Jurors ask about pipe bomb while discussing verdict in Coutts murder-conspiracy trial

People enter the courthouse in Lethbridge, Alta., Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh)

Jurors deliberating the case of two men accused of conspiring to commit murder at the Coutts, Alta., blockade returned to court briefly Thursday to ask the judge about a pipe bomb.

One of the accused, Anthony Olienick, is also charged with possessing a pipe bomb.

They asked if Olienick had to remember having the explosive to be found guilty of that charge or whether the simple fact he had the bomb on his property was enough to convict.

"(Memory) doesn't matter," Justice David Labrenz told the panel. "You're still in possession of (the pipe bomb)."

The defence has suggested the pipe bomb, found at Olienick’s home, was not for a nefarious purpose. A former employer of Olienick's has told court he remembered Olienick using what he called "firecrackers" to blast rock.

Jurors in Court of King’s Bench began late Wednesday deliberating the fate of Olienick and Chris Carbert.

The jury had deliberated for 11 hours when it called it quits for the evening.

Olienick and Carbert are charged with conspiracy to commit murder, a charge that carries a maximum life sentence.

They’re also charged with mischief over $5,000, and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.

The two were arrested after police seized a stockpile of guns, ammunition and body armour in an early morning raid near the blockade in February 2022.

The barricade of trucks and big rigs at the Canada-U. S. border point near Coutts tied up traffic for two weeks to protest COVID rules and vaccine mandates.

The Crown says the two men were planning to use Coutts as a launch pad for a revolution and were prepared to use violence against the RCMP.

Carbert's lawyer, however, told the jury that while her client was a "bit of a wing nut" who fell down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, there was no plot to kill police.

The lawyer for Olienick said her client had been taken in by three female undercover officers who tricked him into making incriminating statements.

Labrenz told the jurors that to convict on the conspiracy charge they must follow a two-step process. They first have to be satisfied there was a conspiracy in which two or more people were colluding to commit the crime.

If so, he said, the jurors would then have to be satisfied Olienick and Carbert were part of that conspiracy.

The trial is in its eighth week.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Aug. 1, 2024.