Almost a year to the day that his first trial kicked off, a Richmond man once more stands accused of the second-degree murder of his wife on their wedding anniversary.
A second trial for James Jian Hua Wu started this week, after the original, six-week trial concluded in November of 2016 with a hung jury, unable to reach a verdict after 13 days of deliberation.
The process was thought to be one of the longest jury deliberations in the history of the B.C. judicial system.
On May 4, 2014, the body of Wu’s wife, Jin Jenna Cheng, was found with multiple stab wounds in the hallway outside the Granville Avenue apartment unit where she lived with her husband.
Wu was found next to her body at the complex, which is close to the intersection of Granville Avenue and Gilbert Road. He was arrested and subsequently charged with second-degree murder.
He is now standing trial at the B.C. Supreme Court for the second time in front of a new jury.
At last year’s trial, it was alleged that Wu had used a cleaver to inflict injuries to the neck and head area of his wife.
The Crown’s theory at the time was that it was a case of extreme domestic violence during a difficult and frustrating period in their marriage.
The court heard previously that, after police arrived, they found the accused and the victim lying on the floor outside their seventh-floor apartment suite in the 7000-block of Granville Avenue. The victim had been stabbed multiple times.
The defence called several expert witnesses who testified that at the time of the offence, Wu’s mental functioning was impaired and he was in the middle of a “dissociative” episode.
After the first trial ended, Dan McLaughlin, a spokesman for B.C.’s criminal justice branch, said the jury deliberations in the case “may very well be” the longest ever in the province.
“Unfortunately, we don’t track those types of statistics so I can’t officially confirm,” he said in an email.
The longest previous case is believed to be the Greeks gang murder trial, wherein the jury took 12 days before finding five men guilty of various offences in connection with three homicides. That verdict came in November 2012.
A jury in the trial of Yuan Xi William Tang, of Richmond, who was accused in the slaying of his wife, Lianjie Guo, went 11 days before finding Tang guilty of second-degree murder. That verdict was reached in November 2015.
With a file from Vancouver Sun/Province
