The Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the appeal of the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) who was trying to prevent Adèle Sorella from having a 3e court case. The Laval woman had obtained this right in March when the Court of Appeal overturned her guilty verdict for the double murder of her young daughters.
The Supreme Court released its decision on Thursday, without providing reasons.
Adèle Sorella was found guilty in 2019 of the second degree murder of her daughters Amanda, aged nine, and Sabrina, aged eight.
The 56-year-old woman was then sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole for 10 years.
His lawyers appealed this decision and obtained a reversal of the verdict and a 3e court case.
Because she had suffered a first in 2013. At the end of it, the jury had declared her guilty of premeditated murder. But due to erroneous instructions to the jury, the verdict was set aside and a second trial ordered.
This second verdict of 2019 was also overturned due to erroneous instructions to the jury. The Court of Appeal ruled last March that the trial judge erred in denying Ms.me Sorella the right to plead the thesis of the involvement of organized crime in the murder of her two little girls.
Mysterious deaths in 2009
On March 31, 2009, the two little girls were found lifeless, lying side by side in their playroom in the basement of the family home in Laval.
A particular element in this case is that the cause of death of the girls was never determined: their bodies bore no marks of violence, nor any indication of what could have happened to them.
The Crown has argued that the most likely cause of their death is that the two children were placed in the hyperbaric chamber installed in the house – to treat one of the little girls – and that they were deprived of oxygen.
This “hyperbaric chamber theory” was presented to the jury, but not the “mafia theory” offered by the defense, had argued before the Court of Appeal in November 2021 Me Ronald Prégent, one of Mr.me Sorella.
At the second trial, the defense argued that Ms.me Sorella — and father of their children — was a mastermind of organized crime. It was then possible that someone entered the house to attack the girls, with the aim of reaching their father. The latter, Giuseppe De Vito, was on the run at the time and wanted by the police. Finally arrested in 2010, he was found dead in his cell three years later, poisoned with cyanide in a maximum security prison.
This theory would have opened the door to the possibility that someone else committed the homicide, continued Mr.e Prégent, while the Crown argued that Ms.me Sorella was the only one who could have committed this crime.
By rejecting this theory offered by the defence, the judge “completely closed the door to the sole possibility that the jury could entertain a reasonable doubt that someone other than the appellant [Mme Sorella] caused the death of the children. »
The Lavalloise will probably have to relive the entire legal process for a third time.