The accused was convicted by jury of the attempted murder of her infant daughter and her mother, and of aggravated assault of the daughter, following an incident in which all three were found unconscious after being injected with insulin.
The Court of Appeal ordered a new trial on the attempted murder count relating to the mother on the basis that the jury instructions failed to distinguish between attempted murder and the offence of aiding suicide where the mother may have self-administered the insulin.
The majority of the Supreme Court of Canada allowed the Crown's appeal, restoring the conviction, finding no air of reality to the theory that the mother voluntarily injected herself with suicidal intent.
The majority held that trial judges must only instruct on theories lacking air of reality where there is a sufficient evidentiary foundation, and that the cumulative circumstantial evidence did not support a reasonable inference that the mother intended to end her own life.
The dissent would have dismissed the Crown's appeal, finding an air of reality to the inference of autonomous self-injection and holding that the trial judge was required to instruct the jury on the legal significance of I.F.'s possible voluntary participation to the actus reus of attempted murder.