WARNING: This story contains details that may be disturbing to some readers
British Columbia’s top court has rejected an appeal by a woman convicted of smothering her eight-year-old daughter to death.
Lisa Batstone was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 15 years in the 2014 killing of her daughter Teagan, following a second-degree murder conviction.
She launched an appeal of both her conviction and her sentence in 2019, arguing the trial judge had misapprehended key evidence, had speculated about details of the offence and had not provided enough reasons for ruling that all after-the-fact evidence supported an intent to kill.
In reasons for decision released Friday, B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Richard Goepel rejected those arguments, ruling that while the lower-court judge may have made small errors they would not have affected the outcome of the trial.
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Goepel found that the trial judge had only misapprehended the length of time it would have taken Teagan to die by smothering, which would not have had bearing on Batstone’s intent.
The trial judge did make two “erroneous conclusions with regard to speculating how the offence occurred,” Goepel found, but ruled, “they were harmless errors and did not impact the trial judge’s conclusion that the appellant had the requisite intent.”
The court further found that the trial judge did not, in fact, find that all of Batstone’s actions after the fact were consistent with intent, but “rather she properly considered actions relevant to intent and the defences raised by the appellant.”
Batstone’s trial heard that the eight-year-old had been fatally smothered with a plastic bag, and prosecutors played video and audio recordings of her saying she wanted the girl to “be with Jesus.”
Prosecutors alleged Batstone had shown intent to kill by smothering her while she slept to ensure she didn’t suffer.
Batstone pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder charge and her defence had argued for a lesser charge of manslaughter.