I was following a historical Hamilton case of a double murder - 'William Staples/Rhonda Borelli', where it was years (decades?) later when the son/brother was finally arrested for the murders.. the case finally went to trial, and by that time, there was not a lot of public interest. Good old Susan Clairmont covered the case, but she seemed to ever be the only reporter present during the trial. She may not have reported on every single detail, but I have to admit that even though I believed the accused to be guilty all of the years between the murder and the trial, I was shocked that the jury actually came back with a guilty verdict, based on what little was actually reported on as evidence.... but then again, perhaps not every detail of the trial was reported on.. with just one reporter covering, it would be easy to miss things, perhaps relevant. The defence in this case did not call a single witness. I believe the defence was banking on that there just wasn't enough evidence to convict without a reasonable doubt, and so they simply remained silent. It backfired. Mark Staples is serving his mandatory minimum 25 year sentence before parole consideration.
I wonder if this case will have any defence witnesses to call upon, and if so, what could such witnesses possibly have to offer which would provide reasonable doubt to the evidence presented thus far?
So far, after 3 weeks, it seems the defence is striving for reasonable doubt based on the 'could have been DM, but since he didn't hide anything, he could be innocent and it also could have been anyone else' theory. But of course, there are far too many holes and coincidences for *that* to work, and there must be a lot more Crown evidence to come, since so far, I'm not even seeing what evidence they had to implicate MS in this murder in the first place. I'm sure his turn is coming soon though!