
The appeal for a taxi driver from Antigonish found guilty of sexual assault who later died has been denied.
William Roger MacLellan was in the process of appealing his Nov. 2016 conviction when he died suddenly in April 2017; his lawyer said the trial judge didn’t properly apply laws of identification or voice identification evidence, among other things.
An application to have his appeal continue posthumously was denied in a 2017 Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruling; members of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal allowed the appeal to go ahead, but they dismissed it in a November ruling released Friday.
They said they had some issues with the process to convict MacLellan, but not with the ultimate decision.
RCMP say an 18-year-old told them she was touched inappropriately for a sexual purpose when she was being driven home alone in a taxi in 2014.
They say a 19-year-old reported a similar incident eight months later.