CALGARY(660NEWS)- The crown has begun appealing the acquittal of an Alberta couple cleared in the death of their young son.
David and Collet Stephan were accused of not seeking medical attention sooner for 19-month-old Ezekiel, who died in 2012. The couple testified they thought their son had croup and that they used herbal remedies to treat him.
WATCH MORE: Crown appeals Stephan’s acquittal
Last September, a Court of Queen’s Bench judge found them not guilty of failing to provide the necessaries of life.
READ MORE: Judges to hear Alberta Crown appeal of couple’s acquittal in toddler death
While the Court of Queen’s Bench judge said he agreed with the testimony of a defence expert, the crown also raised issues with his comments where he criticized the speech of the medical examiner, who is from Nigeria.
“His ability to articulate his thoughts in an understandable fashion was severely compromised by: his garbled enunciation; his failure to use appropriate endings for plurals and past tenses; his failure to use the appropriate definite and indefinite articles; his repeated emphasis of the wrong syllables; dropping his Hs; mispronouncing his vowels; and the speed of his responses,” Justice Terry Clackson wrote.
The crown believes the judge showed bias and wrongfully acquitted the Stephan’s through these “insulting” comments.
This appeal largely centres around claims that the medical examiner, who is from Nigeria, was hard to understand during the trial. The Crown believes the justice in the Stephan's second trial showed bias in his ruling and that led him to acquitting the couple.
— Tom Ross (@Tommy_Slick) June 11, 2020
In the first part of the appeal, the prosecutor detailed that the medical examiner has been an expert witness dozens of times without issue, and nobody raised significant concerns while the trial was happening.
-With files from CityNews and the Canadian Press’ Bill Graveland
