Cannibal gets free lawyer

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A man convicted of butchering his best friend at a hotel and stuffing the body parts into two hockey bags can have a taxpayer-funded lawyer to argue his appeal, Ontario's top court ruled on Wednesday.

In granting the funding request, Appeal Court Justice Peter Lauwers said it wasn't his role to weigh in on the merits of the appeal but to determine whether James McCullough had reasonable grounds to contest his convictions for first-degree murder and committing an indignity on a body.

Evidence was that McCullough, then 22, killed and dismembered Alex Fraser, 20, after they took a taxi from Orangeville, Ont., to a hotel in London, Ont., in September 2013. Some of Fraser's arm was never found.

At trial, the prosecution maintained the motive for the murder was McCullough's desire to "cut up and eat a person," court records show.

Among other things, the prosecutor cited a conversation in which the accused told a psychiatric nurse he had killed cats and cut up their insides, and would do the same with a person and consider eating the remains to take on the person's good qualities and muscles. 

Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance allowed the evidence despite ruling that the prosecution's could not allege that McCullough had eaten part of Fraser because the notion was "too speculative." Instead, Pomerance ruled that the charge of indignity to a body would be restricted to the allegation that McCullough had dismembered Fraser.

The defence maintained McCullough was provoked to kill by an unwanted sexual advance, and attempted sexual assault and that he was guilty of manslaughter or second-degree murder.

McCullough, sentenced to life without parole for 25 years, now wants to argue the references to cannibalism in the nurse's evidence should have been removed because it was overwhelmingly prejudicial.