In the first few minutes of her closing address to the jury, a woman representing herself in her trial for the murder of her husband accused the judge of making decisions based on emotions, declared she still intends to call a witness and urged the jury to keep in their hearts that they are the only ones who can decide the facts.
“You didn’t give me any rights,” Xiu Jin Teng, 40, yelled as Justice Ian MacDonnell told the jury court was done for the day. It was her third outburst of the day, much of which she spent in a room where she could observe the proceedings by video link, but not be heard — an arrangement used when accused persons are disruptive in court.
Earlier in the day, as MacDonnell explained to the jury how closing addresses were going to work, given that Teng is representing herself, Teng suddenly stood and yelled: “Your majesty, I need a defence lawyer . . . what you said is illegal for me.”
“I need a defence lawyer before you say anything further,” she continued, telling the jury she had been segregated” from the courtroom in the morning when they were not present. “You are an illegal judge,” she shouted as MacDonnell attempted to proceed. “I will still call witnesses.”
The reason Teng is without a lawyer has not been explained to the jury, although she has repeatedly complained about it in front of them. A lawyer, Richard Litkowski, has been appointed to advise the court on legal issues and provide some assistance to Teng. Both he and Teng have questioned some Crown witnesses.
After Teng was removed from the courtroom to the video-link room, MacDonnell told the jury Teng’s assertion that she has been denied a lawyer and the opportunity to call witnesses is incorrect.
Teng would not inform the court who the witnesses she wanted to call were and why, he said. None of the witnesses were produced in court and without knowing who they are, the court could not help subpoena them to come, he said.
The one witness Teng did identify is away until February and she would not explain why she wanted to call that witness, MacDonnell said.Prosecutor Joshua Levy told the jury in his closing address that the evidence shows Teng killed her husband Dong Huang in the early hours of Feb. 24, 2012, by strangling him to death with a thin piece of twine after hitting him in the head and drugging him.
She then wrapped his body in plastic and hid it in a closet of their Scarborough basement apartment, Levy said. She intended to dispose of the body and collect between $1.6 million and $2 million in life insurance policies, he said.
The plan was thwarted five days later, Levy said, when Teng’s landlord knocked on the door and asked for rent. Although thousands of dollars in cash was found on the table by police, Teng did not pay the $750 owed for rent.
Concerned after seeing boxes and other indications that her tenants and their 2-year-old daughter might leave without paying, the landlord, her husband and a neighbour entered the apartment and found Huang’s body covered in bleach — possibly, Levy suggested, to conceal the smell.
“(Teng) clearly wasn’t thinking straight,” Levy said. “All she had to do was tell Ms. Gu (the landlord), ‘I have the rent money right here, have a nice day.’ And Ms. Gu might have cheerfully taken the money and gone back upstairs.”
Teng told her landlords her husband had died of a heart attack. Levy said there was no indication that Huang had heart disease and that the cause of death was found to be ligature strangulation.
Levy said Teng repeatedly lied to police but that her biggest lie was that she didn’t work. In fact, she’d been working for a year selling life insurance, Levy said.
Teng took out two life insurance policies on her husband in late 2011, with herself as the beneficiary, Levy said. She also took out a life insurance policy of $1.5 million on herself, with her mother as the beneficiary, he said.
As the salesperson, Teng was paid a commission for taking out these policies, Levy said. In January, she changed her life insurance policy to increase the premium to $40,000 a year from $500 — earning herself a $20,000 commission and $33,000 in bonuses, he said.
And she had no intention of sticking around to pay the new high premium, he said. It is unclear how she intended to collect on her husband’s life insurance, Levy said. “It would not have an insurmountable thing to do, it would have required some effort,” he said. “But I don’t want to speculate on how it would be achievable.”
Levy also told the jury Teng was making plans to dispose of her husband’s body, possibly in the Humber River or Lake Ontario. She bought several items from Canadian Tire in cash, including rubber gloves, a hand saw used to cut up a mattress, several garbage bags, tablecloths, 18 icepacks, rubber mats, a winch, a hydraulic jack and a light, he said.
She also bought a phone in another name. “This is the conduct of a person trying to cover up the murder of their husband, not the conduct of a grieving wife,” Levy said. Teng, who briefly started her closing address to the jury Thursday, is expected to continue on Friday.
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