Winter 2006 / Vol. 7 - AIDWYC

steveN’s loNg JourNey For Justice
Will Justice Prevail?: steven truscott at court of aPPeal
By Win Wahrer
Steven Truscott
June 19, 2006 will not be remembered so much
for its hot, humid temperatures as it will be as
the day that Steven Murray Truscott re-entered
the courtroom at Osgoode Hall accompanied by
his dedicated wife, Marlene and his two grown
sons, Ryan and Devon, at his side. Another
chapter in his historical case had just begun, a
chapter that his family and supporters hoped
and prayed would end with Steven Truscott’s
exoneration, unlike all the others in his long,
Why Pathologists lie: story on Page 42
By Win Wahrer
The long-awaited decision regarding the application
for ministerial review (s.696.1 application)
that was drafted by AIDWYC lawyer
James Lockyer on Romeo Phillion’s behalf in
2003 was released on August 23, 2006.
After Romeo Phillion spent 31½ years incarcerated
for the murder of Leopold Roy and three
years on bail, the decision was not what he was
hoping for but was a victory nonetheless.
As Federal Justice Minister, Vic Toews has the
authority at any time prior to his decision to refer
a question about an application to a court of
appeal for its opinion. This is exactly what he
decided to do in Phillion’s case. Justice Minister
Toews is quoted as saying, “There are certain
issues that in my view merit a review by the Ontario
Court of Appeal and I believe it is necessary
to seek the court’s opinion before I make
my decision.”
The application for ministerial review was
based partly on the alibi Romeo Phillion had at
stressful 48 years of struggle for justice.
But even before the courtroom doors opened,
an extraordinary event occurred. Attorney
General of Ontario, Michael Bryant, had murder
victim Lynne Harper’s body exhumed in the off
chance that DNA evidence would still be available
for testing and that Lynne Harper’s killer
could be identified. Many questioned how that
could be possible after so many years – and why
this could not have been done long before if the
government was so concerned about pursuing
the truth in the Truscott case. Ontario’s chief
coroner, Dr. Barry McLellan, said the condition
of Lynne Harper’s remains made DNA testing
impossible, and the appeal proceeded as scheduled.
Chief Justice Roy McMurtry, Justice Marc
Rosenberg, Justice James Doherty, Justice
Karen Weiler and Justice Michael Moldaver
oversaw the Court of Appeal proceedings.
The defence team consisted of seasoned AID-
WYC lawyers Phil Campbell, James Lockyer,
Marlys Edwardh and Hersh Wolch with Jenny
Friedland assisting. The lawyers for the Crown
- continued on Page 2
the Wait is Not over: romeo Phillion case uPdate
Romeo Phillion and niece Tracey Phillion
Photo by Tory Zimmerman/Toronto Star
which he recanted hours later.
the time of
the killing,
information
that was not
disclosed by
the Crown,
and new expert
reports
related to the
reliability of
his confession
The two questions being referred to the Court
of Appeal are:
• Would the new information concerning the
non-disclosure of certain material be admissible
on appeal to the Court of Appeal?
Leopold Roy’s murder took place in Ottawa,
Ontario in August 1967. Phillion maintains
that he was 100 miles away in Trenton, Ontario
- continued on Page 5
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
credits
ACTING EDITOR: Win Wahrer
FOUNDING EDITOR: Harold Levy
PAST EDITOR: Vicki Preston
LAYOUT: Tammy Knezic, Win Wahrer and
Garret Laffree
What’s iNside
Steven’s Long Journey for Justice
Pg. 1
The Wait Is Not Over
Pg. 1
Letters To The Editor
Pg. 7
AIDWYC Welcomes
Pg. 8
President’s Report
Pg. 8
Lamer Inquiry Report Released
Pg. 9
Ron Dalton: Reacts to Report
Pg. 12
Canadian Updates
Pg. 13
Book Reviews
Pg. 20
Canadian Tragedies: Ipperwash & Wilbert Coffin
Pg. 23
International Cases
Pg. 27
Condolences: Denny Whelan
Pg. 33
Condolences: Brenda Pomeroy
Pg. 36
Congratulations
Pg. 36
Thank You
Pg. 37
AIDWYC On The Move
Pg. 38
Special Report
Pg. 42
A Pale Imitation of Justice
Pg. 44
Can You Help AIDWYC?
