Ontario Appeal Court orders new murder trials in plot to kill parents

Ontario's top court has ordered a new first-degree murder trial for a Toronto-area woman who was convicted in a murder-for-hire plot against her parents.

Jennifer Pan, then 28, was sentenced in 2015 to life in prison with no parole for 25 years for first-degree murder, and life for attempted murder in a 2010 attack that left her mother dead and her father with a critical head wound.

Her three co-accused her on-again, off-again boyfriend Daniel Wong, Lenford Crawford and David Mylvaganam were convicted on the same charges.

Pan and the three men appealed and on Friday,the Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered new trials for the first-degree murder convictions.

"It's a very important day," Stephanie DiGiuseppe, one of the lawyers who represented Pan in the appeal, said in an interview with CBC News. "Her fight is not over."

DiGiuseppesaid the decision is a landmark in Pan'spushto exonerate herself.

The court says the trial judge erred by suggesting to the jury only two scenarios for the attack one in which the plan was to murder both parents and another in which the plan was to commit a home invasion and the parents were shot in the course of the robbery.

"Because the jury was deprived all of the available options, the conviction is not safe," DiGiuseppe said.

The Appeal Court says the trial judge should have given the jury second-degree murder and manslaughter as other possible verdicts in the death of Pan's mother.

The court dismissed the appeals on the attempted murder convictions.

DiGiuseppe said they haven't decided ona potential further appeal of the decision to uphold Pan's attempted murder conviction. She added that is something her lawyers areconsidering.

She said they don't yet have a sense of the timing around a new trial.

Plot began after ultimatum from parents: Crown

Prosecutors said during trial that neither Wong nor Crawford were at the Pan home on the night of the attack, but acted as middle-men for her and the men who carried out the killing. Another man whose case proceeded separately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to 18 years.

The Crown said Pan started plotting her parents' murder after they forced her to choose between them and Wong, who dealt marijuana and managed a Boston Pizza.

The ultimatum came after the Pans discovered much of what their daughter had told them over the past decade was a lie. She had never graduated high school, graduated from university with a pharmacy degree, volunteered at the Hospital for Sick Children, nor was she working at a Walmart pharmacy, the Appeal Court said.

Pan decided to move back home, but testified that she had a poor relationship with her father, who was the "rule maker" of the household, while she was closer with her mother.