Mother acquitted in retrial of disabled daughter’s death

A Toronto mother who was initially found guilty of smothering her severely disabled daughter has been acquitted of first-degree murder.

Cindy Ali was charged with manslaughter, and later first-degree murder, after her 16-year-old daughter Cyanara died in their Scarborough home in 2011.

At her first-degree murder trial in 2016, the Crown alleged Ali decided to kill her seizure-prone daughter by suffocating her with a pillow, then tried to cover up her crime by blaming a home invasion. The prosecution argued the robbery tale suggested Ali had planned the murder.

Ali, however, stuck to her story about two robbers forcing their way into her home, and that Cynara was unconscious when they left. Her defence argued one of the men might have suffocated the girl, or that she might have had a stress-induced seizure and choked on food.

Ali was sentenced to life in prison but Ontario’s top court ordered a new trial because of faulty instructions given to the jury that convicted her. In quashing the conviction, the Court of Appeal said Superior Court Justice Todd Ducharme was wrong in what he said jurors could infer if they decided Ali had lied about the robbery.

In Friday’s ruling Ontario Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly said while she was left in a state of uncertainty when it came to Ali’s home invasion claim, ultimately the Crown had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she had killed her daughter.

Files from The Canadian Press were used in this report