A former B.C. lawyer convicted of stealing $494,633 from a dead client's estate has lost his bid to have the charges against him dropped after arguing that he was too senile to stand trial.
Marvin Kenneth Singleton, a 77-year-old who once practiced law in Nelson, stole almost half of a client's $1,061,648 estate by re-directing the funds to a private company set up in his name. He was convicted of theft and fraud earlier this month.
On Friday, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Arnold-Bailey issued her reasons for rejecting Singleton's application to stay proceedings because of lengthy delays in the trial -- the actual theft took place almost two decades ago.
Singleton had also argued that his advanced age and the onset of an Alzheimer's-type dementia made him unfit to stand trial, but Arnold-Bailey said that argument didn't hold any water.
"A careful review of the transcript of Mr. Singleton's testimony at trial will dispel any notion that Mr. Singleton was not mentally sound enough to participate in this trial," the judge wrote.
She described Singleton as an intelligent and articulate old man, "albeit one who is eccentric and not particularly modest about his intellectual gifts."
To demonstrate that point, Arnold-Bailey said that Singleton could be cutting and clever in his remarks to prosecutors.
When he was asked what he taught at the University of Manitoba, Singleton answered, "Well, I taught the American Revolution through British eyes, which I'm sure [Crown Counsel Trevor Shaw] will charge me with fraud over because I don't really have British eyes."
He also used examples from the literature of Herman Melville and William Faulkner to illustrate points about the common law system, explaining that, "I saw myself as thinking very like these two writers on the point of equity and the common law as cultural tensions."
Theft and fraud
According to court documents, the money stolen by Singleton was meant to be given to charities and the Kootenay Lake Hospital from the estate of John Alexander George's.
Singleton funneled the money into a company he used to buy a plot of land in a forested mountain area just outside of Nelson, envisioning it as the future home of a residential development marketed to winter sports enthusiasts.
He also used money stolen from the estate of another client, Haroldine Copp, to fund development of the property.
But the development struggled to get off the ground, and Singleton lost interest. By the end of 1993, the property went into forfeiture for non-payment of property taxes.
Singleton left Canada in 1993 to live in the U.S. He was arrested in 2004, and stayed in a Kansas prison until he was extradited two years later.
Charges of theft and fraud in relation to the Copp estate were stayed against Singleton in 2009.
Singleton is scheduled to appear in court again next month for a psychiatric assessment.
