Ontario’s highest court hears Dellen Millard, Mark Smich appeals in Babcock murder
Posted March 13, 2023 1:47 pm.
Last Updated March 14, 2023 7:39 am.
The jury that found Mark Smich guilty of helping his once-close friend Dellen Millard murder an ex-lover was not properly told how to balance the evidence against him, his lawyer argued before Ontario’s highest court Monday.
But the Crown says the cases against the two men for the murder of Laura Babcock are overwhelming, calling on the court to dismiss their appeals of the conviction.
Babcock’s parents sat in the courtroom Monday as the Ontario Court of Appeal began to hear arguments from the two men convicted of her July 2012 murder.
The three-judge panel is scheduled later this week to hear the appeals of their convictions for the murder of Tim Bosma, a 32-year-old man whose body was burned in an incinerator after he took the two men out for a test drive of his pickup truck in May 2013.
Related: Millard, Smich murder appeals reopen wounds for victim’s family, 10 years later
Millard is also set to appeal his conviction for murdering his father, Wayne Millard.
Millard and Smich were sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole for 75 years and 50 years, respectively, after convictions were handed down in those cases. But the Supreme Court ruled last year those types of stacked periods of parole ineligibility amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
