PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The lengths to which police went are documented in a feature-length documentary on the case, and were itemized by Lockyer and co-counsel Jessica Zita in an extraordinary list prepared for the retrial and entered as an exhibit. (Full disclosure: I am in the documentary, as I follow Ali’s case after her conviction.) Zita says in the documentary 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 Ali’s first and second trial, court heard evidence from family, friends, pastors and fellow parishioners at the Christian church Ali attends that she was a loving mother to Cynara, and, as Lockyer summarized, “loved her to bits.” Court heard that Cynara suffered from seizures and had three the day before Ali called 911 to report a break in and her daughter in medical distress. Otherwise, Cynara was healthy and happy, court heard. Cynara could not walk, talk or feed herself, and communicated by laughing and crying."
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STORY: "8 years after tossed conviction, Toronto mom Cindy Ali is found not guilty in death of disabled daughter," by Staff Report reporter Jim Rankin, published by The Toronto Star, on January 19, 2024. ( (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: "Toronto mother Cindy Ali has been found not guilty in the sudden death of her severely disabled daughter in a verdict — met with applause in a packed courtroom Friday morning — that brings to an end a prosecution that spanned two trials and more than a decade."
GIST: "Toronto mother Cindy Ali has been found not guilty in the sudden death of her severely disabled daughter in a verdict — met with applause in a packed courtroom Friday morning — that brings to an end a prosecution that spanned two trials and more than a decade.
Ali is not guilty of murder, nor of the lesser charge of manslaughter, Justice Jane Kelly told the Toronto court.
The judge said she was “left in a state of uncertainly” about where “the truth of the matter lies” around Ali's claim her 16-year-old daughter Cynara died following a home invasion gone wrong on the morning of Feb. 19, 2011, but said the Crown had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the mother deliberately planned the murder of her daughter in a “mercy killing” and then staged the home. Nor had the Crown proven its theory for manslaughter, that Ali “snapped” before making it appear as though a break-in had taken place.
Ali stood in court as Kelly explained the bottom line: She is not guilty of anything.
Kelly delivered the much-anticipated verdict before a courtroom packed with supporters of Ali and her family, some of whom attended the judge-alone retrial, which began Oct. 16, on a daily basis.
Cheers rang out in court as Ali hugged her defence lawyers James Lockyer and Jessica Zita.
It was a far different outcome from Ali’s first trial in 2016, when a jury was given an all-or-none decision: Either believe that Ali’s home invasion story taken place and acquit her, or disbelieve her and convict her of a planned and deliberate killing of her beloved daughter.
The jury in that trial chose the latter, leaving Ali’s supporters stunned.
In the wake of the verdict and over the years that followed, Allan Ali and Ali’s supporters questioned whether the composition of the jury was a factor in finding the mother guilty of such a crime.
The jury looked nothing like Ali. A 2018 joint Star and Toronto Metropolitan University (then Ryerson) investigation into jury composition showed how accused seldom get a jury of their peers, at least when it comes to racial background.
The investigation included an analysis of the racial makeup of juries in dozens of trials, including Ali’s. Of the twelve who decided Ali’s fate, eight jurors were white and of those who were not, none shared her South Asian background.
The reversal of the first verdict:
The Ontario Court of Appeal quashed the conviction in 2021 and Ali had been out of prison since she was released on bail in 2020, in part due to the strength of her appeal.
Unlike at the retrial, the Crown did not raise the “mercy killing” motive at Ali’s first trial.
Lockyer, in his closing submissions, described the prosecution theory that Ali loved Cynara so much that she decided to end her suffering “rank speculation” and a motive plucked from “thin air.”
It brought to mind the case of Saskatchewan farmer Robert Latimer, who killed his daughter Tracy, 12, who also had cerebral palsy, by piping exhaust into a vehicle. Latimer, who confessed to police that he killed Tracy to save her from painful surgeries, was convicted of second-degree murder.
In fact, police in Ali’s case, very soon believed mercy killing could be a possibility, given the police lines of questioning of Ali and those who knew her and the family, in an exhaustive investigation that involved wiretaps, vehicle tracking, listening devices and police stimulation techniques aimed at getting people talking.
The lengths to which police went are documented in a feature-length documentary on the case, and were itemized by Lockyer and co-counsel Jessica Zita in an extraordinary list prepared for the retrial and entered as an exhibit. (Full disclosure: I am in the documentary, as I follow Ali’s case after her conviction.)
Zita says in the documentary 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 Ali’s first and second trial, court heard evidence from family, friends, pastors and fellow parishioners at the Christian church Ali attends that she was a loving mother to Cynara, and, as Lockyer summarized, “loved her to bits.”
Court heard that Cynara suffered from seizures and had three the day before Ali called 911 to report a break in and her daughter in medical distress. Otherwise, Cynara was healthy and happy, court heard.
Cynara could not walk, talk or feed herself, and communicated by laughing and crying.
Court heard several possibilities for her death due to lack of oxygen, including sudden unexpected death due to epilepsy, or SUDEP. Prosecutors argued Ali staged the family home to make it appear a home invasion had taken place and then smothered Cynara with a pillow.
Ali and her defence team contended she did nothing to cause her daughter’s death, and that there had been a home invasion gone awry.
Ali was Cynara’s primary caregiver, and home alone with her on February 19, 2011, when she told police two Black masked men, one armed with a handgun, pushed their way into the Ali family townhome in Scarborough, seeking a “package.”
Ali told police at the time, and on the witness stand in her own defence, that one of the men led her through the home in search of a package, while the second man stayed with Cynara in the living room and at one point held a pillow in his hands.
Ali said the men indicated they had the wrong house and left through a basement door connecting to the townhome complex underground parking garage. By then, Cynara, said Ali, was quiet and in distress. Ali dialled 911 at 11:37 a.m., and testified she passed out twice while on the call.
First responders managed to restore Cynara’s heartbeat, but she died 36 hours later at the Hospital For Sick Children after being taken off life support.
An eyewitness from the townhome complex on Burrows Hall Boulevard told police, and testified at the first trial, that she saw two men of similar description to the men described by Ali in the underground garage prior to the 911 call.
Why the first trial was rejected
At Ali’s successful appeal, Lockyer and Zita argued her jury had been “straitjacketed” into a decision that wrongly resulted in a 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 the judge should not have left that with the jury as a possibility.""
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.
