PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Toronto paramedic Christopher Rotolo, who helped revive Cynara, testified to seeing Ali in the living room with a “blank stare” and “looking right through us” — “Catatonic,” suggested Lockyer on cross-examination, and Rotolo agreed. Ali, who has diabetes, told police she twice passed out while on the 911 call, and was also treated at the scene by paramedics. Rotolo was also reminded of earlier testimony of his that indicated there was no snow on the roads that day, and “was pretty sure it was clear” as he entered the Ali townhome. Other evidence backs up that account, which contradicts testimony from the firefighter who was first to enter the home and insisted there was snow accumulation, and no footprints. Jason Cole, a now-retired detective with the Toronto Police Service, told court he was tasked with investigating the reported break-and-enter and passing along information to the hold-up squad. As part of that investigation, he informally interviewed Ali at Centenary Hospital, where Ali and Cynara were taken, and from where Cynara was later transferred to the Hospital for Sick Children. “She was exceptionally distraught and she was as one would expect a mother to be when you walk into a room and something terrible has happened to her child,” Cole told Crown attorney Craig Coughlan, describing Ali in a “quiet room” at the hospital. Cole also toured the Ali home, without touching anything, and made rough notes and later memo book notations and a supplementary report, which Lockyer pointed out had differing degrees of detail and orders of events. The former officer agreed it was confusing and that he “learned a lesson.”
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STORY: ‘A fancy way of saying, I don’t know’: Cindy Ali murder trial focuses on disabled daughter’s cause of death,' by Staff Reporter Jim Rankin, published by The Toronto Star, on November 6, 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.)
GIST: "A severely disabled 16-year-old died as a result of “hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy” — brain damage due to a lack of oxygen — but what caused that is at the centre of her mother’s second murder trial.
Cynara Ali’s heart stopped during what Cindy Ali has described as a home invasion into the Ali family’s Scarborough home on Feb. 19, 2011, by two masked men, one armed with a gun, looking for a package.
First responders revived Cynara, who had cerebral palsy, after Ali called 911. She died about 36 hours later at the Hospital for Sick Children.
Charis Kepron, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Cynara, told Crown attorney Beverley Olesko Thursday that Cynara’s cardiac arrest was of an “undetermined etiology.”'
“That’s a fancy way of saying, ‘I don’t know,’” said Kepron, who testified via video before Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly in a judge-alone trial taking place at the 361 University Avenue courthouse.
It is the second time Cindy Ali has stood trial in her daughter’s death.
An earlier conviction for first-degree murder was overturned on appeal in 2021; her second trial has covered much of the same territory as her first, with prosecutors arguing the home invasion story is a lie.
Kepron next walked through three possible causes of death, based on her findings and what she’d been told by police and the coroner.
Cynara, prone to seizures, could have aspirated her stomach contents, blocking off access to air.
The teen could not move on her own or communicate verbally, and had to be fed by bottle.
Ali, in interviews with police and at her first trial, has said one of the intruders led her through the house while the other stayed with Cynara in the living room.
At one point, she described seeing that intruder standing over her daughter holding a pillow.
Another possible cause of death is mechanical asphyxiation, such as smothering or other causes, said Kepron. In Cynara’s condition, she would not have been able to put up much of a struggle, Kepron told Olesko.
The Crown contends Ali smothered Cyrara with a pillow, made up the home invasion story and staged the home to look like one had happened.
Ali’s defence team, James Lockyer and Jessica Zita, contend Cynara was loved by Ali and her family and that she died in a home invasion gone wrong.
A third possibility of death is that Cynara died due to “sudden unexpected death in epilepsy,” or SUDEP, a phenomenom that does not involve trauma or drowning and can occur after a seizure. Court has heard Cynara suffered three seizures the evening before.
Without giving any of the causes weight over another, Kepron said any is “possible.”
Under cross-examination by Ali’s co-counsel, Lockyer, Kepron agreed that injuries to Cynara’s lip could have been caused by medical interventions and that Cynara was well cared for, and wore nail polish and bracelets at the time of her death.
Kepron also agreed with Lockyer that stress can trigger seizures in people with epilepsy.
Court has heard Ali describe to police how she could hear Cynara laughing in the presence of the intruders — she often laughed and cried — but then the laughter stopped.
Asked by Lockyer if fear could cause stress, Kepron said she “could see how that would be stressful.”
Toronto paramedic Christopher Rotolo, who helped revive Cynara, testified to seeing Ali in the living room with a “blank stare” and “looking right through us” — “Catatonic,” suggested Lockyer on cross-examination, and Rotolo agreed.
Ali, who has diabetes, told police she twice passed out while on the 911 call, and was also treated at the scene by paramedics.
Rotolo was also reminded of earlier testimony of his that indicated there was no snow on the roads that day, and “was pretty sure it was clear” as he entered the Ali townhome.
Other evidence backs up that account, which contradicts testimony from the firefighter who was first to enter the home and insisted there was snow accumulation, and no footprints.
Jason Cole, a now-retired detective with the Toronto Police Service, told court he was tasked with investigating the reported break-and-enter and passing along information to the hold-up squad.
As part of that investigation, he informally interviewed Ali at Centenary Hospital, where Ali and Cynara were taken, and from where Cynara was later transferred to the Hospital for Sick Children.
“She was exceptionally distraught and she was as one would expect a mother to be when you walk into a room and something terrible has happened to her child,” Cole told Crown attorney Craig Coughlan, describing Ali in a “quiet room” at the hospital.
Cole also toured the Ali home, without touching anything, and made rough notes and later memo book notations and a supplementary report, which Lockyer pointed out had differing degrees of detail and orders of events.
The former officer agreed it was confusing and that he “learned a lesson.”
Cynara was taken off life support about 36 hours after the 911 call and died shortly after.
On Friday, Alison Morris, an expert in bodily fluid identification with the Centre of Forensic Sciences, described saliva and blood testing done on pillowcases and a towel seized by police from the Ali family home.
A stain on one pillowcase tested positive for blood that matched Cynara’s DNA, and saliva was also present in the same area, also a match for Cynara.
Elsewhere on the materials were areas that contained saliva or what might be saliva.
There was also blood on one of the two towels tested.
The testing cannot determine the timing of when the saliva and blood ended up on the materials.
On cross-examination, Lockyer showed Morris family photographs of Cynara on a recliner chair, in which a pillow with a pillowcase pattern matching two examined by Morris is beside her face and a towel appearing to be like the one with blood on it under her mouth.
Cynara drooled quite a bit and had a toothy smile. The family used pillows to prop her up, whether it be on the couch or the recliner chair.
Pointing to a zoomed-in portion of one photo, Lockyer pointed to a stain on the pillowcase near Cynara’s face, and Morris agreed that it appeared to be in the same area as the blood and overlapping saliva samples she tested in the lab.
Lockyer then suggested the findings of saliva and blood could be explained by how Cynara was positioned in the family photos.
“I can’t rule that out as an option,” said Morris.
Ali has said the two intruders left the home through a basement door that connects with the townhome complex’s underground parking garage.
An eyewitness at Ali’s first trial testified to seeing two men of a similar description in the underground parking garage around the same time.
The case is the subject of a feature-length documentary, now streaming on CBC Gem. (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 2021 appeal, Lockyer 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.
Ali’s trial continues on Wednesday."
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-1234880143
