The appellants, grandparents and legal guardians of the victims, appealed their convictions for second degree murder and forcible confinement, as well as their respective parole ineligibility periods of 22 and 20 years.
The victims, a five-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister, were subjected to prolonged starvation, abuse, and confinement in a squalid room, resulting in the boy's death.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeals, finding that the trial judge properly inferred the requisite mens rea for murder from the prolonged course of conduct and correctly rejected the defence's expert evidence on diminished capacity.
The court also upheld the admission of police statements and found the confinement vastly exceeded any lawful parental authority.
The sentence appeals were dismissed, with the court affirming that the extreme cruelty and inhumanity of the offences justified the lengthy parole ineligibility periods.
