Man convicted of Chinese student's murder

A jury on Tuesday found Luka Magnotta, 32, guilty of killing and dismembering his Chinese lover in Montreal in the spring of 2012. He was also convicted on four other related charges.

Magnotta, a former porn actor, had admitted to the killing of engineering student Jun Lin, 33, but pleaded not guilty on grounds of mental illness. His lawyer argued that he was schizophrenic and couldn't tell right from wrong at the time of the murder.

However, the prosecution reasoned the crime was both planned and deliberate, and that his behavior and actions were not those of an insane person.

Magnotta was also found guilty of committing an indignity to a human body, publishing and mailing obscene material and criminally harassing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other members of Parliament.

The verdict comes after eight days of deliberations in a case that has garnered significant international attention due to the nature of the murder and the incidents connected to it.

Political parties targeted

The court heard how, in May 2012, a package containing a severed foot was found at the headquarters of Canada's ruling Conservative Party. On the same day, a severed hand was discovered at a postal facility in a package addressed to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Lin's torso was found in a suitcase at a rubbish dump outside Magnotta's apartment building in Montreal. Around a week later, the missing foot and hand were mailed to two schools in the city of Vancouver.

The jury was also shown a video of the killing that Magnotta had posted online. It included a soundtrack and was entitled: "One Lunatic, One Ice Pick."

The prosecution said that six months before the incident, Magnotta had emailed a British journalist to say he planned to kill a human and make a movie of it. The jury heard that Magnotta, a gay escort, was hospitalized in 2001 and sought psychiatric help about a month before Lin's death.

Magnotta fled to Europe after the killing and was arrested in an Internet cafe in Berlin where he was reading about himself online.

lw/glb (AP, Reuters)