Crown, defence present final arguments in 2023 stabbing retrial

A jury heard closing statements from the Crown and defence in the retrial over the 2023 death of 17-year-old Deijean Drybones before beginning deliberations late Thursday.

Deijean was found with a stab wound in Behchokǫ̀ in the early morning of August 4, 2023. He was taken to the community’s health centre and later Yellowknife’s Stanton Territorial Hospital, where he died.

Zakk Lafferty was charged with second-degree murder in 2023. In October 2025, a mistrial was declared after the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict. A retrial began last week.

Speaking to the jury for the last time, Crown prosecutor Brendan Green argued Deijean’s statement given to police before he died – in which he said Lafferty had stabbed him – was “heartbreaking” but truthful and compelling evidence. He described Lafferty’s statement to police as “a fabrication, and it’s calculated.”

“There’s no such thing as a simple murder, but what happened in this case is not complicated,” said Green.

Green described the Crown’s version of events the night Deijean died, saying friends had been drinking together in Behchokǫ̀ when Lafferty arrived at the house.

There was a fight between Lafferty and one of the individuals, which was filmed by Deijean and in which Lafferty lost his phone and vodka, Green said, and while Lafferty left the house after the fight, he returned later that evening and stabbed Deijean when Deijean said he didn’t have Lafferty’s phone.

Green urged the jury to find Lafferty guilty of murder or, if they did not believe Lafferty had intent to kill Deijean, manslaughter.

Kim Arial, the defence lawyer representing Lafferty, agreed with events up until what happened after the initial fight. Arial said jurors should believe Lafferty’s statement to police – he went home to bed after the fight. Arial said it wasn’t until he went to the Behchokǫ̀ health centre, where he was arrested, that he left his home again on August 4.

“This case is, above all else, a tragedy,” said Arial. “A tragedy that unfolded in circumstances that are unfortunately not rare in many northern communities.”

‘Unconscious bias’ from RCMP

Arial laid out a timeline of events that relied in part on security footage taken from a house in between the one where Deijean was found stabbed and the one where Lafferty lived.

In the security footage, an individual in a white t-shirt is seen walking in the direction of the house with Deijean and his friends at 12:32am. A similarly dressed individual is seen walking in the opposite direction at 1:44am, five minutes after Deijean recorded a Snapchat video of the fight with Lafferty. The defence urged the jury, in the context of other evidence presented to them, to consider the person in the white t-shirt to be Lafferty.

However, police found a second set of clips on the security footage that shows an individual in a black top walking towards the house with Deijean and his friends at 2:26am and returning in the opposite direction at 2:30am. Arial argued this individual was not Lafferty because, to change clothes in that manner, he would have had to know a camera was recording him.

“Zakk is not particularly sophisticated,” Arial said, arguing Lafferty was also intoxicated. Arial suggested the jury should consider that Lafferty showed up to the health centre in a white t-shirt with blood on it from the fight, so he would have also had to change back after returning at 2:30am if that was him.

Responding to the Crown’s suggestion that Lafferty fabricated his statement to police, Arial acknowledged it was not perfect, but statements from other witnesses were also inconsistent at times or were missing details.

Arial said a number of factors, like Lafferty being hung over, feeling tired from pain medication, and the pain from his injuries should be considered when the jury evaluates if Lafferty’s statement is credible and reliable.

“So he doesn’t remember the details precisely, but he sure tried to tell it like it was,” said Arial.

Arial’s final arguments to the jury were explaining what the defence says was RCMP tunnel vision and unconscious bias toward Lafferty being the only suspect from the start of the investigation. She focused on the testimony of RCMP lead investigator Greg Morrow.

She said while it is natural for RCMP to focus “on a particular theory of the case” because of the evidence presented to them, they received Lafferty’s name as a suspect right at the beginning then filtered everything through the lens that he was responsible.

Arial said with limited resources, RCMP officers could not “diligently” challenge their unconscious bias, and while Morrow’s explanations for actions he took individually appear to make sense, they more broadly only “confirmed the officers’ first and only theory.”

Jury begins deliberations

Arial said the jury must also confront unconscious bias when determining if Lafferty is guilty. She said jurors’ first interaction with Lafferty was the clerk saying he was on trial for the murder of Deijean, and they had since heard evidence that the Crown believes proves this.

“You must take the difficult path and combat that unconscious bias that you have,” said Arial.

She urged jurors to acquit Lafferty if they are not satisfied, beyond a reasonable doubt, he murdered Deijean.

Justice David Gates also instructed the jury that Canada’s criminal justice system holds a higher burden of proof than other levels of court that convict on a balance of probabilities.

Gates said if the jury believes Lafferty murdered Deijean beyond a reasonable doubt, they should find him guilty. But if they only believe the Crown’s theory is more probable than the defence’s, or that Lafferty didn’t murder Deijean, they must find him not guilty.

The jury was sent to deliberate just after 6pm on Thursday.