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But Weir was not able to enjoy this courtroom success that clears her name and restores her legal innocence. That is because Crystal Weir died last October in Newfoundland when the car her friend was driving left the road, causing a crash that is still under investigation.

To find her innocent now is totally useless. Nothing can be undone,

As such, she joins one of the rarest groups in Canadian jurisprudence — the posthumously acquitted.

“To find her innocent now is totally useless. Nothing can be undone,” said her father Melvin Weir in an interview from Roddickton, N.L. “It makes me very angry at the system. It brings me no satisfaction.”

Being charged was “the start of the downfall of my daughter’s life,” he said. “She was victimized by the justice system, which led to her death.”

Dead people are not supposed to appeal their convictions. Judicial resources are already scarce for living people. The rule is that the appeal dies with the appellant, as it did in the recent Ontario case of Michael Beaton, a chiropractor in Ottawa. He was convicted of three historical sexual offences against three male patients, and sentenced to 15 months. He appealed his convictions, the Crown appealed the sentence, and the whole case was heard last summer, a few months before Beaton died.

His family wanted the appeal to continue toward a decision, as it could clear his name of the stigma of sexual crimes. But all serious crimes carry stigma, the Ontario Court of Appeal observed. If all such cases could be appealed by the family after the offender’s death, “the rule would become the exception and the exception, the rule.” So it decided Beaton’s appeal was moot, and declined to decide it.