I agree with both Gumshew and Abro, and also with what Palisadesk wrote in post # 406.
I think it matters little if one has a fantastically capable and experienced defense lawyer if the Crown has a rock solid case, but if the accused plead not guilty, as have MS and DM, and are submitting to a trial having seen the disclosure, it makes me wonder why as well, if they didn't believe they had a good chance of winning it, IMO.
"Winning" does not necessarily mean acquittal. The volume of damning evidence so far would probably preclude that. Instead, "winning" could mean conviction on a reduced charge. That would appear, at this stage, to be more of a possibility for MS than for DM, but we have yet to see most of the evidence where MS is concerned.
I know the client directs the lawyers on how they want to plea to the charges, and sometimes they go against the advice of their lawyers, but if these lawyers are top-notch, I think they could pick away at the evidence and instill reasonable doubt for the jury about the guilt of the accused, IMO.
As ABro pointed out, even the best lawyer can't make something out of nothing. They can do what they are already doing: challenging potential evidence that is hearsay, or prejudicial (but not relevant to the crime in question), and so on. They can raise doubts about particular pieces of evidence. But, as the judge will doubtless advise them, the jury is to look at the big picture, of which the details are important, but this one or that one is rarely decisive. The weight of evidence will lean one way or another, and "even the best" lawyer can't change that. I hope the accused both have excellent lawyers; when the guilty are well-represented and a trial meets the highest standards of jurisprudence, the legal system is doing its job and we the public can have confidence in it. That certainly appears to be true here, so far at least.
That possibility is worrisome in all murder trials as the victim's loved ones wait for the verdict and must rely on the Crown to leave little or no room for reasonable doubt. There is no guarantee of the outcome for either side, IMO.
Never a guarantee, no. But while the victim's loved ones (I'm not speaking of the Bosma family in particular here) are anxious for the accused to be convicted, their feelings are not helped when it turns out that a wrongful conviction has taken place. The family of Elizabeth Bain were led to believe that her killer was Rob Baltovich, and his conviction has been overturned. Same with the Jessop family and Guy Paul Morin. The anger and pain is increased many-fold when that happens; often the family clings to the belief that the wrongfully convicted is really guilty even when evidence is overwhelming that he was not (the Truscott case had such an outcome).
So it's imperative to get it right. Some of those earlier infamous cases were due to sloppy police work, even corruption and getting witnesses to lie, which would never (I hope) be tolerated today.
Can the accused change their plea down the road as the trial continues
Yes, they can. It is unusual but it is legal.
See
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canad...ice/Trials/Juries#Guilty_plea_in_a_Jury_trial and scroll down to the part about change of plea during a jury trial.
Perhaps despite the most compelling evidence against them they just think that even if there is a tiny chance and faint hope of getting acquittals it's worth it to keep pursuing that hope?
As I said earlier, I think it's likely that neither accused expects an acquittal, but may be hoping for conviction on a reduced charge, such as second-degree murder. Of course there are accused who clearly enjoy the trials (Ted Bundy comes to mind) and DM seems a little too chipper about the whole thing so I wonder about whether he enjoys being the centre of the proceedings, as it were. That is a narcissistic trait, though not a criminal one.