Adele Sorella's defence lawyer argues Crown didn't present concrete evidence of how girls died

Laval police investigators were so convinced Adele Sorella fatally poisoned her daughters that they overlooked other possibilities, defence lawyer Pierre Poupart said as he began his closing remarks Monday at the Laval courthouse.

His client, 52-year-old Adele Sorella, has pleaded not guilty to two charges of first-degree murder in the girls' deaths. The trial before Superior Court Justice Sophie Bourque began last November.

The bodies of Amanda, 9, and Sabrina De Vito, 8, were found, without signs of violence, on the floor of their Laval playroom in March 2009.

Poupart recounted the testimony of the first police officers to examine the crime scene — Sorella's luxurious home on de l'Adjudant Street in Laval.

He said police didn't closely examine a hyperbaric chamber in the home until days after the girls were found dead.

Last month, the pathologist who conducted the autopsies, Dr. Caroline Tanguay, testified the hyperbaric chamber could have been used to asphyxiate the sisters.

Tanguay said she believed it was the most likely cause of their deaths.

However, Poupart says investigators and the Crown have not presented the jury of six men and six women any concrete evidence to prove Sorella used the chamber to kill her daughters.

Earlier in the trial, a defence witness who is an expert in fibres said there were no traces of the clothes the girls were wearing inside the chamber.

"They didn't do anything to make sure there were no traces, no clues inside this hyperbaric chamber," until after the autopsies determined the girls had not been poisoned, Poupart said.

Poupart also went into the details of how the chamber was eventually seized for evidence. He said investigators had it transported from the home by blue collar workers and that at one point it was driven in the back of an uncovered truck. 

"Movers are more careful with the objects they are moving," he said.

He noted that police officers whose job it was to make sure the house was secure all said there had been no signs of forced entry, but they hadn't inspected every window and every doorway.

"Does something need to have been broken for someone to have forced their way inside?" he asked the jury.

He also pointed to a boot print Crown witness and retired investigator Eric Coïa said he noticed but never examined further.

"Incredibly enough, he doesn't take the faintest photograph of this print," said Poupart, who switched between English and French during his remarks.

"Do you remember hearing of even a minor effort to find fingerprints?" he asked at another point.

Poupart at times raised his voice and punctuated his arguments with dramatic pauses.

He started the remarks by quoting the Supreme Court of Canada on the presumption of innocence, which he said was "the best way of describing it that I've seen."

He also quoted the French philosopher René Descartes on common sense, asking the jury members to use theirs as they parse through everything they've heard at the trial.

"It's not up to the defence to prove Madame Sorella's innocence, and it's not up to you," he said later during his arguments, addressing the jury.

Then, turning to Crown prosecutors, Poupart added that, "With a lot of respect for my colleagues whom I adore, their job hasn't reached" the burden of proving Sorella is guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

He also asked the jury to "judge [Sorella] as you would hope to be judged."

Poupart's remarks continue Tuesday and are expected to take as long as three days. Crown prosecutors will deliver closing arguments after the defence wraps its case.

Judge's instructions

In a rare move, Judge Bourque prefaced the closing remarks by telling the jurors they have to answer four questions in deciding their verdict:

• Did Adele Sorella, without a reasonable doubt, kill her daughters?
• If so, did she intend to kill her daughters?
• If she killed her daughters, was it done deliberately?
• If she killed her daughters, was she mentally ill at the time of their deaths?

Bourque said it's up to the Crown to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Sorella did kill her daughters, and it's up to the defence to make the case that it was more likely than not that Sorella was mentally ill at the time of their deaths.