Ontario's top court dismisses Millard, Smich conviction appeals in Bosma murder

Multiple murderers Dellen Millard and Mark Smich had their convictions upheld on Wednesday for the killing of Tim Bosma, with Ontario's top court ruling they had been treated fairly at trial.

The decision from the Court of Appeal for Ontario said the 2016 trial was hard-fought, lengthy and contentious, with both Millard and Smich raising cutthroat defences in the case about the killing of the 32-year-old father from Hamilton.

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But the three-justice panel agreed the trial judge properly addressed the relevant issues.

"Accordingly, I would dismiss both Mr. Smich's and Mr. Millard's conviction appeals," Justice Eileen Gillese wrote in the decision released Wednesday, endorsed by the other two justices on the panel.

It's the second of three murder convictions to be upheld against Millard after the panel heard appeal arguments over consecutive hearings in March.

The panel quickly dismissed Millard's appeal of his conviction for killing his father and the court is slated to release a decision on his and Smich's appeal in the murder of Laura Babcock on Thursday.

The Bosma trial saw the two men try to blame the other for the May 2013 murder, framing it as a truck theft mission that unexpectedly turned deadly when Bosma -- a stranger to them both --was shot.

Tim Bosma is seen in this undated photograph.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, argued Millard and Smich jointly set out to murder Bosma and steal his truck, bringing evidence to suggest the men stripped the truck, hid the murder weapon and burned Bosma's body in an incinerator stowed away behind Millard's farm.

Millard, the heir to his father's aviation business and who represented himself on appeal, claimed he was cast as the perfect villain in the trial. During the March appeal hearings, Millard suggested he was too meticulous to carry out a murder he described as careless and sloppy.

• Understanding the Tim Bosma murder trial: Three story lines emerge

Smich, meanwhile, claimed the trial judge did not properly instruct the jury to separate the evidence against each co-accused, one of several alleged errors that contributed to what his lawyer Richard Litkowski called an "ambience of unfairness".

Both argued the trial judge did not properly correct closing arguments presented by the prosecution and the others' lawyer that exceeded the evidence.

Dellen Millard (left) and Mark Smich are seen in these undated images.

But in the 51-paragraph decision, Justice Gillese disagreed. She wrote that there was "no unfairness as a result of the closing arguments" when considered in the context of the judge's "clear, specific, and repeated instructions to the jury," as well as the trial as a whole.

"This was a hard-fought, lengthy, and contentious trial where the co-accused mounted antagonistic defences. The trial judge addressed the co-accused's multiple complaints about each other's closing arguments in a fair and balanced manner," Gillese wrote.

"He addressed the allegedly problematic aspects of the Crown's closing firmly, clearly, and correctly."

A notice on the appeal court's website indicates the panel is set to release its decision Thursday on Smich's and Millard's appeals for the murder of Babcock, the 23-year-old who prosecutors theorized was killed by the two men to settle a love triangle between her, Millard and his then-girlfriend.

Litkowski, Smich's lawyer, said in an email that once both decisions were released and reviewed in detail, he and his client would consider future options, "which include a potential application for leave to appeal" to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Babcock's family has been critical of a recent Supreme Court decision striking down as unconstitutional stacked periods of parole ineligibility for multiple murder convictions.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 14, 2023.