PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Court heard that Ali was not told of the true condition of her daughter for many hours, including during a lengthy police interview conducted while her daughter lay on life support at the Hospital for Sick Children. Allan Ali testified last week as a defence witness about a letter, purporting to be from the home invaders, that arrived at the family home on March 16, 2011, about a month after Cynara’s death. The Crown has argued the letter was also fabricated. The handwritten letter said the invaders had gone to the wrong address in search of a package. After Allan delivered the letter to police, the Ali family was called in for fingerprinting and to submit writing samples. Cindy Ali told court she did not write the letter, and Allan Ali said he quizzed Cindy and others about who might have written it as well. The origins of the letter have never been determined. Last week, a second letter that was later sent to the Ali home just after the one-year anniversary of Cynara’s death was detailed in court for the first time. It was an unsigned fake police “stimulation” letter sent to the family, purporting to be from a neighbour, and likely designed to get family talking — in a case that involved police listening devices. “Looks like the police don’t believe the mother (sic) story” and that there should be a murder charge “if you did it,” reads a typed introduction to a series of Toronto police Facebook postings that follow it, from the period around the anniversary. Most of the posts refer to unrelated investigations but then a posting about the death of Cynara appears, authored by Frank Skubic, the lead detective on the case. The post describes the details of the case and Skubic appeals for anyone with information to call or email him directly.
Below it is a single, purportedly public, comment that speculates about the cause of death and criticizes the intruder story as “simply not believable.” Court also heard new details last week about a made-up, one-night Niagara Falls hotel vacation prize designed by police to get the Ali family out of the family home. Though Allan Ali initially thought the prize might be some sort of scam or “vacuum sales pitch,” the family and some relatives enjoyed an entire suite the night of Jan. 8, 2012. Allan testified he was awoken at 3 a.m. at the hotel by a call from his alarm company, saying the system had been tripped back home. When he called back to ask more about it he was patched through to a supervisor, who said, “I can’t discuss it with you.” After the trip, the family and others started getting calls from the lead detective, Skubic, requesting further interviews, said Allan, who “felt that the focus” of the investigation was on the family, and “it gave me pause for concern.” Ali was arrested by Skubic a couple of weeks after the “stimulation” letter arrived."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "At the first trial, the Crown contended Ali smothered Cynara for financial reasons, a motive Lockyer attacked in the appeal hearing, saying the debt the family carried made them no different than hundreds of thousands of Canadians. The appeal court found that motive “so meagre” and “speculative” that Ducharme should not have left that with the jury as a possibility. It has not come up at the re-trial. Ali was released from prison on bail in 2020, in part based on the strength of her then-unheard appeal. Throughout this trial and the last, supporters, most with a connection to Ali’s church, have been attending."
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STORY: "‘It was a tragedy’: Toronto mom denies killing disabled daughter to end her suffering," by Staff Reporter Jim Rankin, published by The Toronto star, on November 28, 2023. (Jim Rankin is a reporter-photographer on the crime, courts and justice team. He has won three National Newspaper Awards and been nominated for eight others. In 2002, he led a team of reporters, editors and researchers involved in a Michener Award-winning investigative series into race, policing and crime in Toronto. He is also the recipient of a Canadian Association of Journalists Award and the St. Clair Balfour Fellowship from the Canadian Journalism Foundation.)
SUB-HEADING: "As she did at her first trial in 2016, Toronto mom Cindy Ali has taken the stand to reiterate her claim that her disabled daughter was the victim of a home invasion gone wrong."
GIST: "Cindy Ali, standing trial for a second time in the death of her severely disabled 16-year-old daughter, Cynara, has rejected a prosecution theory that, following a string of seizures, the mother decided it was better if her daughter’s life were over, and smothered her with a pillow.
“It was a tragedy,” Ali, in tears, told Crown attorney Craig Coughlan during a cross-examination last week that focused on Ali’s account of her daughter going into medical distress during a home invasion by two men seeking a “package.”
Coughlan suggested Ali was upset after Cynara, who had cerebral palsy, suffered three seizures the evening before Feb. 19, 2011, when Ali called 911 to report a break-in and a call for help. Seizures were common in the teen’s life, court has heard, but Coughlan suggested her quality of life was deteriorating.
Ali, suggested Coughlan, had done “the very best” for Cynara but realized her daughter would be enduring seizures “for the rest of her life” and “came to the conclusion that you did not want that for her.”
“I never did anything to Cynara,” said Ali, who is facing a charge of first-degree murder for the second time, after being convicted by a jury in 2016. That conviction was overturned on appeal in 2021.
Ali took to the witness stand last week, as she did at her first trial.
Prosecutors continue to argue Ali staged the family home to make it appear a home invasion had taken place, and then smothered Cynara with a pillow.
Ali’s defence team of James Lockyer and Jessica Zita contend Ali did nothing to cause her daughter’s death, that there had been a home invasion gone wrong, and that Cynara was loved by a supportive family and well cared for.
Cynara was her “world,” Ali told Zita at the conclusion of her examination in chief.
Cynara communicated by laughing and crying. She could not walk or feed herself. Court has heard several possibilities for her death due to lack of oxygen, including sudden unexpected death due to epilepsy.
Ali has said she saw one of the intruders standing near Cynara with a pillow in his hands. One of the intruders, said Ali, acknowledged they had the wrong home and the pair exited the Scarborough townhome through a basement door leading to an underground garage shared by 165 other units in the complex.
