For most of the day, triple murderer Dellen Millard remained silent in a video room at the Millhaven Institution as he watched the real-life attorney plead his first of three appeals before an Ontario Supreme Court panel.
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Stacks of documents were spread out on his prison table and at his feet was a banker’s box filled with more.
This is the week he’s been waiting for: The former aviation heir is appealing his three murder convictions – the July 2012 killing of ex-girlfriend Laura Babcock along with his former best friend Mark Smich and the disposal of her body in an industrial animal incinerator ‘d bought ; the couple’s thrill of killing stranger Tim Bosma during a test drive in May 2013; and his solo murder of his father Wayne Millard in November 2012.
He always thought of himself as the smartest person in the room and how frustrating it must have been for him to remain calm when his attorney, Ravin Pillay, argued that his conviction for Babcock’s murder was due to errors by Supreme Court Justice Michael Code. should be repealed.
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But Millard will have his turn later this week when he argues his other two appeals himself.
Both killers are looking for new processes, but even if they are unsuccessful, they are already far ahead of where they started. Thanks to last year’s controversial Supreme Court ruling, which found that stacking probation periods for multiple murders was a “cruel and unusual punishment,” they don’t have to present their sentencing appeals. While Millard faced the longest known sentence in Ontario history — a life sentence with no possible parole for 75 years — and Smich was considering 50 years, that will be reduced to the usual 25 years before they can seek parole.
Babcock, a troubled 23-year-old University of Toronto graduate, was her first murder – but Smich still claims Millard acted alone.
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Court exhibit image provided of Mark Smich of the first degree murder trial of Dellen Millard and Mark Smich in the death of Laura Babcock of the trial on November 9, 2017 at the courthouse at 361 University Ave. in Toronto, Ont. Photo by Court Exhibit/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network
They’re “almost like brothers,” said Smich’s appellate attorney Richard Litkowski, but there’s a “power imbalance” between the two: Smich was a poor wannabe rapper who crashed at Millard’s Etobicoke home, while Millard was the multi-trait rich playboy and expensive toys. While Smich helped his girlfriend clean up after Babcock’s murder — and even wrote a rap about how her bones were burned on The Eliminator — the attorney insisted he had nothing to do with the actual murder.
“What evidence was there that he assisted Mr. Millard with the intention of helping him commit a murder?” Litkowski said. The vast majority of this evidence indicates that Millard acted independently.”
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Millard’s attorney told the three judges that the aviation heir was wrongfully self-represented during the 2017 Babcock trial and should have been granted the adjournment he requested in order to access his frozen funds and hire an attorney who would have time to prepare his case – but Code stated that further delay would be “over my dead body”.
The panel seemed quick to dismiss that appeal, telling the Crown they didn’t even have to answer.
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Pillay also argued the trial judge should not have allowed the jury to use Smich’s rap lyrics and video against Millard and should have prevented his “hostile” uncle from testifying against him.
As the long day drew to a close and the Crown continued its arguments on Tuesday, Millard’s silence was finally broken as he rose to address the panel. As Babcock’s poor parents had to hear him speak for the first time since he was locked away five years ago, their daughter’s killer complained he was having a hard time.
Millard’s legal arguments for later this week are all stored on his computer, although the filing deadline has passed, but the prison had no procedure to transmit them, he said. He wanted the court to order the prison to help him.
“I respectfully claim that I should not be accused of this,” he said in his best lawyer’s German. “Being incarcerated is a very difficult situation to deal with.”
Poor, arrogant serial killer.
