OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada will not hear an appeal in a high-profile case in Alberta that saw a couple tried twice in connection with the death of their sick child.
David and Collet Stephan had been accused of not seeing a doctor sooner for their 18-month-old son, before his death in 2012.
They testified at trial that they treated the boy with natural remedies for what they believed to be diphtheria laryngitis.
A jury found the parents guilty of failing to “provide the necessaries of life” in 2016, but the Supreme Court of Canada later overturned that verdict and ordered a new trial.
The judge who heard the second trial, without a jury this time, acquitted them in 2019. But in March 2021, the Alberta Court of Appeal granted a Crown application to overturn that acquittal and ordered a another trial.
Prosecutors ultimately stayed charges against the Stephans in June 2021, but the request for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court the decision to hold a third trial had already been submitted to the nation’s highest court.
The Supreme Court announced Thursday that it would not hear this appeal.
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