What the Stanley jury likely considered in rendering its not guilty verdict

Unlike in the U.S., where jurors are permitted tospeak freely to the media after they've rendered a verdict, Canadian jurors are legally barred from discussing the proceedings.

This means it's unlikely the public will ever know thereasoning behind aSaskatchewan jury's decision to acquitGerald Stanley, 56, of second-degree murder in the death of ColtenBoushie.

The verdicthas sparked accusations ofracism and outrage that Stanley's defence team was able to exclude members of the Indigenous communityas potential jurors.

It has also prompted legal questions about the caseandthe basis on which the jury of five men and seven women may have reached its verdict.

CBCNews spoke to legalexperts to explain some of the issuesthe jury may have taken into consideration.

• Shouts of 'murderer' in courtroom after Stanley acquitted
• Ministers say Canada must 'do better' afterBoushieverdict

Boushie, 22,was killed by a single gunshot to the back of his head afteran altercation between Stanley, Boushie and four other young adults from the Red Pheasant Cree Nation on Aug. 9, 2016. They had driven an SUV onto Stanley's rural property nearBiggar, an hour's drive west of Saskatoon.

Stanley testifiedhe had fired warning shots and, as he approached the SUV, believed his gun was empty.

He said when he reached inside Boushie's SUV to turn it off, the gun went off accidentally, butthat he never pulled the trigger.

Instead, his defence team arguedthe gun went off because of "hang fire" adelayed discharge that resultedfrom having pulled the trigger earlier.

The prosecution dismissed that theory as nonsense, arguing there was nothing wrong with the gun,and that Stanley had pulled thetriggerto kill Boushie.

At the end of the trial, the jury was left with three choices:convict Stanley of second-degree murder, convict him of the lesser charge of manslaughter, or acquit.

"Any one of those three could be said to be reasonably supported by the evidence," said Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer David Butt.

Credibility of Crownwitnesses

Given that Boushie was shot in the head,as well as the fact Stanleyarguably had a motive to use force, it wasn't unreasonable to suggest the killing was intentional, meaning second-degree murder was a viable charge, saidMichaelPlaxton, an associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Law.

However, he said some credibility issues with Crownwitnesses likely made it harder to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the killing was intentional.

Cassidy Cross-Whitstone, 18, one of the SUVpassengers, testifiedthat he lied about trying to break into a truck on another property near the Stanley farm and about how much he'd had to drink that day.

• OPINION|Cases like Colten Boushie's are handled unjustly, and there's nothing wrong with saying that

Another SUV passenger, Belinda Jackson, 24, also changed her story, making no mention in a previous statement to police that Stanley had shot Boushie.But shelater toldjurorsshe saw the defendant shoot him twice in the head while he was sitting in the SUV.

"Speaking generally, if the people who are telling the story are not believable, or aspects of their version of events are not credible or inconsistent, then it becomes more difficult to convince the jury that's really what happened," saidSteven Penney, a University of Alberta law professor.

What about manslaughter?

Ifthe jury did not believeStanley intendedto kill Boushie, the option of convicting him of manslaughter was available. Put simply, manslaughter is a dangerous act that causes death, but without intent to kill.

Canada has an extremely broad manslaughter law, in particular when a person is using a firearmin a careless manner, said Kent Roach, a University of Toronto law professor. A manslaughter conviction follows, then, whenevera person who is using a firearmin a careless manner oughtto have knownthat someonecould be seriously injured from the wayhe or she was was using the firearm, Roach said.

"For me,one of the enduring mysteries ... is why did [the jury] reject manslaughter," he said.

Penney agreedthatan argument could certainly be made for a manslaughter convictionbased on the evidence thatStanley was grossly negligent by brandishing a weapon in away that was very dangerous and resulted in thedeath of Boushie.

But he said there's also an argument to be made that Stanley did take precautions, that he did attempt to figure out if the weapon was loaded at the time of his confrontation with Boushie. If that's true, or if there's a reasonabledoubt, that could make a manslaughterconviction challenging, Penney said.

"I'm not suggesting that was the correct way to view it but it's not crazy if that's the way the evidence was presented."

Hang fire and two options

Plaxton, in a series of tweets,argued that based on thelack ofstatistical evidence of''hang fire,"the reasonableness for the jury to accept this theory seemed "pretty thin."

And if the jurors rejected the hang fire theory, Plaxtonwrote, this means they may have felt they had been left two options: either convict Stanley of second-degree murder,or acquit.

"Once left with the all-or-nothing choice, the jury was left to ask whether it was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that, in the midst of all that chaos in a blindingly-quick period of time, Stanley intended to fire the fatal shot.

"We know what it decided."