Pg. 47
Can AIDWYC Help You?
Pg. 48

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Will Justice Prevail? - continued from Previous Page
were Rosella Cornaviera, Gregory J. Tweney,
James Alvaro, Leanne Salel and David Lepofsky.
Ryan, Marlene, Steven and
Devon Truscott
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
The fresh new evidence
hearing was
attended by print,
television and radio
reporters who sat
through the expert
testimony of three
forensic pathologists,
one gastroenterologist
and three
entomologists from
the United States, Wales and Canada. Also attending
were supporters, family members and
friends of the Truscotts as well as writer Julien
Sher (author of “Until You Are Dead: Steven
Truscott’s Long Ride Into History”), family
members of the judges, lawyers, and court staff.
Romeo Phillion, William Mullins-Johnson and
Gary Comeau, all wrongly convicted AIDWYC
clients, sat through portions of the hearing and
offered Steven their encouragement and support.
In total, 17 witnesses gave testimony over the
course of the three weeks.
Bryan Glover, a witness at Steven Truscott’s
original trial in 1959, and I attended, between
us, the entire appeal court hearing and fresh evidence
application. In the following paragraphs,
Bryan provides an extraordinary perspective on
the proceedings, under the caption: “Friends,
Then and Now.” AIDWYC is most grateful for
this riveting contribution to the Journal. My
comments on testimony which occurred when
Bryan could not attend are presented in italics.
FrieNds, theN aNd NoW:
By Bryan glover
Steven Truscott’s journey for justice, absolution
and vindication has
become my quest for therapy,
healing and closure
to a horrific event that occurred
in my childhood.
My name is Bryan Glover
and I was a witness in the
original trial of Steven
Truscott in 1959. I was
not involved in the Reference of the Truscott
PAge 2 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
steveN’s loNg JourNey For Justice
case to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1966,
but later I vowed to attend any future court proceeding.
That possibility presented itself when the Minister
of Justice, on October 28, 2004, granted
Steven’s s.696.1 application and referred it to
the Court of Appeal for Ontario.
I was able to attend three of the eight full days
and all of the three half days of the “fresh evidence”
hearing held at the historic and majestic
Osgoode Hall Court Building in downtown Toronto.
On the first day of the hearing people had
arrived to secure a seat in Courtroom 1 as early
as 6:30 a.m. Courtroom 5 was set up with two
big screen monitors to cover the proceedings for
the overflow of attendees and media.
I was fortunate to have been provided a seat by
Win Wahrer of AIDWYC in the section reserved
for the Truscott family members where I sat
throughout the proceedings.
Apart from providing support to Steven and
his family during this stressful time, I wanted
to hear first hand new evidence testimony from
former witnesses Bob Lawson, Cathy Beaman
and Karen Daum. Until the fresh evidence hearing,
my understanding of the other legal proceedings
were from reading transcripts, media
articles, conversations, TV reports and productions.
Seeing the expressions on the witnesses’
faces, listening to their tone and inflections plus
watching the reactions of the Justices, certainly
added a dimension to the experience.
I was shocked to learn that there were three different
versions of Dr. John Penistan’s autopsy
report during AIDWYC lawyer James Lockyer’s
examination of first witness, Dr. Michael
Pollanen, Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist,
and that all of them stated substantially different
“post mortem intervals” for the time of death
of Lynne Harper. Equally alarming was the fact
that the hand-written version was obtained only
last year from a Stratford General Hospital file
and that the final typed version was not completed
until four years after the first one, in 1963.
Why, I asked myself, would Dr. Penistan state
an exact window of time? What or who was applying
the pressure or influence? What was the
motive? I was sure this was a frame-up; a conspiracy
and attempted cover-up. I began to wonder,
“Was this only the tip of the iceberg?”
Dr. Pollanen after having examined photos of
Lynne Harper’s body, taken at the crime scene;
was shocked at how little her body had decomposed
under such hot temperature conditions (30
° C). He also noted that in the kidney and liver
slide photos the degradation was inconsistent
with the timing that Dr. Penistan had estimated.
It suggested instead a theory that she was not
killed until sometime on June 10, 1959.
Morris Manning, an articling student with the
Crown’s office in 1966, was asked questions
about the lack of disclosure of important information
that would have been beneficial to
Steven’s case.
Steven’s lawyer at the 1966 Reference, the
late Arthur Martin was not told of a letter Dr.
Penistan wrote in May 1966 which he sent to
the lead detective, the late Inspector Harold
Graham. In the letter Penistan wrote that he
had undergone an “agonizing reappraisal” of
his earlier position on Lynne Harper’s time of
death. Morris Manning admitted that by 1966
it was “well-known” within the Crown’s office
that Dr. Penistan’s opinion on time of death was
no longer limited to his original assessment of a
two-hour time period. Manning said the position
of the Crown back then was that defence
lawyers received the materials they asked for,
but if they did not specifically ask for a document
it was not provided.
It was troubling to hear that although Mr. Manning
stated that he was “genuinely trying to
put his best reflection on his memory for both
the 1966 Reference and meeting with Justice
Kaufman”, he had trouble recalling meetings
attended, handwritten witness names appearing
on a memo taken from one such meeting relating
to whom might be called for the Reference,
the three hand-written question marks placed
next to Dr. Penistan’s name on a memo found
in his files, plus not seeing the “agonizing reappraisal”
letter of Dr. Penistan.
Morris Manning was followed by his successor
on the file, now retired Justice John Clendenning.
Clendenning was asked whether, to his
knowledge, important information that would
be helpful to the defence for the 1966 Reference
before the Supreme Court was disclosed to the
defence. He had no definitive answer.
AIDWYC’S lawyer, Marlys Edwardh ques-

tioned gastroenterologist, Dr. Nicholas Diamant,
professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto,
about stomach contents as they relate to
lag times, rate of emptying, acidity levels, plus
other variables such as stress, sex and age. The
answers to many of these points clearly showed
that what was relied upon as proof at the original
trial appears to have been a grievous error. A
significant point was made, that the “anecdotal”
type of evidence as given by Dr. Penistan at trial
was generally accepted as “proof”, whereas Dr.
Diamant stated that only modern “valid scientific
methodology” evidence should be considered
and that any reliance on “anecdotal” evidence
could be inherently dangerous.
PH levels in the stomach, plotted against time,
clearly illustrated that the testimony given at the
trial, about the strong acidity in Lynne’s stomach
at the time of autopsy was not factual, as
it was used to further substantiate the time of
death. Dr. Diamant clearly illustrated that strong
acidity does not occur in one hour because of
the buffering effect of the ingested food, but actually
occurs much later.
Dr. Werner Spitz, forensic pathologist from
Michigan who testified on behalf of the Crown
said, “Dr. Penistan didn’t know how to estimate
time of death, but he did the best he could.” Dr.
Spitz stated under cross-examination by AID-
WYC lawyer Phil Campbell that “People knew
all along that you can’t fix the specific time of
death. It’s always a range between which two
times the death is likely to have occurred.” Under
questioning by Justice Moldaver, Dr. Spitz
said if he were going to estimate a time of death
based on stomach contents he would suggest
that Lynne Harper died between 7:15 p.m. to
7:45 p.m., which contradicted his earlier statement
and was the exact time that Penistan had
estimated in 1959.
Joseph Irving was power of attorney for the late
Arthur Martin, Steven Truscott’s lawyer at the
Reference in 1966. When Joseph Irving took
the witness stand I was interested to learn that
he had recently retrieved six boxes of files belonging
to Mr. Martin regarding the 1966 Reference.
They were now available for the five Justices’
review during the appeal process. Irving
was positive that the complete set of documents
were accounted for and that the disclosure items
discussed were not amongst Martin’s file nor
had they ever been.
steveN’s loNg JourNey For Justice
FrieNds theN aNd NoW - continued from Previous Page
I was keenly interested in hearing testimony
by the last living officer connected to Steven’s
case. The, now 84 year old retired OPP Superintendent
Harry Sayeau, who played such a pivotal
roll in the crime scene investigation and the
gathering of evidence in Steven’s case in 1959.
He was also the officer who arrested Steven.
Steven attended the proceedings on three different
occasions and was present with his daughter,
Lesley and son-in-law, Rob for Sayeau’s testimony.
It was a concern to hear that Mr. Sayeau had recopied
his original occurrence book for Crown
Attorney Glenn Hays for use at the trial, but
even more alarming that the second copy had
some modified entries, apparently made by Mr.
Sayeau to conform with the Crown’s theory.
Marlys Edwardh gave an example of the different
wording about Lynne’s stomach contents, on
how it changed from “appears to be meat (possibly
ham)” in his original occurrence book to
“Preliminary examination indicates stomach
contents (meat, either turkey or ham”) in the recopied
notebook. Incidents such as this strongly
suggest that some on the Crown team were willing
to go to great lengths to affect the outcome
of their case without exercising any integrity.
Steven Truscott & daughter Lesley
Photo by Cheryl Heath
(Clinton News Record)
He also
made several
subjective,
judgmental
s t a t e m e n t s
about the
credibility of
several child
w i t n e s s e s ,
i n c l u d i n g
the then
nine-year-old Karen Daum. Sayeau now also
acknowledged that he ignored the statements
of children who had seen Steven Truscott and
Lynne Harper in the school yard as late as 7:30
p.m. He also admitted that he did not contact
neighbouring police services, Crown attorneys
or air force personnel to inquire as to whether
there were any known sex offenders in the area
at the time and he did not recall if other police
officers made those contacts. Steven Truscott
was the prime, and it appears only, suspect.
With regard to several witnesses, who might
have supported the defence theory, he wrote:
“Very imaginative, I think. Wouldn’t consider it
at all” on Daryl Wadsworth’s statement and regarding
the other, Karen Daum, (whom he never
met) he testified at trial that the investigator’s
consensus was that she was a “cute girl, but had
to be wrong”. I cringed at hearing this “fresh
evidence” and realized that no one could have
won against such a stacked deck. Upon hearing
the testimonies, I couldn’t imagine what might
have been going through Steven’s mind.
Elisabeth Hulbert and Sandra Stoltzmann were
student nurses in 1966 at Douglas Hospital in
Verdun, Quebec where they met fellow student
nurse Jocelyne Gaudet. They recalled that at a
student nurses gathering where conversation
turned to the upcoming Supreme Court rehearing
of Steven Truscott’s case, Gaudet mentioned
she had testified at the original trial and that
she had lied.
A number of civilian witnesses testified, including
Cathy Beaman who was a close friend of
Lynne Harper’s and was Steven Truscott’s neighbour.
Lynne Harper’s father testified at trial that
his daughter never hitchhiked, making Steven
Truscott’s statement to the police questionable.
However Cathy Beaman, who was never interviewed
during the investigation in 1959 and
subsequently for the 1966 Reference to the Supreme
Court, related that she and Lynne Harper
hitchhiked together on several occasions.
On June 30th, Bob Lawson was sworn in, one
day before his 70th birthday. Bob Lawson and
his mother owned the property where Lynne
Harper’s body was discovered. I lived directly
across from the Lawson farm so I spent a good
deal of time helping Bob with his farming
chores.
Bob Lawson testified that Jocelyne Gaudet, a
key Crown witness, who testified that Steven
Truscott had asked her to meet him at the same
wooded lot (Lawson’s Bush), on the night Lynne
Harper went missing, asked him prior to his trial
testimony to change the time (7:15 p.m.) to an
hour before the actual time she visited him at
his farm the night Lynne Harper disappeared,
reportedly to match the time she gave during her
trial testimony. Bob Lawson declined to change
his story and states that he did not realize the
significance of Ms. Gaudet’s request until many
years later. My knowledge of Bob Lawson’s
character and integrity, which has developed
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 3

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
FrieNds, theN aNd NoW - continued from Previous Page
over 48 years, is that this conversation took
place as he relates it and that he would never
agree to alter his testimony.
Bob Lawson also managed to clear up some earlier
misconceptions that the wooded area wasn’t
a forest, by saying that “it wasn’t very thick and
it was easy to walk through” thereby confirming
that it would not be a cool place during a heat
wave, which would affect the possible rate of
decomposition of a body.
