The British Columbia Court of Appeal has upheld the first-degree murder conviction of James Busch, who escaped from a Vancouver Island prison in 2019 with another inmate, then killed a man who lived near the institution.
Busch and fellow inmate Zachary Armitage escaped from William Head Institution, a minimum security prison, on July 7, 2019, and 60-year-old Martin Payne was murdered in his home the next day.
The Appeal Court ruling says Payne was found dead on his bathroom floor days later “in a pool of blood, with duct tape on his leg and arm.”
It says Armitage eventually pleaded guilty to the killing, but Busch continued on with a trial that focused on whether he was involved in the murder to some degree, “if at all.”
A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder in 2022, but he appealed the conviction claiming the lower court judge gave improper instructions about his “potential liability for aiding a planned and deliberate first-degree murder.”
The three-judge panel dismissed the appeal Friday, finding the judge gave “well-structured and organized” jury instructions that boiled down complex legal concepts to be “easily understood,” rejecting Busch’s appeal that focused on “one narrow area” of jury instructions.
