B.C.’s highest court has upheld the second-degree murder conviction of a man who stabbed another man to death with a kitchen knife after a drunken altercation at a Burnaby karaoke club nearly seven years ago.
Lloyd Jay So, also known as "Hanjo," is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years for the brutal killing of Joong Kwan Kim at OB's Cabin, a Korean karaoke club located below Sushi Oyama at 5152 Kingsway.
On Sept. 18, 2017, So, a Surrey father of two, stabbed Kim in the heart, lung, groin, neck, back, arm, cheek and hands with a 10-inch knife he grabbed from the club's kitchen, according to information presented at his trial in 2020 and 2021.
Shortly before the stabbing, So had been overpowered and beaten up by members of Kim's group after So had tried to start a fight with one of them.
So, who was 36 years old at the time of the killing, didn't deny he stabbed Kim and took his life, but his lawyer, Kenneth Beatch, argued his client had been in a "dissociative state" at the time and was therefore not guilty due to the state of automatism.
Beatch also argued a combination of intoxication, blows to the head and "mental disruption" raised a reasonable doubt So would have been able to form the intent needed for murder.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Janice Dillon was not convinced and convicted So in April 2021.
But So launched an appeal, arguing Dillon had inappropriately put the burden on him to prove his intoxication, thus violating his presumption of innocence.
His lawyers further argued, Dillon had "misapprehended" evidence from a toxicologist and a forensic psychiatrist called by the defence; didn’t give sufficient reasons for why the evidence hadn't raised a reasonable doubt about So's "murderous intent," and failed to properly consider all of the evidence.
This week the B.C. Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, concluding Dillon had committed none of the alleged errors.
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