Dr. Tracy Rogers

The appellants, Dellen Millard and Mark Smich, appealed their convictions for the first-degree murder of Laura Babcock.

The Crown's theory was that Millard killed Babcock due to a love triangle, and Smich assisted him, including by incinerating her body.

The Court of Appeal dismissed all conviction appeals, finding no reversible errors in the trial judge's jury instructions regarding reasonable doubt, party liability, after-the-fact conduct, or the use of rap lyrics as adopted admissions.

However, applying the Supreme Court's decision in Bissonnette, the court allowed the sentence appeals solely to quash the consecutive parole ineligibility periods imposed under s. 745.51 of the Criminal Code.

In a pre-trial motion for a first-degree murder case, the defence sought to limit the scope and terminology of expert opinion evidence from two forensic anthropologists regarding photographs of objects burning in an incinerator.

The court granted the request to prohibit the experts from using potentially misleading terminology such as 'consistent with' or 'cannot exclude'.

However, the court dismissed the defence's challenge to one expert's qualifications to opine on the differences between human and deer bones, finding she met the threshold for expertise, subject to a brief voir dire at trial.