The lawyer for a B.C. man convicted of second-degree murder for stabbing his friend 73 times says bisexuality shouldn’t have been factor in the man’s conviction.

Brent Olthuis told a B.C. Appeal Court that the lower-court judge focused on Cory Bird’s sexual orientation, when he should have been examining the uninvited sexual contact from the victim.

In 2008, Bird claimed he woke up after a night of drinking and smoking marijuana with his friend Albert Michell in Lytton to find Michell sexually assaulting him.

Bird told his earlier trial that he went into the kitchen to get a knife and started stabbing Michell in a “frenzied state,” even stopping to switch weapons several times.

At his original trial, Justice Richard Blair said he wasn’t satisfied with reasoning that the sexual advances would have caused Bird to lose his self control, given his previous sexual experiences with other men.

But Olthuis says the judge lost sight of the fact that the sexual contact was uninvited and unexpected.