GIST: A new prosecution theory that Cindy Ali loved her 16-year-old daughter Cynara so much that she smothered her to end her suffering amounts to “rank speculation” — a baseless motive plucked from “thin air,” her legal team argued at the close of Ali’s second trial, which is now over but for the judge’s verdict.
The Crown’s mercy-killing theory, when contrasted by evidence Ali was a loving mother who would never harm Cynara, supports a finding of a “proved absence of motive,” lawyer James Lockyer argued Monday. That would serve as a “powerful piece of evidence” that Ali did not kill Cynara, who had cerebral palsy, he said.
Before a packed court filled with Ali’s family, friends and congregants from her church, Lockyer told Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly she could lift an “enormous stigma” Ali and her family have carried in the 13 years since Cynara’s 2011 death by finding Ali had nothing to do with it.
“I’m asking the court to consider taking away from Cindy and her family that she had anything to do with the death of her beloved daughter, a stigma that drove her to try and take her own life” while in prison following her initial first-degree murder conviction in 2016 — a verdict, delivered by a jury, that was later overturned.
Such a finding, said Lockyer, would allow Ali and her family for the first time, “finally and properly, to grieve Cynara’s death, along with all those around her.”
While the defence team of Lockyer and Jessica Zita have argued Ali is innocent in Cynara’s death following a home invasion gone awry, the prosecution contends the home invasion was a fabrication by Ali. In their closing arguments, prosecutors gave Kelly several paths to finding Ali guilty, up to and including for first-degree murder, once again.
Crown attorney Beverley Olesko told Kelly a first-degree murder finding is appropriate if she finds Ali decided to kill Cynara and did so after making up a home invasion story and staging the family’s Scarborough’s town house to make as though one had taken place. If the judge finds Ali suffocated Cynara but did not plan it in advance, and then quickly staged the home and then called 911, Ali could be convicted of second-degree murder, Olesko said.
Lastly, said Olesko, the judge could find Ali guilty of manslaughter, for example, if she finds Ali did not smother Cynara but didn’t take steps to try and save her.
Lockyer called that path to a manslaughter verdict “ridiculous,” saying it should be rejected.
Cynara, who communicated by laughing and crying, could not walk or feed herself. Court has heard several possibilities for her death due to lack of oxygen, including smothering and sudden unexpected death due to epilepsy. She suffered from seizures, and court has heard she had three the night before Feb. 19, 2011, when Ali, home alone with Cynara, called 911 to report a break in and her daughter in medical distress.
Ali, who said she twice passed out during her 911 call, told police two Black men with Jamaican accents, dressed in black, wearing gloves and balaclavas, pushed their way into the home that Saturday morning seeking a “package.” While one, holding a gun, took Ali through the home looking for the package, the other remained on the main floor near Cynara, at times with a pillow in his hands, she testified.
Ali said she tried several times to get back to Cynara and on the last successful try, Cynara was quiet, and the men, realizing they had the wrong house, left through a basement door connected to an underground garage. First responders managed to restart Cynara’s heart. She lived another 36 hours before being taken off life support at the Hospital for Sick Children.
At the first trial, an eyewitness testified to seeing two men with similar descriptions to what Ali provided police, on foot in the underground parking garage about 17 minutes before Ali dialed 911. That evidence was again part of the retrial.
Olesko submitted Monday that the eyewitness account was a “red herring” — “so general it should have no weight” and amounting to possible “racial profiling” of many Black men who live in the area.
Court has also heard of another home on the same street as the town home complex that had a street address identical to the Alis’ unit number, and that the two homes often got each other’s mail and pizza deliveries.
Olesko spent much of her closing submissions Monday pointing out inconsistencies in Ali’s accounts of the home invasion, including to police and in court, that suggest Ali had “made up the story to begin with and can’t keep all of her details straight.”
Ali’s defence team contends Ali did nothing to cause her daughter’s death and that Cynara was well cared for and “loved to bits” by Ali. “She was a blessing” to the family, said Lockyer, “a miracle, God’s gift to them.”
Lockyer told court Monday that the defence believes one of the intruders used a pillow to quiet Cynara, who had a loud laugh, while the other led Ali through the house.
Court has heard the extent to which police investigated Ali, her husband Allan Ali, Cynara’s three sisters, their two church pastors and, in all, about 20 people, using wiretaps, “stimulation” techniques, vehicle trackers, seized phones and text messages, and planting listening devices.
The entire investigation put the family “under a cloud of suspicion” Lockyer said Monday, and is notable for its “absence of evidence.” Lockyer pointed out that only one piece of evidence from those police efforts — a single text by one of Ali’s daughters to her boyfriend saying she thought her parents were keeping something from her — came up at the retrial.
Out of some 8,300 texts, said Lockyer: “Wow, they took one.”
“My children probably think I’m hiding things from them all the time, and I am,” Kelly responded, prompting laughs from the public gallery.
Lockyer pointed Monday to the testimonials from family, friends and church pastors that Ali was a caring, loving mother who would never harm her daughter.
In the police interview, said Lockyer, Ali asks for updates on her daughter, about her “baby,” and is told she is in good hands at SickKids. Ali is “subservient” throughout the interview, Lockyer noted. If she had been “cold and calculating,” as the prosecution asserts, that is not apparent in the recorded interview.
“At no time is she saying how awful this was for Cynara, it was something she could no longer endure, to the contrary,” said Lockyer. He then directed the judge to a number of “badges of truth” in Ali’s statement that portray a person who is not “making up a story,” including a recollection that the man with the gun did not point it at her when that might seem more likely in a made up story.
At her trial in 2016, Ali’s jury was given an all-or-none decision — either believe the home invasion story and acquit, or disbelieve and convict Ali of a planned and deliberate murder. The conviction was quashed in 2021 by the Ontario Court of Appeal and Ali has been out of prison since she was released on bail in 2020, in part due to the strength of her appeal.
The Crown did not raise the “mercy killing” motive at Ali’s first trial.
At Ali’s successful appeal, documented in a feature-length documentary on the case, Lockyer and Zita argued her jury had been “straitjacketed” into a decision that wrongly resulted in a conviction and automatic life sentence. (Full disclosure: I am in the documentary, as I follow Ali’s case after her conviction.)
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 the judge should not have left that with the jury as a possibility.
Throughout this trial and the last, supporters, most with a connection to Ali’s church, have been attending.
The trial resumes Jan. 19, with a verdict expected that day, about a month shy of the 13th anniversary of Cynara’s death.
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/toronto-mom-cindy-ali-had-no-motive-to-kill-her-disabled-daughter-defence-says-at/article_7a422e4a-9865-11ee-b80b-b3afde0ebf7c.html
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
