Steven Randy Pirko

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A Kelowna killer sentenced to life in jail for second-degree murder has had his conviction overturned and will have a new trial.

A panel of judges at the Court of Appeal of B.C. have found that the original trial judge in Steven Pirko's second-degree murder conviction made several errors and ordered a re-trial.

Pirko was convicted of the 2014 murder of Chris Ausman who he bludgeoned with a hammer.

Pirko had argued it was self-defence and he was helping his friend during a fight with Ausman.

According to a March 14 Court of Appeal of B.C. decision, the original judge made errors in instructing the jury over the motive to prove intent for murder.

"In my respectful view, the cumulative effect of these errors resulted in an unsatisfactory trial," Court of Appeal of B.C. Justice Gregory Fitch said in the decision.

The case dates back to January 2014 when Ausman and his friend Elrich Dyck were drunk and walking down Highway 33 in Rutland when they got into an altercation with Ausman.

Pirko had testified that Ausman ran across the street and began punching Dyck in the face. Pirko then hit Ausman with a hammer twice in the back of the head.

Ausman's body was found early the next morning on a Rutland sidewalk.

Nearly three years passed before Pirko was charged and he then confessed to hitting Ausman with a hammer.

Pirko always maintained that it was in self-defence and that he didn't mean to kill Ausman.

The Court of Appeal ruled that the original judge misdirected the jury in the choice of language used.

"More importantly, I have found that the instructions given on the (Pirko's) primary defence were, taken as a whole, so confusing as to amount to error in law," Justice Fitch said in the decision. "I have also concluded that those instructions were, on occasion, wrong in law and prejudicial to Pirko. In addition, I have concluded that the judge erred in law by failing to give the jury the assistance it required in using Pirko’s post-incident conduct to determine whether the Crown had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that his intervention in the fight constituted an unlawful act and, thus, the offence of manslaughter."

Ultimately, the conviction was overturned and the case will have a new trial. It's unclear when the new trial will take place.

For more stories on the case go here.

— This story was corrected at 8:45 a.m. March 15, 2023. The original story said the Court of Appeal found the original judge failed to address "inflammatory and factually inaccurate" submissions made by the Crown. However, the Court of Appeal dismissed this argument.

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