By then, she said, Cynara was not moving.
Court has heard another home nearby shared the same street address as the Ali’s unit number, and that the two households often got each other’s mail and deliveries.
The Crown closed its case two weeks ago after calling its final witnesses, including a Toronto police forensics officer who photographed the house and lifted fingerprints matching Ali’s from shards of broken glass from candle holders.
Ali has said she threw a holder at one of the intruders. Ali has testified one of the intruders, in turn, threw a glass candle holder at her as well. Rhonda Haley said it’s possible the two matching prints she lifted came from one of two broken glass candle holders.
By the time the police forensics team began its examination of the house, 17 first responders and police officers had been in and out of the townhome.
Ali described the two male intruders as dressed in black suits and coats, black leather shoes and wearing gloves and balaclavas, speaking with Jamaican accents. Ali told police one of the intruders, armed with a handgun, led her through the home to look for a “package,” while the other stayed with Cynara on the main floor.
An eyewitness at the first trial, a neighbour, testified to seeing two men wearing dark clothing in the underground garage around the time of the 911 call. That witness, now believed to be living out of country, could not be located and instead, her evidence from the first trial was entered into the court record last week.
The Crown spent most of its cross-examination of Ali going through police photos of the home and pointing to inconsistencies in the timing of events and past testimony.
As the judge-alone trial before Justice Jane Kelly at the 361 University Ave. courthouse has seen with other witnesses, some memories have faded over the past dozen years, Ali’s among them.
“I was in shock. I had two strange guys in the house,” Ali said at one point during questioning by Coughlan. At another: “I am trying to do my best to remember everything. It was tragic at that time.”
Ali was home alone with Cynara that day, with her husband Allan and twin daughters out at a Family Day weekend work event, and their oldest daughter also out.
Ali dialed 911 at 11:37 a.m. and has said she twice passed out while on the call. First responders were able to restore Cynara’s heartbeat, but she died in hospital 36 hours later after being taken off life support.
Court heard that Ali was not told of the true condition of her daughter for many hours, including during a lengthy police interview conducted while her daughter lay on life support at the Hospital for Sick Children.
Allan Ali testified last week as a defence witness about a letter, purporting to be from the home invaders, that arrived at the family home on March 16, 2011, about a month after Cynara’s death. The Crown has argued the letter was also fabricated. The handwritten letter said the invaders had gone to the wrong address in search of a package.
After Allan delivered the letter to police, the Ali family was called in for fingerprinting and to submit writing samples. Cindy Ali told court she did not write the letter, and Allan Ali said he quizzed Cindy and others about who might have written it as well. The origins of the letter have never been determined.
Last week, a second letter that was later sent to the Ali home just after the one-year anniversary of Cynara’s death was detailed in court for the first time.
It was an unsigned fake police “stimulation” letter sent to the family, purporting to be from a neighbour, and likely designed to get family talking — in a case that involved police listening devices.
“Looks like the police don’t believe the mother (sic) story” and that there should be a murder charge “if you did it,” reads a typed introduction to a series of Toronto police Facebook postings that follow it, from the period around the anniversary.
Most of the posts refer to unrelated investigations but then a posting about the death of Cynara appears, authored by Frank Skubic, the lead detective on the case. The post describes the details of the case and Skubic appeals for anyone with information to call or email him directly.
Below it is a single, purportedly public, comment that speculates about the cause of death and criticizes the intruder story as “simply not believable.”
Court also heard new details last week about a made-up, one-night Niagara Falls hotel vacation prize designed by police to get the Ali family out of the family home.
Though Allan Ali initially thought the prize might be some sort of scam or “vacuum sales pitch,” the family and some relatives enjoyed an entire suite the night of Jan. 8, 2012.
Allan testified he was awoken at 3 a.m. at the hotel by a call from his alarm company, saying the system had been tripped back home. When he called back to ask more about it he was patched through to a supervisor, who said, “I can’t discuss it with you.”
After the trip, the family and others started getting calls from the lead detective, Skubic, requesting further interviews, said Allan, who “felt that the focus” of the investigation was on the family, and “it gave me pause for concern.”
Ali was arrested by Skubic a couple of weeks after the “stimulation” letter arrived.
Allan testified he only learned that the trip was a ruse a few years ago from filmmaker Sherien Barsoum, who was working on a feature-length documentary on the case. (I am in the film, as I followed the case after a jury convicted her of first-degree murder in 2016.)
At Ali’s successful appeal, Lockyer and Zita argued her jury had been “straitjacketed” into an all-or-nothing decision that wrongly resulted in her conviction and automatic life sentence.
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.
That fact, along with other problems in Justice Todd Ducharme’s instructions to the jury, was enough reason to set aside her conviction, the Court of Appeal ruled. At the first trial, the Crown contended Ali smothered Cynara for financial reasons, a motive Lockyer attacked in the appeal hearing, saying the debt the family carried made them no different than hundreds of thousands of Canadians.
The appeal court found that motive “so meagre” and “speculative” that Ducharme should not have left that with the jury as a possibility. It has not come up at the re-trial.
Ali was released from prison on bail in 2020, in part based on the strength of her then-unheard appeal. Throughout this trial and the last, supporters, most with a connection to Ali’s church, have been attending.
The trial continues on Monday, Dec. 4.
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;
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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;
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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-123488014\