Court nixes Wilmot Park killer’s appeal
Angela April Walsh, 25, sought extension of time to file notice of appeal of first-degree murder conviction in gruesome stabbing death Clark Ernest Hunter Greene in April 2020
Warning: This story contains graphic descriptions of a violent crime.
An appeal judge has ruled that a Fredericton woman serving a life sentence for murder won’t get an extension to file a notice of appeal because her case “is without merit.”
Angela April Walsh, 25, AKA Ali Morningstar, formerly of Kings College Road in Fredericton, pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder in the April 2020 stabbing death of Clark Ernest Hunter Greene, 31.
She was sentenced to life in prison - the only sentence available under the Criminal Code of Canada - and a Court of King’s Bench judge ruled she can’t even apply for parole until she’s served 13 years of that sentence.
Despite her guilty plea and acknowledgement of her murderous actions on the court record, Walsh sought leave to appeal her conviction, but since she filed it long after a 30-day deadline, she first had to seek an extension of time to file her notice with the New Brunswick Court of Appeal, the province’s highest judicial authority.
A hearing on her extension application was held before Justice Raymond French last month, and in a written ruling issued Thursday, the judge dismissed her request for extra time.
“Ms. Walsh’s intended appeal is without merit and the justice of her case does not require an extension of time,” he wrote.
In her handwritten intended notice of appeal and in argument last month, Walsh claimed she had only planned to rob Greene and hadn’t been the one to stab him repeatedly.
As such, she argued, she should have been convicted of manslaughter and therefore should be serving a lesser prison sentence.
A passerby found Greene’s body at the Wilmot Park gazebo on the morning of April 15, 2020. He’d been stabbed 12 times in the chest area and seven times in the face, and two of those latter blows had gouged out his eyes.
New story led to lesser charge
Walsh began to stand trial in January 2023 on a count of first-degree murder in Greene’s death, but the jury trial came to a halt on its third day when her spouse, Zachery David Murphy, changed his story on the witness stand, claiming he’d stabbed Greene and that Walsh had nothing to do with it.
Murphy, 23, had previously told police and testified Walsh was the one who’d stabbed Greene over and over, having used a knife she pulled from the victim’s pocket after Murphy had incapacitated him with a blow to the head with a pipe.
But after Murphy changed his tune, the prosecution and defence met and came to an agreement: Walsh would admit to the lesser count of second-degree murder and admit to her deadly actions.
Murphy had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder long before Walsh’s trial. He’s serving a life sentence as well, with parole eligibility set at 11 years.
Murphy has since been charged with perjury for offering different testimony at trial than he did during a preliminary inquiry in Walsh’s case. He has yet to elect mode of trial or enter a plea, as he is applying for legal aid to retain defence counsel. He’s due back in provincial court on the perjury charge Jan. 30.
Despite admissions in court that she’d stabbed Greene, Walsh said in her intended appeal that it was Murphy who did so and that she shouldn’t be subject to a murder charge as a result.
In his decision, French wrote that Walsh, in her intended notice of appeal, sought to see her conviction reduced from second-degree murder to manslaughter because “this crime was an unintentional one as it was only supposed to be a robbery” and because she claimed here were errors in some of the evidence and facts presented to the court.
But the appeal judge points out that Walsh agreed to those facts, acknowledged them as accurate on the original court record and even signed the agreed statement of facts prepared by Crown and defence counsel.
“As will be discussed further below, although the conviction (second-degree murder) is rooted in Ms. Walsh’s guilty plea and her admission to the essential elements of that offence, the agreed upon facts and available evidence submitted to the judge on sentencing respecting the commission of the offence provide important context to the assessment of Ms. Walsh’s intended grounds of appeal,” he wrote.
French noted that Walsh, on appeal, contends that contrary to what was stated in court, she never provided police with a statement about the murder.
But the court record showed she was questioned extensively about the murder and ultimately admitted to it, and that information was reproduced in the agreed statement of facts that Walsh reviewed and signed.
Grisly descriptions of deadly actions
That interrogation revealed Walsh initially said she didn’t recall the events in the park, and that they actions sounded like those of an alternate personality of hers.
“Ali (Walsh) saw herself doing horrible things to someone. There was something to do about eyeballs, that made a popping noise. There was so much blood,” the court record shows.
“She saw the ground, and some of the ground was darker than other parts. She looked up at herself and saw that it was coming out of the person. She then realized it was blood.”
Walsh acknowledged to police the victim was Greene, though she initially said she couldn’t see the person’s face.
“She couldn’t believe she did something like that; she decided to tell the truth because she saw the evidence, and realized it wasn’t just a dream,” the agree statement said.
“She said she felt sorry for what happened.”
French ruled Walsh’s intended appeal doesn’t give rise to any serious or legitimate issue to be argued on appeal. During the December hearing before him, French told Walsh that was the hurdle she ultimately had to overcome to be granted the extension of time.
“First, the second-degree murder conviction rests on Ms. Walsh’s guilty plea and admission to the essential elements of the offence, and her intended appeal does not challenge the validity of the plea, either directly or indirectly,” the appeal judge wrote in Thursday’s decision.
“Second, the notion that Ms. Walsh ought to have been convicted of manslaughter because Mr. Greene’s murder was ‘an unintentional one as it was only supposed to be a robbery,’ conflates the element of ‘planned and deliberate’ for the purposes of first-degree murder, and the required intent for murder.”
Walsh’s conviction was therefore unrelated to any issue of planning, he wrote.
Furthermore, French said, the sentencing judge, Court of King’s Bench Justice Kathryn Gregory, made an explicit reference to that lack of planning in her decision.
“While it is an aggravating factor that this crime of murder occurred as part of a plan by Ms. Walsh and Mr. Murphy to rob Clark Greene, I do accept that the murder falls more in the category of a spontaneous killing,” Gregory said last year.
“The plan as I understand it, was to strike Mr. Greene rendering him unconscious to rob him. However, while Clark Greene was unconscious but starting to stir, still totally vulnerable, Ms. Walsh took a knife carried by Mr. Greene in his pocket and began a vicious brutal attack, stabbing him multiple times in the face, neck and torso. Ms. Walsh additionally stomped on his face with her foot. It was an absolutely savage unleashing of violence on Mr. Greene, without any explanation.”
French also addressed Walsh’s argument that there were factual errors presented to the court that would merit an extension of time for her appeal, noting those assertions didn’t raise any serious appellate issue either.
“On the contrary and ignoring for the moment that the conviction was based on a guilty plea, the facts identified by Ms. Walsh all relate to peripheral matters, none of which have any bearing on the requisite intent for second-degree murder,” he wrote.
“Some, like her contention that she did not give a statement to the police, are inconsistent with the record. Nor would any of these assertions, even if accurate, like her statement that she is not ambidextrous, have any impact on the sentencing judge’s determination of the issue of parole ineligibility.”
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.