Sask. Court of Appeal dismisses twin 1st-degree murder convictions against Dillon Whitehawk

A Regina gang member convicted of murdering two rivals in separate drive-by shootings in 2019 is getting a new trial.

Jurors convicted Dillon Whitehawk of killing Jordan Denton on Nov. 9, 2019, and then Keenan Toto on Dec. 1, 2019. The Crown’s theory was that Whitehawk was a member of the Indian Mafia street gang and killed the men to get a promotion.

Both cases were blended into a single trial in April 2022.

Whitehawk appealed the convictions on three grounds, with the primary and successful argument being that the trial judge improperly limited the questioning of potential jurors. The two other grounds concerned whether a juror should have been dismissed and the qualification of an expert gang witness.

“Mr. Whitehawk asserts that the trial judge also erred by not drawing the inference that some jurors may be unable to set aside their bias against street gang members and decide the case impartially. I agree that the trial judge erred, because he applied the wrong legal test to this determination as well,” Justice Jeffery Kalmakoff wrote in the unanimous appeal decision.

Kalmakoff wrote that the judge framed his analysis around “whether jurors would be able to set aside that bias and decide impartially.”

The question is not whether jurors, in general, would be able to set aside a bias, he wrote.

“It is whether some jurors may not be able to do so. The difference is subtle but important and, in my respectful view, the trial judge got it wrong.”

The overturning of the convictions does not mean that Whitehawk is walking out of prison a free man.

In 2023, Whitehawk was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Keesha Bitternose.

A Court of King’s Bench judge sentenced Whitehawk to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years — the maximum sentence for second-degree murder — in the Regina mother’s 2020 gang-related death.

Justice Janet McMurtry called the killing a “ferocious and impulsive attack” — one that the Crown correctly labelled as “senseless and brutal.”

In December 2022, McMurtry said she could not believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Whitehawk deliberately planned Bitternose’s murder, that it was connected with a criminal organization or that Bitternose was forcibly confined. Therefore, she found him guilty of second-degree murder instead of first-degree.