Jeffrey Salomonie guilty of 1st-degree murder in Daisy Curley death

Jeffrey Salomonie has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Daisy Curley, who was found dead in her Iqaluit home in May 2009.

Justice Neil Sharkey handed down the verdict in an Iqaluit courtroom Tuesday afternoon in front of about a half a dozen of Curley's family members.

Salomonie declined to appear in court for the verdict, instead remaining in the Nunavut court's jail cells.

First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years.

Salomonie had pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. At the beginning of the trial, he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, but Crown prosecutors didn't accept the plea and proceeded on the murder charge.

Both Crown and defence had agreed Salomonie killed Curley in her own home by hitting the 33-year-old Iqaluit woman in the face with his fists and striking her with a hockey stick after a night of drinking. The trial's arguments centred on the legal requirements for a murder conviction versus a manslaughter conviction.

The Cape Dorset man testified he could not remember assaulting Curley because he was intoxicated at the time.

Justice Sharkey rejected that defence in his decision, pointing to the fact Salomonie could recall several things from that night, including spending time with her in his hotel room at the Frobisher Inn, asking her three times to spend the night with him, going to Curley's house by taxi, pouring a drink, passing out then waking up to see blood, wiping his shoes in the kitchen and walking back to his hotel, even noting the time he arrived at 5:30 a.m.

"[Salomonie] was drunk, to be sure. But he was certainly self-aware, and he acted knowingly when he ended the life of Daisy Curley," Sharkey said. 

"He was not so drunk that he did not know what he was doing. I reject that notion outright. It just does not make common sense, and the law and common sense are not strangers." 

The first-degree murder conviction hinged on whether or not Salomonie killed Curley while committing sexual assault. 

Sharkey says in his view, blood stains on the waistband of Curley's jeans and underwear and a "haunting and telling" crime scene photo showing a blood transfer stain on Curley's naked hips and buttocks indicate that her pants and underwear were pulled down by an assailant with bloody hands.

"The message it conveys is clear and stark. Any reasonable person who looks at this photo can come but to only one conclusion, and can say only one thing about what they see, namely, 'this woman has been beaten and sexually manhandled,'" Sharkey said.

Salomonie is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday.