The Yukon Court of Appeal is back in session for the first time this year, starting off its hearings Monday with the case of Alicia Murphy. She was convicted of second-degree murder for the death of a young woman six years ago.

Murphy, 34, appealed a jury's verdict that she drowned Evangeline Billy in the Yukon River along the Whitehorse waterfront in June 2008.

Murphy's lawyers told the three-judge panel Monday in Whitehorse that the prosecution intentionally cast her in a bad light, tainting the jury's impression of her character and lifestyle during the trial in October 2009.

Lawyer Michael Dineen said the Crown had called Murphy "less clean-cut and respectable.” The questions put to her on the stand had a "moralistic tone,” which "really permeate(d) the cross-examination,” Dineen said.

The Crown had also implied she was a bad mother who could not hold down a job nor stay off drugs, he added. Dineen said that "linking the addiction issues ... with a disposition, potentially, for violence” also made for a "prejudicial” portrait of the accused.

This was "highly unfair to the appellant and undermined her right to have a fair trial,” he argued.

Dineen told the appeal panel the trial judge had an obligation to step in, while the defence counsel should have offered more objections to the portrayal.

He conceded that "highly disreputable evidence was inevitably going to come before the jury, (but) this cross-examination crossed the line.”

A different Crown lawyer, Keith Parkkari, rejected the notion that Murphy's character was rendered unfairly.

"This wasn't a long, lengthy, abusive cross-examination,” he said Monday. "You can't talk about this case without (looking at) motive, credibility....”

He noted that during the half-day questioning in late October 2009, Murphy also talked about going to the swimming pool and movie theatres with her children.

"That sounds an awful lot like good character,” he said, suggesting the jury received a layered impression of the accused.

Murphy's counsel also said that opinion evidence given by one police officer constituted "oath-helping” — a strategy prohibited by the court that places reliable witnesses on the stand simply to bolster the credibility of other witnesses.

An RCMP sergeant who discussed witnesses Rae Lynne Gartner and Tanya Murphy — Alicia's sister to whom Tanya said she confessed — took the stand to discuss statements the two had given, Parkkari rebutted.

Murphy's other lawyer, Jennifer Cunningham, also said the officer's testimony about his initial theory of the cause of Billy's death — "massive blunt force trauma” to the head, not drowning — prejudiced the jury against Murphy.

"The police officer shouldn't have been opining about those two issues,” Cunningham told the court.

Parkkari argued in turn that the Mountie was just recounting the progress of the investigation, and that the jury was more than capable of making an independent assessment based on the facts of the case.

Cunningham also said the two defence lawyers in 2009, David Christie and Gordon Coffin, offered "ineffective assistance” to their client — a serious accusation — necessitating a new trial.

The two attorneys did not offer an explanation as to why their client submitted her alibi belatedly. And Murphy only did so after the one person who could corroborate it — a drug dealer whose house she was apparently at when Billy was killed — died before the trial.

Murphy said in an affidavit she thought she had the right to say nothing, and was not aware of the requirement to disclose an alibi.

Parkkari argued that the defence did not have a responsibility "to canvass every possible legal defence” and elaborate on them to their client.

"They met their professional legal standards,” he said. "There is no prejudice in this case as far as ineffective assistance is concerned.”

Following the full-day hearing, the appeal court reserved judgment until a later date.

"Alicia Murphy has been convicted of a senseless and brutal murder,” Yukon Supreme Court Justice Ron Veale said in November 2009 of the crime, which saw Billy's beaten body dumped half-naked into the Yukon River.

Murphy was sentenced to 14 years in jail before becoming eligible for parole.

Veale noted the violence of the crime, the fact that Murphy had tried to make it look like a rape, and the three-day drug and alcohol binge which preceded the murder.

The judge also noted Murphy had been on probation for an assault on her boyfriend at the time she killed Billy.

Murphy's behaviour in jail since she was arrested in June 2008 also reflected badly on her, the judge said. He referred to the fact she had been caught smuggling marijuana and tobacco into the Whitehorse Correctional Centre, bullying other inmates and threatening them with violence.

Veale noted that a second-degree murder conviction automatically comes with a life sentence, and that Murphy will not necessarily be a free woman in 2022 — unless the conviction is overturned.

Two witnesses, including her sister, testified that Murphy told them she killed Billy during an attempted robbery, then tried to make it look as if the woman had been raped.

Murphy and Billy were around the same age.