A Kamloops man is at the centre of a second-degree murder trial this month — for the second time.

He is accused of murdering his girlfriend in July 2003. Her body was found floating in the North Thompson River the next month.

The charges have not been proven.

The man was actually convicted in a trial in 2009, but successfully appealed that conviction and was granted a new trial last year. The new trial is expected to wrap up in December.

This will be the first trial in which evidence from a Mr. Big sting is heard in a Canadian courtroom since the Supreme Court of Canada limited the admissibility of evidence and some tactics used in the controversial sting operation in July of this year.

The country’s highest court ruled confessions made under Mr. Big operations are “presumptively inadmissible” as evidence in court.

That means the onus is on the Crown to prove the confessions are reliable and should be used as evidence.

In a Mr. Big sting, police officers pose as members of a criminal organization who recruit the suspect and use a variety of staged scenarios to gain the suspect’s trust and gradually introduce him to more responsibility within the organization.

Eventually, the suspect is given the chance to meet with the boss — “Mr. Big” himself — who is actually an undercover officer. Mr. Big is his confessor, and before he can move up in the gang, he needs to divulge anything that might come back to haunt him.

The technique, though controversial, has been documented in detail.

The book To the Grave by Winnipeg Free Press crime reporter Mike McIntyre gives the inside scoop of a Mr. Big sting and paints a vivid picture of how the sting works.

After all, it led to the first-degree murder conviction for Michael Bridges in the cold case murder of Brandon, Man. teenager Erin Chorney.

The book spans the length of the investigation, which took two years, but ended with Bridges leading undercover officers directly to the crude grave in which the remains of his former girlfriend were buried.

Hundreds of Mr. Big stings have been conducted in the last decade, and they carry with them a high rate of conviction.

But the Mr. Big sting is controversial for a number of reasons. Among them, it has been criticized heavily for “grooming” targets into confessions. For example, a Brandon judge found officers crossed the line in their 1998 Mr. Big investigation into the bludgeoning death of a 14-year-old girl.

The judge acquitted the accused in 2000 after finding police offered him promotions in the criminal organization in exchange for a confession as well as threats if he didn’t.

The sting was at the centre of a Dawson Creek woman’s criticism recently as well for similar reasons.

Her son was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1999 killing of a Merritt teen, but she steadfastly defends his innocence, and believes his confession was prompted by the danger he thought he was in, so he told Mr. Big what he believed Mr. Big wanted to hear.

Stirring the pot is the fact that techniques like it, wherein undercover officers pose as high-powered gangsters, are illegal in the U.S. and U.K.

Whether it’s fair or not — well, people around the country have their opinions on that, which can vary a case-by-case basis.

But as long as people keep falling for it, it’s a technique that will be continually employed.