Laura Babcock trial September 2017
Wayne Millard trial March 2018
:angry:
Based upon what we have just seen, I'm not expecting much from either of these projected trials, if they even come to pass.
While the result of the CN debacle is certainly better than the (very real, as it turns out) possibility of her walking out free and clear with an acquittal, it was certainly implied by some close to the case and by the fact of direct indictments and publication bans, that the Crown had a very strong case against CN.
That proved
not to be true, and the Crown said so in so many words, as did the judge (who however did not hear what other evidence the Crown might have had). The Crown did say they had
no direct evidence to prove what CN knew. This is *the* critical factor in the case against her, and lacking that, the odds of a conviction while greater than zero, were not good.
With the LB and WM cases, investigations only started long after the fact, material evidence, if any, is limited; proper forensics could not be done in the absence of remains, weapons and so on, and actual evidence may be far less conclusive than what was purportedly amassed against CN.
The Crown must have something, or the judges involved would not have sent the matters to trial. But they don't need a whole lot of evidence for this; a poster earlier cited the fact that the standard for issuing a preferred indictment was no higher than the standard for proceeding with any other prosecution. The bar is low.
Given all that, I'm not sanguine either that trials will take place, or that any further guilty verdicts will result from them. I can only speculate on what the Crown's logic is in proceeding, but by keeping the cases ongoing they can still hope for new or damaging information to reveal itself or witnesses to come forward now that DM and MS are incarcerated.
Not sure there will be a reason to reconvene in September, though. On verra.