Jury now deliberating in the Haiden Suarez Noa murder trial

A Hamilton jury is now deliberating on whether Haiden Suarez Noa is guilty of murder or manslaughter in the 2013 stabbing death of his then girlfriend Tania Cowell.

Now that the jury are sequestered and we can tell you more of the things they were not told during the trial.

Tania Cowell was 36 years old when she was killed; stabbed 11 times by her boyfriend Haiden Suarez Noa while their five month old son lay nearby. The jury heard the two had been fighting for the past 13 hours.

Suarez Noa turned himself in to police the next day in Guelph, where he had lived before moving in with Cowell in Stoney Creek. First he told police that he’d killed her when she came at him, but later changed that story.

During his first trial in 2015, he told a court for the first time that he snapped when Cowell called him an f-ing immigrant and said she was moving out and taking the baby. He said he already had a knife in his hand and only remembers thrusting it into Cowell twice, not the eleven times forensic evidence confirmed.

The jury knows there was a previous trial, but not that Suarez Noa was convicted of manslaughter and that the crown later won an appeal of that conviction. The court of appeal agreed that the defence should not have been allowed to present evidence from forensic psychiatrist Julian Gojer, who testified it was possible Suarez Noa had erupted at Cowell’s words and stabbed her repeatedly before returning to his senses.

This time, prosecutor Janet Booy had a psychiatrist with a competing opinion ready to testify but in the end the judge did not allow Dr. Gojer’s testimony at all.

The 2015 verdict was chilling for women’s groups in the city, because of the idea that someone could be excused for murder just by being provoked with words. Suarez Noa was originally sentenced to 11 years in prison; if he’s convicted of second degree murder, he’ll get life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 10 years.