Court to hear appeal of convicted double murderer
Posted January 14, 2021 6:58 am.
CALGARY – The appeal of a man convicted in a double murder will be heard Thursday in a Calgary court.
Edward Downey is appealing his first-degree murder convictions in the 2016 deaths of Sara Baillie and her five-year-old daughter, Taliyah Marsman.
In 2019, Downey was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 50 years.
WATCH: Edward Downey sentenced for murdering mother and daughter
The trial heard Downey killed Baillie because he blamed her for the breakdown of his relationship with her best friend, and that the child was a witness who needed silencing.
Queen’s Bench Justice Beth Hughes sentenced Downey to consecutive periods of parole ineligibility and called him a “callous and remorseless individual.”
Downey’s grounds for appeal, set out by lawyer Kelsey Sitar, include that the judge erred in pre-trial rulings, in charging the jury and in imposing consecutive periods of parole ineligibility.
