Randal Dooley died Sept. 25, 1998 of brain injuries that witnesses said were received after repeated beatings at the hands of his parents.
Abused child's parents lose their murder appeal
Updated: Tue Dec. 22 2009 6:35:29 PM
The Canadian Press
TORONTO — Second-degree murder convictions against the father and stepmother of seven-year-old Randal Dooley were upheld Tuesday by Ontario's highest court.
A jury convicted Tony and Marcia Dooley in 2002 of murdering the boy in what's been called one of Canada's worst child-abuse cases.
Randal had wasted to just 41 pounds and had 13 fractured ribs, a lacerated liver, four brain injuries, and head-to-toe bruises when he died in 1998.
On Tuesday, the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed the couple's argument that they should be granted a new trial because the judge made legal errors which resulted in jury verdicts based on emotion, not evidence.
"Randal's severely compromised physical condition must have been apparent to the appellants," the Appeal Court decision reads.
"Neither did anything to protect Randal from further abuse or to obtain the medical assistance needed to keep him alive."
Randal was born in Jamaica and came to Canada to live with his father and stepmother in November 1997, 11 months before his death.
The key objection raised during the appeal was the trial judge's failure to specifically instruct the jury not to convict the couple based solely on the evidence of prior abuse.
"The trial judge's explanation connecting liability for murder to culpability in the fatal assault, repeated at several different phases of the instructions, made it clear to the jury that in arriving at its verdict it must come to grips with the evidence pertaining to the final assault," the decision reads.
"The appellants have not convinced me that, absent the instruction they seek, the jury could have ignored the trial judge's instructions tying culpability to the final assault and convicted based on responsibility for the earlier assaults."
The court also dismissed Marcia Dooley's sentence appeal.
At the 2002 trial the judge found Marcia Dooley "more blameworthy" and handed her a life sentence with no chance of parole for at least 18 years.
It was found that she had struck the fatal blow to Randal and had inflicted the vast majority of the prior abuse.
Her husband received a life term with no parole for at least 13 years.
A ruthless drug dealer admitted yesterday he fired the .357 Magnum that likely killed schoolgirl Jane Creba in a brazen Boxing Day gunfight on Yonge St.
Jeremiah Valentine, 27, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the shooting.
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