Nicole Kish has lost the appeal of her second-degree murder conviction in the stabbing death of a 32-year-old man on Queen St. W in 2007.

Kish, who has maintained her innocence, was identified as the young panhandler who stabbed Ross Hammond after a judge-alone trial by Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer in 2011 and sentenced to life imprisonment with parole ineligibility set at 12 years.

During her appeal, Kish’s lawyers argued that Kish’s friend Faith Watts could have been the one who fatally stabbed Hammond, or that it could have been either of two other men.

The panel of three Ontario Court of Appeal judges upheld Nordheimer’s verdict as reasonable based on the evidence of several eyewitnesses.

Nordheimer identified Kish, now 27, as being a “female street kid” who asked Hammond and his friend for $20 near an ATM. When they responded rudely, she began to yell at them.

A fight broke out between Hammond and Kish’s friend Douglas Fresh on the south side of the street. Kish and Watts tried to help Fresh.

Nordheimer found that Kish used a knife to get Hammond off Fresh by inflicting superficial wounds to his back.

Watts stayed to help Fresh, who was unconscious, while Kish pursued Hammond the north side of the street, Nordheimer found.

In the second fight with Hammond, Kish was joined by two men, her friend Jeremy Wooley and the other an unidentified man, Nordheimer found.

Nordheimer concluded, based on the eyewitness testimony, that Kish fatally stabbed Hammond in the chest during that fight. He added that even if she had passed the knife to one of the other two men who then stabbed Hammond, she is still guilty of second-degree murder for “aiding the act.”

The appeal judges found no “misapprehension by the trial judge” in ruling out the defence’s theory that Watts stabbed Hammond. The judges also ruled out Wooley as an alternative culprit.

“Such a theory is, in my view, utter speculation and is without foundation in the evidence,” wrote Justice Jean MacFarland.

“The fact is that the appellant was an active participant in the north side fight — where a vicious beating was administered to Hammond — from its start to its finish and she continued her participation after hearing Wooley utter the words ‘you die tonight’ . . . If Wooley administered the fatal stab wounds, the appellant would still be guilty of second-degree murder as a party.”

The judges also rejected the unknown man as an alternative.

“We are totally destroyed. There is absolutely nothing in our justice system that seems to make any sense,” Kish’s mother, Christine Bivens, said Monday.

She says there is a huge flaw in a justice system that allows appeals based on procedural errors but not innocence.

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“We’ve seen wrongful conviction after wrongful conviction because there wasn’t a procedural error.”

She says they will consider all available options, including appealing for a ministerial review of Kish’s case.