PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Though the Crown suggested at trial Cynara had lived years beyond expectations and had become a “burden,” Ali, at trial, and in an interview with the Star while still in prison, maintained she did nothing to cause the death of her daughter. “All the evidence suggested (Ali) loved (Cynara) to bits, as did their whole family, in a funny way as often happens when you have a disabled child in the family,” Lockyer said at Ali’s appeal. “Cynara kept the family together.” At times, Ali lost all hope following the conviction, and tried in prison to harm herself. She credited her husband Allan for reminding her to hold on. “Allan is pretty good at this, he never gave up,” Ali said in a January 2020 interview while in prison at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener. “No matter how much I gave up, he never did.”
=========================================
PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The alleged financial motive was vigorously attacked in Ali’s successful appeal hearing, with Lockyer saying the debt the family carried made them no different than many Canadians. Justice David Doherty — who penned the appeal ruling agreed to by a panel including two other judges — found the motive “so meagre” and “speculative” that Ducharme should not have left it with the jury as a possibility.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Lockyer too, initially, was skeptical of Ali’s evidence but after meeting Ali in a Quebec prison where she’d been transferred because she had attempted suicide, the lawyer best known for representing the wrongfully convicted, had a change of mind. “I think I was unfair to her when I met her in Montreal because I had discounted in my own mind the home invasion theory, and I gave her a rough time about it,” Lockyer said in an interview with the Star, which is included in the film. In time, the case moved from what he thought of as a “miscarriage of justice” case, said Lockyer, to: “She is innocent."
---------------------------------------------------------------
STORY: "Once convicted of killing her disabled daughter. Cindy Ali is getting one more chance to clear her name, by Staff Reporter Jim Rankin, published by The Toronto Star, on October 15, 2023.
SUB-HEADING: "In 2021, a court overturned Toronto mother Cindy Ali’s life sentence over the death of her severely disabled daughter, Cynara. Her second trial begins Monday."
GIST: "The verdict, delivered on a Sunday morning in a Toronto courtroom seven years ago by a jury that looked nothing like Cindy Ali, stunned family and supporters. So too in her church, where screams rang out as the news spread by text.
Guilty. Of first-degree murder. In the 2011 death of Cynara, her 16-year-old severely disabled daughter.
“Oh, Jesus, why?” one person in the courtroom cried out that day.
It’s a question Ali, her husband Allan, their family and dozens of supporters asked then and continue to ask.
It’s now been two-and-a-half years since the Ontario Court of Appeal quashed that conviction and on Monday, Ali — who has been free on bail since May 2020, based on both the strength of that appeal and due to a COVID outbreak in the prison where she had been serving an automatic life sentence — is scheduled to be in court for the beginning of a second trial, expected to take four weeks.
This time, a judge alone — Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly — will decide Ali’s fate on the same charge, facing the same accusation: That she carried out a plan to intentionally kill her daughter.
It’s a high-profile case — explored in depth in the documentary “Cynara,” which premiered at Hot Docs this past spring and is scheduled to air on Documentary Channel on Oct. 22 — that saw the churchgoing Trinidadian-Canadian mother of four daughters initially charged with manslaughter, later upped to first-degree murder, face trial in front of a jury that, appeal lawyers James Lockyer and Jessica Zita successfully argued, was “straitjacketed” into the all-or-none decision that resulted in her conviction and automatic life sentence.
Cynara — who had cerebral palsy and epilepsy, often had seizures and could not speak or move on her own — died in hospital after being resuscitated by first responders Ali had herself called to the family home in Scarborough on Feb. 19, 2011.
In her 911 call, Ali, who had been at home alone with Cynara, described a home invasion involving two men; she testified to the same at her trial.
But despite testimony from a witness who described seeing two men of similar description near the home around the time of Ali’s 911 call, the jury returned a verdict that indicated jurors did not believe her story — guilty of premeditated murder.
Not put to the jury at her first trial were other possible options to consider, including that Ali could have done nothing wrong but panicked and made up the intruder story.
Instead, the jury was left to make a problematic all-or-nothing decision. That fact, along with other problems in Justice Todd Ducharme’s instructions to the jury, was enough reason to set aside her conviction, the appeal court ruled in 2020.
At the time of that decision, Ali, in a statement, said that nothing will bring back Cynara, “but what the Court of Appeal did today is justice and a huge relief for me and my family.” Looking forward, she said she held out hope that “prosecutors won’t force me and my family to go through another trial.”
Instead, she’ll face trial again.
This time around, Ali will have her appeal lawyers Lockyer and Zita at her side, as her defence team.
At her first trial, the Crown argued her intruder claim was made up, that Ali staged the home to look like a home invasion had happened, and that Ali smothered Cynara, in part for financial reasons.
“Common sense should tell you — should tell all of you — that this story is simply ridiculous … a lie,” Rosemarie Juginovic, lead prosecutor at trial, told the jury in closing submissions.
