Law360 Canada ( November 10, 2025, 9:35 AM EST) -- Appeal by appellant from jury verdict. As a result of his disabilities, the appellant was unable to live independently and thus lived with his parents, his father being his primary caregiver. That relationship was fraught with conflict arising from the appellant’s condition and the repetitive behaviours associated with it. On the day of the offence, the appellant and his father had a physical altercation at the top of a set of stairs. The appellant hit his father. The father taunted him by asking something like “what are you gonna do, push me down the stairs?” The appellant took this literally, as he did not understand taunting, and pushed him. While the father lay on the floor at the foot of the stairs, the appellant retrieved a kitchen knife and stabbed his father multiple times in the neck. The central issue in the trial was narrow: did the appellant, a 36-year-old dependant adult with complex cognitive deficits, have the intent required for second-degree murder when he pushed his 70-year-old father down the stairs and then attempted to decapitate him? A jury concluded that he did. On appeal, the appellant argued that the trial judge erred in permitting the Crown to call expert rebuttal evidence and in the instruction to the jury....