![Murder retrial ordered after Ontario judge said couple was ‘f****d’ if they went to trial](https://globalnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/jaylin.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&w=720&h=379&crop=1)
Murder retrial ordered after Ontario judge said couple was ‘f****d’ if they went to trial
Global News
The Toronto mother and father were found guilty of murder by a jury in 2017 after their son allegedly died of malnutrition and blunt trauma.
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A Toronto couple convicted of murder for allegedly killing their child has been granted a retrial by Ontario’s top court. Comments made by the trial judge, urging them to plead guilty, were found on appeal to have caused a “miscarriage of justice.”
A three-judge decision released Wednesday found that the “appearance of fairness and the integrity of the trial was irretrievably compromised” after comments made by the trial judge in 2017, telling them at one point that they were “f****d.”
The appeal on behalf of Ravyn Colley and Joel Roberto was granted, despite a jury finding them guilty of first and second-degree murder respectively in the death of their four-year-old son, Jaelin. He died in 2014 after suffering from chronic malnutrition and blunt-force trauma.
During Roberto’s trial, the court heard he had called 911 at 2 a.m. one night in 2014, claiming his son had fallen down the stairs of the family’s townhouse near Finch Avenue and Don Mills Road in North York. That story, the judge said, was a lie concocted by the couple.
An autopsy found that Jaelin, who was just 27 pounds at the time of his death and just months from turning five years old, died from blunt force trauma to the head, aspiration of vomit to the lungs and chronic severe protein malnutrition.
The couple was arrested and charged with failing to provide the necessities of life, but the charges were later upgraded to first-degree murder. A jury found both guilty of murder, though Roberto was found guilty of second-degree.
An appeal was filed on a “number of grounds,” according to the appeal court ruling. Among the reasons the couple requested a fresh trial were disagreements over what evidence could be admitted at trial, how the judge instructed the jury and claims the judge attempted to make both plead guilty.