A Vernon, B.C., man who is charged with second-degree murder will find out later this month if a BC Supreme Court Justice will pave the way for him to stand Trial, despite significant brain damage.

Richard Fairgrieve is charged with the killing of Willy Bartz in June 2017. Since that time he’s suffered multiple strokes that have impaired his speech and general cognition.

In 2020, after the strokes, he was found unfit to stand trial but last November that decision was reversed in a BC Review Board Hearing, at which he expressed a desire to go to trial.

This week, another hearing with evidence on Fairgrieve’s competency was held and BC Supreme Court Justice Alison Beames is scheduled to offer her decision on the matter June 20, nearly six years after the killing occurred.

One of the issues she will be considering is the definition of “meaningful participation” and whether Fairgrieve would have the ability to communicate with counsel, should there be a trial, or understand the evidence given.

Crown counsel Alison Buchanan said Fairgrieve has suffered a number of traumatic brain injuries, as well as strokes that have impacted his cognitive abilities.

“He suffers from receptive and expressive aphasia, which means that he has delays and we saw clearly saw he had delays both in processing information  … and in communicating his information, and that’s the expressive part of the aphasia,” she said.

“Any communication with Mr. Fairgrieve is low, it’s laboured and it’s difficult. However, the test for fitness is a low threshold, here’s a limited cognitive capacity.”

Buchanen argued the Crown’s job is to establish that he meets the minimum threshold to stand trial, not necessarily process evidence presented over the course of the legal process or even recall actual events relating to the crime in question.

“I’m gonna submit that that’s not required as part of a rudimentary ability to communicate with counsel,” she said.

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“He is able to communicate at the moment, he’s able to process and understand, he’s able to communicate his needs and his wants.”

This, she said, is something Fairgrieve demonstrated in his review board hearing. Also, she argued that a defence lawyer can make accommodations for his cognitive issues by speaking slowly, breaking issues down into smaller words, but a rudimentary understanding of the process would be aided by those changes.

“(Those) could bring them to the threshold of rudimentary participation and a rudimentary understanding,” she said.

Verdurmen, Fairgreave’s lawyer,  said Crown counsel did not meet the bar needed to order a trial, which would mean the 2020 decision by a supreme court judge would stand and Fairgreave would be considered unfit for trial.

Fairgrieve told the BC Review Board he wants to go to court for the trial looking into Bartz’s killing. He has denied he hurt someone and told his treating psychiatrist he plans to plead not guilty.