After 15 years and three trials, there will be no end to the legal saga surrounding Adèle Sorella, who was twice convicted of killing her 8- and 9-year-old daughters and acquitted last December.
Posted at 5:46 p.m
The Director of Criminal Justice and Prosecutions (DPCP) announced on Friday that he would not proceed after the deadline for him to appeal against the acquittal of a mafia boss's wife expired.
The DPCP says it has “carried out a thorough analysis of the reasons supporting this.” [dernière] Decision” and concluded that “although this judgment does not correspond to expectations, in view of the applicable legal norms, the DPCP concludes that it cannot appeal this case.”
“Remember that the prosecutor must allege an error of law to justify the intervention of the Court of Appeal after an acquittal, and that a simple disagreement is not sufficient reason,” adds his spokeswoman, Me Audrey Roy Cloutier.
The deaths of Adèle Sorella's two daughters, Sabrina and Amanda De Vito, will therefore remain a mystery.
The woman was acquitted last December, at the end of the third trial, due to “gaps” in the evidence and the possibility that the mafia may have killed the girls.
On March 31, 2009, Adèle Sorella left her apartment without giving any reason before being found in her damaged car that night. His daughters Amanda and Sabrina were later found dead by their uncles at the end of the day.
They were then in the living room, still in school uniforms, and no signs of violence or burglary could be found on their bodies or in the house.
A long saga
The appeal court ordered a third trial because the judge at the second trial had prohibited the defense from putting forward the theory of organized crime involvement.
You should know that the father of the little girls and husband of Adèle Sorella at the time of the events was Giuseppe De Vito, an influential mafia clan leader who had been on the run for three years. He died of cyanide poisoning in a maximum security prison in 2013.
Adèle Sorella had become paranoid since her husband's sudden departure. She had attempted suicide three times. According to experts, she suffered from severe depression and pathological dissociation. Amnesia also prevented him from remembering the fateful day the girls died.
She was found guilty of first-degree murder by a jury in an initial trial on June 24, 2013, a decision that was overturned by the appeals court.
An appeal by the prosecution remained possible, but a fourth murder trial would have been virtually unprecedented.
With Louis-Samuel Perron, La Presse