Luka Magnotta's Case Is Now Closed

Luka Magnotta has withdrawn the appeal to his murder conviction meaning that it's finally case closed on one of Canada's strangest legal sagas.

The case made global headlines in 2012 following an international manhunt that led to Magnotta, once an aspiring model and porn star with a trail of bizarre audition tapes, being charged with the gruesome first-degree murder of Jun Lin and criminally harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper by mailing him his victim's foot in pink wrapping paper.

VICE was inside the Montreal courtroom where Magnotta, appearing via video conference in his jail cell, informed the Court that the decision to drop the appeal was entirely his.

Confined to the white walls of his prison cell and wearing a white T-shirt, Magnotta spoke slowly and deliberately, which gave the proceedings a very sterile tone. "I've had the opportunity to reflect on the consequences," he told Quebec Court of Appeal judge Geneviève Marcotte, who presided over the hearing.

His lawyer, Luc Leclair, also sought Magnotta's explicit consent to abandon the appeal, but not before scolding his client: "You should have been standing to address the Court."

Until this morning, Magnotta had been seeking a new trial. Leclair had initially filed two appeals last month on the grounds that trial judge Guy Cournoyer erred in law and that the five guilty verdicts were "unreasonable and unsupported by the evidence and the instructions," according to court documents obtained by VICE.

Because only Leclair's signature was on today's abandonment of notice of appeal, the Quebec Court of Appeal needed Magnotta's express consent. This was due in large part to the very serious consequences of his decision, namely accepting the mandatory maximum sentence of 25 years in prison without parole stemming from his first-degree murder conviction.

Magnotta, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was 20, had confessed to committing the heinous acts but argued that he was not criminally responsible because he was suffering from a psychotic episode at the time of the murder. The jury instead opted for the Crown's thesis, that Magnotta had in fact very coldly and deliberately planned to kill Lin. They found him guilty as charged in December, after a dramatic ten-week trial.

Today's withdrawal means that Luka Magnotta will not have a new trial and will continue to serve his life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Shortly after his client's video appearance, Leclair told reporters at the Quebec Court of Appeal that Luka Magnotta was ready to meet with his victim's father Diran in "the spirit of truth and reconciliation to the extent that something can be shared and answer the father's question, perhaps, although to what extent I don't know, but I think it would be beneficial."