The trial of two men accused of killing a Metchosin man after they escaped from William Head Institution will remain a joint one after lawyers abandoned an application to split the case.
Zachary Armitage and James Lee Busch escaped from the minimum-security prison in Metchosin on the night of July 7, 2019.
The pair appeared before Justice David Crossin in Vancouver on Tuesday. It was expected that Busch’s lawyer, Schuyler Roy, would make a severance application to split the cases.
Roy, however, told Crossin that the application was being abandoned. Armitage’s lawyer, Jim Heller, and Crown prosecutor Chandra Fisher took no position on the change.
The two were discovered missing during an 11 p.m. head count. They were recaptured in Esquimalt on July 9 by an off-duty RCMP officer.
Martin Payne, 60, was found dead in his home on July 12, three days after his vehicle was found in Oak Bay.
After a preliminary hearing to determine whether sufficient evidence existed to go to the trial, the men were committed to trial in B.C. Supreme Court.
Busch and Armitage have already pleaded guilty to the prison break and received 12-month sentences.
The fact the men were in the minimum-security prison bewildered many, including the judge who sentenced them for the escape. Armitage had five previous escapes.
A February 2018 Correctional Service of Canada internal report assessed Armitage as a moderate risk to escape and best suited for a medium-security institution, “but one week later,” that recommendation was “overridden” and he was assessed as a low risk to escape and determined to be suitable for minimum security, Judge Roger Cutler said.
Armitage was placed at William Head in 2018 and was due for parole in September 2019.
Cutler said: “The public is entitled to expect that those incarcerated for violent criminal conduct and who have an extensive and recent escape history are rarely, and only with solid reasoning, placed in a position where escaping incarceration may be achieved merely by walking the shoreline at low tide.”
