Quebec Appeal Court orders 3rd trial for Adele Sorella

The Quebec Court of Appeal has ordered a third trial for Adele Sorella, a Laval woman who has twice been convicted of killing her daughters.

Sorella had appealed a 2019 conviction by a jury on two counts of second-degree murder in the 2009 deaths of her two daughters, nine-year-old Amanda and eight-year-old Sabrina, for which she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 10 years.

Sorella was first convicted of first-degree murder in 2013 in the deaths of her daughters, but that ruling was overturned on appeal in 2017.

In a ruling Monday, Quebec's highest court overturned the most recent verdict because of the trial judge's refusal to accept an argument that organized crime could have played a part in the deaths.

Justices François Doyon, Jean Bouchard and Christine Baudoin found that Quebec Superior Court Justice Sophie Bourque may have exacerbated the impact of that error in her instructions to the jury.

Sorella's husband and the girls' father was Giuseppe De Vito, a man with ties to organized crime who died in prison in 2013 after being poisoned.

The girls were found dead in their playroom on March 31, 2009. Their bodies bore no signs of violence, and the cause of their death has never been determined.

Sorella had been granted bail in July 2020 while awaiting the outcome of her appeal. 

 A new trial, this time for second-degree murder, would be a third for Sorella, who has pleaded not guilty due to a mental disorder.