Thomas Hamp murder trial in Saskatoon postponed until May

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The continuation of the murder trial in Saskatoon has been adjourned until next year due to a delay in receiving an expert medical report.

Thomas Hamp’s second-degree murder trial began in September in the Court of King’s Bench. The hearing was adjourned from December 17 to 19 to give a forensic psychiatrist time to review letters Hamp sent from prison – which Hamp’s lawyer said were not disclosed to the defense – before including them in his expert report.

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“As Thomas Hamp’s defense had not received a report from the proposed expert, nor provided it to the Crown, they requested an adjournment of the trial, which was granted by the Court. The defense also waived the Charter deadline in the circumstances,” confirmed Crown prosecutor Cory Bliss on Tuesday.

He said the earliest dates available for all parties to conclude the trial before a judge alone are May 26-30, 2025.

Hamp, 28, admits to stabbing his girlfriend, Emily Sanche, 25, in the chest in her Greystone Heights apartment on February 20, 2022.

The defense argues that he should be found not criminally responsible because he was suffering at the time from a mental disorder which made him incapable of appreciating the wrongfulness of his act.

Hamp, who also stabbed himself, said he killed Sanche to save her from a “much worse death”. He told the court that for months he had been under the illusion that a childhood friend was colluding with the secret police to present him as a pedophile and take him and Sanche to be tortured and killed.

The court heard he had been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and had been taking and taking his medication in the months before Sanche’s death. Hamp said he stopped his medication — against his doctor’s orders — because he believed the drugs were trying to brainwash him.

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He also said Sanche feared his heavy cannabis use could contribute to his delusions, intrusive thoughts and false memories. He therefore stopped smoking two days before the attack.

“Emily had been worried about me for months by the time my condition really deteriorated, and she was asking me to go to the hospital and stop smoking weed long before I was,” Hamp wrote in a letter to Sanche’s parents.

“I didn’t believe it at the time, but I now think that this paranoia and resulting psychosis was caused by the weed I was smoking. Needless to say, I quit for good,” he wrote in another letter to Sanche’s cousin and best friend.

Hamp sent his first set of apology letters since being taken into custody a month after the stabbing, in March 2022, but they were intercepted by police. Another set of letters was sent back to his parents, who turned them over to police once they realized their relevance, Pfefferle said.

Witnesses testified, and Hamp wrote in his letters, that Sanche worked with Hamp’s parents to help him and convince him to go to the hospital. The court heard that neither Sanche nor Hamp’s parents wanted to call the authorities because they feared it would make his behavior worse.

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Hamp said he began refusing to go to the hospital because he thought doctors would turn him over to the secret police.

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