Dennis Oland could be released on bail today to await new trial

Dennis Oland will be back before the New Brunswick Court of Appeal this morning for a bail hearing after his second-degree murder conviction in the 2011 death of his father, Richard, was overturned on Monday.

A three-justice panel has ordered a new trial, citing the trial judge's "fundamentally flawed" instructions to the jurors last fall on how they should deal with Oland's incorrect statement to Saint John police about what jacket he was wearing on the night his father was killed.

Oland, 48, who has been in prison for 10 months, serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for at least 10 years, could soon be back at home in Rothesay, likely under some court-imposed conditions.

"We should all bear in mind that Mr. Oland has reacquired the benefit of the presumption of innocence," said Chief Justice Ernest Drapeau, who read a summary of the panel's decision aloud in the Fredericton courtroom.

The bail hearing is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. AT and will be live streamed by CBC New Brunswick.

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Justice Marc Richard, who in February rejected Oland's request for bail while awaiting his appeal, will be presiding.

At that time, Oland was a convicted murderer. But this time, it's as if he is being charged for the first time.

Although there is a reverse onus on those accused of murder to argue ​reasonable grounds as to why they shouldn't be held in custody, Oland was released pending his first trial and abided by all of the court-imposed conditions.

Those included surrendering his passport, advising police of any travel outside New Brunswick, maintaining his residence in Rothesay and advising police of any change of address.

His uncle Derek Oland, the executive director of Moosehead Breweries, had also posted a $50,000 surety.

When Oland unsuccessfully sought bail pending his appeal, prosecutors had said they wanted to see the same conditions imposed, along with $400,000 in sureties — half from his uncle and half from his mother, Connie Oland.

The body of Richard Oland, 69, was discovered lying face down in a pool of blood in his Saint John investment firm office on July 7, 2011. He had suffered 45 blunt and sharp-force injuries to his head, neck and hands. No weapon was ever found.

His son, Dennis Oland, was the last known person to see him alive during a visit at his office the night before. Oland told police he was wearing a navy blazer, but video surveillance showed he was actually wearing a brown sports jacket.

A week later, a brown Hugo Boss jacket was seized from his bedroom closet with a dry cleaning tag attached to the collar.

Forensic testing showed the jacket had four small bloodstains on it — two on the right sleeve, one on the upper left chest and one on the back, near the hem, in the middle. They ranged in size from sub-millimetre to about two centimetres.

DNA extracted from three of those areas matched his father's profile. The estimated probability of selecting an unrelated individual at random from the Canadian Caucasian population with the same profile is one in 20 quintillion, the trial heard.

The jacket was taken to be dry cleaned the morning after police told Oland he was a suspect in his father's death.

The Crown argued Oland had lied about what he was wearing to mislead police, but the defence maintain it was an "innocent mistake," and that it was his wife who took the jacket to be dry cleaned, along with several other items, because they needed clean clothes for the upcoming visitations and funeral.

'No probative value'

The appeal court ruled the trial judge, Court of Queen's Bench Justice John Walsh, did not properly instruct the jurors that even if they found Oland's incorrect statement about what jacket he was wearing that night was a lie, "it had no probative value unless they concluded, on the basis of other evidence independent of that finding, that the lie was fabricated or concocted to conceal his involvement in the murder of his father."

Walsh, who sought input from both the Crown and the defence in preparing his 204 pages of instructions, told the jurors: "You must not use the evidence about what Dennis Oland said about the colour of the jacket in deciding or helping you decide that Dennis Oland committed the offence charged unless you reject any innocent explanation you may find for it."

Oland has been in custody since Dec. 19, when a jury found him guilty following a three-month trial in Saint John's Court of Queen's Bench and roughly 30 hours of deliberations over four days.