She described Cynara’s death as an “execution” that included “planning and deliberation” by Ali.
Asked why the Crown is proceeding with a second trial this week, a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Attorney General said, “It would be inappropriate to comment as the matter is before the courts.”
The alleged financial motive was vigorously attacked in Ali’s successful appeal hearing, with Lockyer saying the debt the family carried made them no different than many Canadians.
Justice David Doherty — who penned the appeal ruling agreed to by a panel including two other judges — found the motive “so meagre” and “speculative” that Ducharme should not have left it with the jury as a possibility.
Ali had been Cynara’s primary caregiver for her entire life; Allan, Ali’s husband, had a tech job that gave the family a middle-class life.
At trial, Ali testified two men with Jamaican accents, dressed in dark wool coats and wearing balaclavas, invaded and searched the home. At one point, she said she saw one of the men standing near Cynara with a pillow in his hands.
The Ali family said they later received a letter, purporting to be from the home invaders. The Crown argued the letter was also fabricated. The handwritten letter, entered as an exhibit, said the invaders had gone to the wrong address in search of a package.
The family on occasion did get mail intended for an address down the street, which had the same street number as their unit in the Scarborough townhouse complex.
At appeal, Ali’s lawyers argued Ducharme failed to charge the jury with an alternative option to murder.
If the jury disbelieved there were intruders, there was the possibility Ali could have made up the story because she “failed to protect” Cynara following a seizure or felt responsible and wanted to shift blame.
It was “reasonably possible” that panic “associated with a fear of being accused” of killing her daughter caused her to make up a story, Lockyer and Zita argued.
The trial judge should have given the jury a couple of those possibilities, the appeal court found.
Though the Crown suggested at trial Cynara had lived years beyond expectations and had become a “burden,” Ali, at trial, and in an interview with the Star while still in prison, maintained she did nothing to cause the death of her daughter.
“All the evidence suggested (Ali) loved (Cynara) to bits, as did their whole family, in a funny way as often happens when you have a disabled child in the family,” Lockyer said at Ali’s appeal. “Cynara kept the family together.”
At times, Ali lost all hope following the conviction, and tried in prison to harm herself. She credited her husband Allan for reminding her to hold on.
“Allan is pretty good at this, he never gave up,” Ali said in a January 2020 interview while in prison at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener. “No matter how much I gave up, he never did.”
Cynara loved animals and outings, particularly to Marineland. She loved sweets, chocolate and ice cream and laughed and cried, all things the family in affidavits said they dearly miss.
Cynara’s death and all that followed for the Ali family is explored in “Cynara,” directed by Sherien Barsoum and also available to stream on Gem starting Oct. 24. (Full disclosure: I am in the documentary, filmed as I follow Ali’s case after her conviction.)
The film delves into the police investigation, which involved extensive wiretaps and other forms of surveillance on family members, including Cynara’s sisters.
It also highlights the response and testimony of first responders, including a firefighter who immediately disbelieved anyone had invaded the home and kicked at Ali as she lay on the floor near Cynara.
It also probes the mysterious letter sent to the family home, signed as coming from the invaders who said they had gone to the wrong home in search of a package. Its origins remain unknown.
Co-counsel Zita describes in the documentary the lengths police went to in their investigation, including a fake police “stimulation” letter sent to the family, a fabricated vacation prize to get family out of a house, multiple searches, seizures of electronics, installing listening bugs and recording phone calls.
“They wanted to use all the tools and manpower they had to not only investigate the Ali family, but all their known associates and family members and friends, track their vehicles, track their phone lines, put number recorders on their phones, which would indicate incoming and the outgoing calls,” Zita said.
She added that the way that the family was investigated “is similar to the kind of investigation you see in a gang” case. But for all the resources and techniques used, police “produced nothing. The investigation became tunnel vision.”
At trial, the jury looked nothing like Ali; her husband and supporters have questioned if that may have affected the outcome.
A 2018 joint Star and Toronto Metropolitan University (then Ryerson) investigation into jury composition exposed how accused seldom get a jury or their peers, at least when it comes to racial background.
Included in the investigation was an analysis of the racial makeup of juries in dozens of trials, including Ali’s. Eight jurors were white and of those who were not, none shared her South Asian background.
While it’s not possible to know why or how a jury arrives at a decision, it’s clear the jury in Ali’s trial did not believe a home invasion had taken place.
Lockyer too, initially, was skeptical of Ali’s evidence but after meeting Ali in a Quebec prison where she’d been transferred because she had attempted suicide, the lawyer best known for representing the wrongfully convicted, had a change of mind.
“I think I was unfair to her when I met her in Montreal because I had discounted in my own mind the home invasion theory, and I gave her a rough time about it,” Lockyer said in an interview with the Star, which is included in the film.
In time, the case moved from what he thought of as a “miscarriage of justice” case, said Lockyer, to: “She is innocent.""
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
—————————————————————————————————
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
------------------------------------------------------------------
YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
—————————————————--------