Bob Lawson also recounted how he and his
friend Ross Crich saw a 1952 Ford convertible
parked about 75 feet south of the tractor trail on
Tuesday, June 9, 1959 when they had headed to
the river for a swim to cool off from the sweltering
heat. The significance of this account is
that there appeared to be a shorter female sitting
close to the driver and that the location was
nearly adjacent to where Lynne Harper’s body
was found. Although Bob Lawson had reported
this incident at the Clinton Base guardhouse at
the time, no apparent report, record nor followup
occurred. Corp. Grey had also reported a
very similar sighting two days earlier.
I found the University of Michigan, forensic pathologist,
Dr. Richard Merritt’s testimony to be
most illuminating as he related the differences
between the colonization characteristics of the
two types of flies found at the crime scene. Dr.
Merritt’s passion for his chosen field was evident
when the court reporter asked if he could
slow down his speech as he became deeply
engrossed in giving his “scientifically-based
evidence” relating to “Accumulated Degree
Hours” vs. the various 1st, 2nd and 3rd instar
modes of egg hatching (i.e. 496, 993 and 1407)
using the Base 6 degrees reference standard and
also, how as the Base factor goes down, from
10 to 6 and even to 2 degrees, the “Post Mortem
Interval” (PMI) shortens. A little humor entered
into the appeal proceedings when Justice David
Doherty commented that one of the fly species
he had been asking about would be a good word
for a spelling bee. At the end of Dr. Merritt’s
testimony, his conclusions lead to a much later
time of death based on the size of the eggs and
larvae collected at the scene. This finding was
grossly different to what appeared to have been
scripted at the 1959 trial (where expert testimony
on entomology was not introduced). Also,
his “new evidence” supported the findings and
conclusions of defence witness, Dr. Sherah Van-
Laerhoven of the University of Windsor, based
on her “pig experiment” conducted at the apparent
crime scene under similar weather conditions
as existed on June 9, 1959. She concluded
that there is a “high probability” that Lynne’s
body was not in the bush on the night of June 9,
1959, but probably on June 10th, or even June
11, 1959.
I was sceptical of University of Indiana’s entomologist,
Dr. Neil Haskell’s testimony, as in
1992 he testified at a different homicide, while
being questioned by AIDWYC’S lawyer, Phil
Campbell, that “Flesh Flies” were among the
first to descend on a corpse and now he reversed
himself saying that “Blue and Green Bottle
Flies” would be the first. Also, apparently Dr.
Haskell, reportedly called OPP Officer, Tom
Nahrgang, in June 2005, explaining that after
he had “looked at the evidence”, he felt that he
“could do some pretty damaging work on this
case”. His statement to this comment was that
he didn’t recall but that it “could be”.
He also said that flesh flies “scout” bodies before
dark, since they do not lay eggs in the dark. All
other entomologists who testified had never observed
nor read data that suggested flies “scout”
a body at night and return in the daylight to lay
their eggs.
Green Bottle Fly
(family
Calliphoridae)
Photo by Eddie
Dunbar
PAge 4 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
steveN’s loNg JourNey For Justice
Dr. VanLaerhoven, speculated
that the flesh flies likely
deposited their first larvae on
Lynne Harper’s body after 11
a.m. on June 10th.
Biologist Elgin Brown had
worked for the Centre of Forensic
Sciences in Toronto,
where Dr. Penistan sent the maggots he had
collected from Lynne Harper’s body. Forensic
entomology was an emerging science in 1959,
and one in which Brown was not particularly
well versed. However, at 85 years of age, Brown
recalled feeding the maggots and growing them
to adulthood so he could identify
the type of flies. He was
able to identify them as blow
flies and flesh flies and knew
that insect evidence would be
Flesh Fly helpful in determining the
(family Sacrophagidae)
time of death based on the
Photo by R. Major
flies’ life cycles.
Brown testified four times in the Truscott case,
including the fresh evidence hearing, but never
on the issue of forensic entomology. He said the
Crown did not make an issue of it.
