Spectators on one side of a courtroom in Barrie gasped on Friday, while those on the other side applauded as Superior Court Justice Vanessa Christie delivered her final verdict.
“Robert Sampson is not guilty of the count that is charged,” she declared, after reading from her 168-page decision for four hours on Friday.
Family members of Tracy Reid, who was found severely injured outside the Silver Swan Villa on Davey Drive on June 19, 2019 and later pronounced dead in hospital, left the courthouse angry.
A while later, Robert Sampson emerged with his legal team, Eginhart Ehlers and Stacey Tanaka. He was free from the handcuffs by which he was bound when he was escorted into courtroom 1 that morning. And he was free of the jail where he had been held since being charged with first-degree murder in December of 2019.
“I’m just happy the truth came out and I’m happy to be out of there, out of jail ... happy to go home today.”
Nattily clad in a dark suit and pale purple shirt, Sampson, 59, said he doesn’t blame the family for being angry. He described Reid as “a very good friend” and said he missed her.
“I don’t think they have accused me, either. But I think there could have been a better investigation for sure," Sampson said outside the courthouse.
“I’m just happy to be out and carry on and put this behind me for now,” he said.
When asked what he’ll do next he said he’d like to go swimming and get some relief from a bad back.
Sampson said he has no idea how Reid died. He wouldn’t comment on the judge’s findings that his relationship with Reid was abusive and that he caused some of her injuries.
In her decision, Christie described their relationship as “tumultuous and sometimes volatile.” It was one that included violence.
She referred to a number of incidents of abuse in the year and months before Reid’s death, including one which prompted an officer to turn on her Taser. Sampson, she said, desired and had the ability to control Reid’s movements.
Christie went through the evidence in detail, finding much of it inconclusive or unclear, with some of the witness testimony inconsistent with other testimony.
But she did determine that Sampson and Reid had a heated argument the night before Reid died. Christie concluded that Sampson assaulted Reid that night in his unit at the Silver Swan.
However, the judge wasn’t convinced that Sampson necessarily caused all of the blunt-force injuries found on Reid’s body. There were, she added, other plausible theories.
Just how Reid left his unit that night was one of the questions she determined the circumstantial case couldn’t answer. Evidence of foliage in his home didn’t necessarily mean that he carried her to the bush area nearby where she was found.
And then there was the suggestion that another area resident ran into Reid in the darkness of night on his e-bike. That may have caused some of Reid’s injuries. It may have also triggered arrhythmia in Reid who had a coronary artery disease. An autopsy also found recent cocaine and alcohol exposure.
It was the e-bike rider who was the first to find Reid near the Silver Swan Villa residence and later called 911. The defence suggested the man then recovered the mirror that was knocked off his bike when he struck Reid, which may have also involved moving her onto her back and under a tree.
The court was told that it would be impossible for an autopsy to determine there was a cardiac arrhythmia — only a monitor at the time of the event could determine that.
Those combined factors and the inability to parse out specified details added up to doubt for the judge.
“The reality is that Ms. Reid’s death could have occurred without the blunt-force injuries occurring at all,” the judge concluded.
Ehlers, the defence lawyer, described Justice Christie’s decision as a great guideline for lawyers to follow in cases in the future, given the amount of detail provided.
He agreed with Sampson about the investigation of Reid’s death.
“Could the police have done more? Yes, absolutely. There’s no doubt in my mind,” he said. “It’s one of those things, the police have a difficult job, there’s so much to consider in all of these cases. But ultimately they have to make decisions ... pursue prosecution or not.”