TORONTO - Memories of the shocking starvation death of a young boy at the hands of his grandparents nine years ago were revived in a Toronto courtroom on Wednesday.

Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman are asking the Court of Appeal for Ontario to overturn their second-degree murder convictions in the death of five-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin.

Bottineau and Kidman were convicted in 2006 and sentenced to life in prison with no parole for 22 and 20 years, respectively.

Jeffrey weighed only 21 pounds and was covered in sores when he died in November 2002 from complications due to chronic starvation.

Lawyer James Stribopoulos told Ontario's highest court that Bottineau's conviction should be overturned because the trial judge "swept away evidence of Bottineau's highly incapacitated mental state."

Bottineau's IQ of 69 -- borderline mental retardation -- prevented her from understanding that malnutrition was likely to kill the boy, Stribopoulos said.

Had she intended to kill him, she could have withdrawn his food entirely rather than allowing him to slowly wither away over the course of five years, Stribopoulos argued.

Richard Litkowski, who represents Kidman, blamed Bottineau for the abuse, saying that Kidman was "passive" and had "remained tragically indifferent."

"It's morally reprehensible. It makes him an awful human being," said Litkowski -- but it doesn't make him a murderer.

Kidman asked the court to quash Kidman's murder conviction and instead send him to prison for manslaughter for failing to intervene.

Bottineau was the one who set the rules of the house and fed and disciplined the children, Litkowski said.

She was the only one who had access to the locked room where the children were kept, he argued.

Kidman spent most of his days at work and had little direct contact with the kids, the lawyer told the justices.

Evidence that Kidman had beaten Jeffrey was "ambiguous at best," Litkowski said.

The Crown is asking the court to dismiss the appeals because the pair raised the same issues at trial and there is no reason to interfere with that judge's decision.

Jeffrey and his sister were confined to a dark, unheated room for 14 hours a day, breathing in the stench of their own urine and feces.

Although they lived in squalor, the rest of the house was normal, including the living quarters of other children in the home.

The case will continue on Thursday.