By Tina Comeau
THE VANGUARD
NovaNewsNow.com
A court proceeding known as a faint hope hearing got underway in Supreme Court in Yarmouth on Monday, May 31.
Clayton Otis Jacquard, who is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years, is hoping to convince a jury to allow him to go to the National Parole Board earlier than the 25-year mark to seek possible parole.
Jacquard is serving a life sentence after being convicted of first-degree murder in the December 1992 shooting death of 38-year-old Alexander (Sandy) Hurlburt and attempted murder in the shooting of Barbara Marie Wilkinson.
For Jacquard to be able to seek early parole, the jury will have to reach a unanimous decision.
Jury selection took place Monday morning, with around 300 people turning out to the Yarmouth courthouse to see if they would be selected. Twelve jurors and two alternates were chosen but before the hearing began one of the jurors was released after his employer wrote a letter to the court saying that it would be a hardship to their business – and possible another business – to be without the employee for the duration of the hearing.
Two weeks of court time have been set aside for the hearing, although it’s been suggested it may only take a week or a little longer to hear the matter.
Jacquard, who was is now 38, looks different from the 20-year-old who committed the shootings 18 years ago. His hair is shorter and greying around the ears. He entered the courtroom dressed in a suit, smiling, looking like an older man as opposed to the youthful-looking offender he was when convicted in 1994.
Rather than having to go back through evidence and testimony to set the stage of the 1992 murder and attempted murder, the Crown and defence submitted an agreed statement of facts that outline the circumstances of the offences, a move that the judge said likely shaved days off of the hearing.
While Jacquard’s lawyer Robert Gregan summarized the agreed statement of fact to the jurors, Justice Kevin Coady also read it in full. The jurors were told that during his life, Jacquard suffered verbal and physical abuse, first from his biological father Otis Jacquard, and then later from his stepfather Sandy Hurlburt. The abuse by his stepfather, the jurors were told, lasted from the time Jacquard was nine years old to 16.
On Dec. 16, 1992 – although Hurlburt was no longer in a common law relationship with Jacquard’s mother, that relationship had ended in 1988 – Jacquard went to Hurlburt’s apartment at 93 Parade St. He was described that night as quiet and withdrawn. He had lost over $800 from gambling on VLT machines over a 23-hour period and was also thinking back to the abuse he had endured. He was, the jurors were told, suffering from post traumatic stress. The type of abuse Jacquard suffered was outlined to the jury.
Jacquard had spent the night at the apartment on Dec. 16 and was contemplating committing suicide in front of Hurlburt. Instead, on the evening of Dec. 17, he shot Hurlburt twice – once in the back and once in the chest. The jurors were told it had not been Jacquard’s intention to shoot Wilkinson – who was living common law with Hurlburt – but in the excitement of the moment, and with shouting and yelling going on, he shot her while she lay in bed, first in the hip and then in the hand when she raised it to try and shield her eyes from the light.
He hid the shotgun he used under a skateboard ramp on Forest Street and went to a friend’s house, where – after sliding down on the floor, hugging his knees – he confessed to the shooting and asked his friend to call the police so he could turn himself in. The 12-guage pump-action shotgun, which Jacquard had worried might be found by a child, was located two days later by a member of the Yarmouth Ground Search and Rescue Team, along with a bag of ammunition.
