MANDEL: Hail Mary for man who stabbed his parents to death

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For double killer Alpha Henry, it’s a Hail Mary move that is his last desperate chance of avoiding many, many years in prison.

Last week, Superior Court Justice Joan Barrett found Alpha had slaughtered his parents, Colin and Veronica Henry, in their Etobicoke apartment on Sept. 22, 2022, then lay in wait in an unsuccessful attempt to murder his brother Daniel Kwame Henry as well.

At his judge-alone trial, he pleaded not guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and one of attempted murder, claiming his brother was the real killer in their family.

Now, in what will surely be an uphill climb, Alpha plans to try and prove he was not criminally responsible at the time due to a mental disorder to avoid a life sentence for murder.

On Friday, the judge signed off on a defence request to have him undergo a 30-day psychiatric assessment – the first step before his lawyer Jamie Kopman can argue he was NCR.

Barrett agreed there was enough evidence about Alpha’s behaviour for her to order an assessment: Daniel Kwame testified he and his parents had been concerned about his brother’s mental health and had him see a family doctor. He also described an incident in the weeks before the murders when he and his dad were on their way home from church and they spotted Alpha, who was not living with them. When they offered him a ride, he said he began swearing at them.

She also pointed to body-worn camera footage of Toronto Police escorting him out of the boiler room of a Kipling Ave. apartment where he was squatting as well as the first sergeant on the scene of the murders telling paramedics that Alpha was a “severe EDP (emotionally disturbed person).”

And then there was police body-worn camera footage of him at the hospital where he was being treated for wounds suffered during the struggle to kill his brother: he gave his dead parents as his emergency contacts and when he heard a voice in the hall, he said it was his father.

“I agree that all of this evidence provides the necessary reasonable grounds to determine whether or not Mr. Alpha Henry was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the offences,” the judge concluded.

Crown attorney Michael Wilson had initially opposed the assessment since there was “no air of reality” to the argument that Alpha was suffering from a mental condition at the time of the murders that made him unaware of the wrongfulness of what he was doing – especially, he said, when he took so many steps to cover up his crimes.

Alpha discarded items in a garbage bin behind the apartment building shortly after the murders, changed into his father’s clothes, cleaned up the blood in the apartment, posed as his mother to text his flight attendant brother to find out when he was returning from Japan and then, when his attempt to kill him went awry, called 911 and blamed Daniel Kwame for the slayings.

“All of this speaks to someone who has a very operating mind and a full understanding of the wrongfulness of his actions,” Wilson said.

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Yet the Crown decided to withdraw its objection to the assessment, he explained, after finding the Criminal Code sets the threshold to get a psychiatric assessment very low as well as reviewing past decisions that show the request has never been denied.

But he put Alpha on notice that this desperate play to avoid responsibility won’t go unchallenged.

“I just wish to make the record clear that in no way, shape or form is this a commentary on the part of the Crown with respect to any merit of an NCR defense,” Wilson said. “I expect that the Crown will be vigorously opposed.”

The case returns to court in April.

mmandel@postmedia.com