Killer's journals written in custody focus of Crown cross-examination at Saskatoon murder trial
Blake Schreiner kept journals before and after stabbing partner Tammy Brown
Blake Schreiner says he lied when he wrote in a journal that he was high on magic mushrooms the night that he stabbed his common-law partner Tammy Brown 80 times.
The admission came during cross-examination by prosecutor Melodi Kujawa.
The 39-year-old is testifying at his first-degree murder trial in front of Justice Ron Mills at Court of Queen's Bench in Saskatoon. Brown died in her home in the River Heights neighbourhood on Jan. 29, 2019.
Schreiner is not disputing that he killed Brown, but he's plead not guilty to the first-degree murder charge, claiming that he did not know what he was doing at the time.
Much of the trial has focused on what Schreiner wrote in his journals. It became clear Monday that there are different sets of journals being referenced.
The first set of journals contain Schreiner's detailed accounting of his hallucinations while taking the so-called magic mushrooms in the years leading up to Brown's death.
A second set of three journals were written after his arrest in 2019, when he was in custody and charged with murder. These are referred to as the "NCR journals," prepared as part of his "not criminally responsible" defence.
According to Justice Canada, "No person is criminally responsible for an act committed or an omission made while suffering from a mental disorder that rendered the person incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act or omission or of knowing that it was wrong."
Schreiner has testified that he wrote an amended set of two journals this year — called journals four and five — which contradict aspects of the three NCR journals.
It's in these two most recent journals that he changes his story to say that he was not high on mushrooms the night he stabbed Brown.
Rather, he said that voices in his head had instructed him to kill her, because she planned on alleging that he was a pedophile and then having him killed.
The trial continues all week.
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