge was wrong to deny him the right to present evidence that Derksen might have been killed by someone else. Another girl had been abducted in a similar fashion nine months after Derksen's death when Grant was in custody.
"It seems to me that this evidence, which I view as very relevant, could provide the basis upon which a reasonable, properly instructed jury could acquit," Justice Michel Monnin wrote on behalf of the three-member Appeal Court panel last fall.
"The exclusion of the evidence denied the accused the opportunity of placing before the jury the full answer he wanted to make."
After the ruling, the Crown had the choice to ask leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, go ahead with a new trial or drop the case.
Derksen's parents said at the time they hoped the Crown would ask the Supreme Court to rule on the decision.
"If there's any doubt, then it needs to be clarified, for sure," Cliff Derksen said. "I guess we thought there wouldn't be doubt, but apparently there is."
