Convicted killer wins return of Bitcoin held a decade by police

A Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge has ordered that a laptop containing a Bitcoin wallet be returned to the family of William Sandeson, a man serving a life sentence for murder, after the Crown failed to prove the cryptocurrency was connected to the 2015 killing. Justice John Bodurtha ruled Tuesday in Halifax that the Bitcoin, valued anywhere from $8,000 to more than $200,000, could not be shown to be proceeds of crime. The judge did order that $5,000 in cash seized from Sandeson's apartment stay with the state, having found it was connected to the offence.

Sandeson was convicted at his second trial in 2023 of second-degree murder in the death of Taylor Samson, a fellow Dalhousie University student. Sandeson had arranged to buy roughly 18 kilograms of cannabis from Samson, then shot him at his apartment and kept the drugs and money, disposing of the body in the Bay of Fundy. Samson's remains have never been recovered. Sandeson's first conviction was overturned on appeal before the second jury found him guilty again.

The laptop sat in police custody for a decade. Sandeson has said the Bitcoin was worth between $8,000 and $10,000 at the time of his arrest; a lawyer for the Samson family in a separate wrongful death suit has put its current value at more than $200,000. The Crown argued the cryptocurrency was tied to the drug transaction, but Bodurtha found the claim speculative. "The potential use of the cryptocurrency as part of the drug transaction is hypothetical," he said. "There was no evidence that the respondent actually intended to use it in the transaction."

The ruling turns on a simple point: conviction forfeits liberty, but property only becomes the state's through a forfeiture order, and the prosecution never obtained one for the Bitcoin. Had the state moved to forfeit it, the wallet might have been liquidated years ago at whatever price prevailed. Instead, an asset that would have yellowed in an evidence locker if it were cash compounded quietly on the blockchain while in official custody, and the appreciation now accrues to a convicted killer's family rather than to the victims' or the public purse.

Samson's family had sought the same wallet in their wrongful death lawsuit, which previously treated the cryptocurrency as its centre. The judge ordered the laptop returned to Sandeson's family; Sandeson, appearing virtually from prison, becomes eligible for parole in 2030.