Convicted Kitchener killer's appeal dismissed by court

The Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal of Michael Ball, a convicted killer from Kitchener, who murdered his former girlfriend in 2013.

Ball pleaded not guilty in the death of Erin Howlett in June 2013. Her body was later found in a duffel bag in the Grand River in Kitchener.

It was later revealed in court that Ball killed Howlett in a jealous rage, after he choked her to death.

Ball's first trial in Kitchener ended in 2016. The jury was unable to reach a verdict. The retrial was in St. Catharines.

In May 2019, Ball was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Howlett. He was sentenced to an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Appeal dismissed

According to the Appeal Court, Ball challenged aspects of the jury charge, and claimed it was “inadequate and erroneous.”

But the court maintained that the trial judge wasn’t in the wrong and said that the trial judge did not make any reversible errors warranting appellate intervention.

“This was a very strong Crown case. When considered as a whole, as the jury was instructed to do, the evidence overwhelmingly supported the jury’s verdict of first-degree murder. There is no suggestion that this was an unreasonable verdict,” the Appeal Court said.