The 12 people on the jury in the Roderick Sutherland trial are deliberating their verdict.
He is the last of nine people to face charges in connection with the murder of Megan Gallagher on September 20, 2020, although he was not tried for murder, but for involuntary manslaughter, unlawful confinement and offering indignity to human remains. He pleaded not guilty.
Gallagher was murdered after being confined and assaulted in a Saskatoon garage. His remains were found on the bank of the South Saskatchewan River, about 105 kilometers northeast of Saskatoon, near the town of St. Louis, on September 29, 2022.
Now that the jury is sequestered, this means that publication bans tied to evidence, agreed statements of fact and victim impact statements from previous trials and sentencing hearings are no longer in effect, including details about the other people charged and their court outcomes that jurors were not told about.
Robert (Bobby) Thomas was the first person charged with murder, on September 20, 2022. He pleaded guilty in October 2024 to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years. It is the only murder plea of the nine defendants and the only murder charge known to the jury.
Cheyann Peeteetuce and Summer-Sky Henry were charged with first-degree murder, but pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in January 2025 and were sentenced to seven years each.
Ernest Vernon Whitehead, Jessica Badger (Sutherland) and John Wayne Sanderson pleaded guilty to offering indignity to human remains. Charges against Robin John (unlawful confinement and aggravated assault) and Thomas Sutherland (involuntary manslaughter) were stayed.
The jury was also not told that Roderick Sutherland was initially charged with first-degree murder, but in August 2025 the charge was downgraded to involuntary manslaughter. That fact was available online, but jurors were instructed not to conduct their own searches for information.
There were also events and events during this trial (which occurred when the jury was not present) that could not be reported until Crown prosecutors Bill Burge and Jennifer Schmidt and defense attorneys Blaine Beaven and Alora Arnold closed their cases and Judge John Morrall gave his instructions to the jury.
On Thursday, he spent two and a half hours reviewing trial evidence and explaining the law around the three counts to jurors before they were sequestered to begin their deliberations.
What follows are some of the points the jury didn’t hear.
Gallagher Hoodies
On the third day of the trial, Beaven asked the judge to order Gallagher’s friends and family in the gallery to stop wearing black hoodies emblazoned with a photo of Megan and large text that read “killed but not forgotten.”
The clothing, worn by people close to jurors, would intimidate them or send a false message about the murder during a manslaughter trial, Beaven argued.
He asked them to put their sweatshirts on inside out that day and then refrain from wearing them in the future.
The family disagreed, saying a sheriff’s deputy had said they could wear them during the trial, but not during jury selection. They also wanted clarity on whether they could wear t-shirts honoring missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
Morrall ordered that T-shirts with Megan’s photo and the text “murdered” not be worn. In the days that followed, family members and supporters wore red T-shirts, the color chosen because it is believed to evoke the spirits of the missing and represent their soul.
Criminal record
Jurors heard from Cheyann Peeteetuce, who pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter earlier this year. On the stand she was questioned about her role in Gallagher’s death and what she knew about Roderick Sutherland.
Jurors heard that she had pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, but knew little about the rest of her significant criminal record. They also did not know that she had originally been charged with first-degree murder in Gallagher’s death.
In 2015, Peeteetuce pleaded guilty to two counts of dangerous driving causing death after killing two teenagers in a crash in Saskatoon. Police said she was intoxicated at the time and drove a stolen truck through a stop sign and crashed into another vehicle.
She was a member of the Indian Posse street gang at the time. She was sentenced to six years in prison and served four years.
The ‘Vetrovec warning’
The Crown and defense closed their cases on October 14, after prosecutor Burge told the jury that police had been unable to find their last witness, Ernest Whitehead, and defense lawyer Blaine Beaven decided not to call any witnesses.
Judge Morrall then dismissed the jury so he could discuss with lawyers whether he should issue a “Vetrovec warning” to jurors as part of his charge.
The name comes from a 1982 Supreme Court of Canada case. The warning refers to the degree to which a judge must warn the jury about believing an “unlikeable or untrustworthy” witness. The caveat is that it would be dangerous to convict a defendant solely on the witness’s evidence.
Both Burge and Beaven agreed that the potential warning should not apply to Peeteetuce because, in their assessment, she did not offer any practical evidence in her testimony; He testified that, for example, he could not remember why he had pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
However, they disagreed on whether the judge should warn the jury about the testimony of Robert (Bobby) Thomas, who admitted on the stand to lying to police and using methamphetamine when Gallagher was killed.
Thomas, for example, had lied about knowing Gallagher.
Burge said Thomas’ testimony did not warrant a warning. Thomas pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is an on-duty prisoner, so while it may be “disgusting,” Burge said Thomas had nothing to gain personally by telling anything but the truth about what happened.
Beaven argued that the judge should give the warning.
He noted that while it would be dangerous to convict Sutherland based solely on Thomas’ evidence, the judge should also point to evidence in his testimony that could be confirmed by other witnesses, such as drug use by the people in the garage.
In his indictment Thursday, Morrall issued a warning about Thomas, specifically advising jurors to approach his testimony “with the utmost care and caution” because of his admitted history of lying to police and in court.
He urged jurors to seek independent evidence to confirm his testimony. For example, he said the convenience store’s bank records show Gallagher going in and out of the garage in the early stages, which could confirm that Thomas said things were “fine” before becoming violent.
The defense of ‘abandonment’
Beaven also argued that he should be able to present the “abandonment” defense to the jury.
Sutherland had tried to get out of the situation when he saw Gallagher had been tied up in the garage, Beaven said. As such, he had “abandoned” his illegal confinement.
Burge argued that Sutherland failed to comply with what constitutes abandonment because he could have left the garage or he could have called the police.
Morrall ruled that abandonment could be presented to the jury as a possible defense.