Although, I missed the “fresh evidence” testimony
given by Cathy Beaman, Sandra Stolzmann
and Elizabeth Hulbert, I am very pleased that
I did not miss that of Karen Jutzi (nee Daum)
and Bernard Knight, which I feel was the most
significant of the whole “fresh evidence” appeal
process so far, because I found them to be
in stark contrast. Karen Jutzi’s appeared to be
the “most unbelievable” and Bernard Knight’s
seemed to be the “most believable”.
Karen Daum Jutzi, was nine years old in 1959
when she was interviewed by the police on three
different occasions regarding her sighting of Steven
Truscott and Lynne Harper cycling by her
and Doug Oates (who has never changed his testimony)
when they were “coming up from the
river” where they had been searching for turtles.
She was shown an enlarged photo of the road
in question and asked to identify where she had
seen them. In her statement taken by a police officer
she identified the spot as at “just about the
railway tracks”, which would put Steven Truscott
and Lynne Harper well north of Lawson’s
Bush and closer to the river.
Now, Karen Jutzi testified that she was “shocked”
when she was given a copy of her statement by a
producer from CTV-TV during their preparation
of “The Fifth Estate” documentary program on
the Steven Truscott story in 2001. She stated that
her father would have spoken up if the police
had prepared a statement that did not accurately
reflect what she had said at the time. Karen Jutzi’s
present memory reflects that Steven Truscott
and Lynne Harper had veered toward her while
she was heading home on her bike, causing her
to fall off her bike into the ditch and that she
remembers seeing the bush on either side as she
was getting up.
On cross examination, Jutzi had to admit that
she could not have seen Steven Truscott and
Lynne Harper from the vantage point in the road
where she now says she saw them due to the
topography of the road.
In contrast, the testimony given by the final
witness Dr. Bernard Knight, was straightforward
and believable. His credentials are in four

disciplines: university lecturer; medical pathologist;
lawyer and philosopher. He has conducted
25,000 to 30,000 autopsies, and has written 22
novels and 12 textbooks. One of his textbooks
was written on the topic of predicting time of
death. Although he contends that stomach contents
is by far the poorest determinant and should
not be relied upon. He quoted other factors from
one of his books, chapter 6 on “General Assessment
of Gastrological Stomach Contents”.
When he was asked what time reliance could be
placed on Lynne Harper’s stomach contents regarding
the time of death, Dr. Knight essentially
replied, some time between the time she was
last seen alive on June 9th and when the body
was discovered on June 11th. He testified that
his approach is: “if you can’t prove it, don’t say
it”. Although he retired in 1996, he is and was
a strong proponent of “evidence-based pathology”.
He recounted that prior to the 1960s, many
forensic pathologists were very “egotistical and
would pontificate with very little challenge”. He
further stated
that now,
with more
challenges,
f o r e n s i c
p a t h o l o -
gists can no
longer claim
Steven Truscott & Bryan Glover
Photo by Bent Romnes
that “it is
so because
I say it’s
so”. Dr. Knight felt that any forensic
pathologist who would pinpoint the time of
death to fractions of an hour was either “uninformed
or incompetent”.
Dr. Knight also testified that the three widely
varying estimates of times of death (40 hours,
30 - 36 hours, 45 - 45.5 hours) given in three different
versions of Dr. Penistan’s autopsy report,
illustrate that Dr. Penistan didn’t know what
he was doing. Dr. Knight told the court that “It
seems very strange that he [Dr. Penistan] happened
to land upon the very window of opportunity
of access by Mr. Truscott to Miss Harper”.
Dr. Knight told reporters outside the courthouse
that he also found it very “suspicious” and “a
coincidence” that the final version of the autopsy
report, prepared four years later, pinpointed
the exact time of Lynne Harper’s (7:15 p.m.
to 7:45 p.m.) death to precisely the exact time
that Steven Truscott and Lynne Harper were to-
steveN’s loNg JourNey For Justice
FrieNds, theN aNd NoW - continued from Previous Page
gether. Steven’s whereabouts was known from
8 p.m. onwards.
On the final day of the “fresh evidence’ portion
of testimony, my wife, Lee, joined me in
the Courtroom and we were both pleased to
sit with Ann Camps, the widow of Dr. Francis
Camps, who testified on behalf of Steven. Dr.
Keith Simpson, supported Dr. Penistan’s opinion
when he testified at the Supreme Court Reference.
Dr. Knight, who once worked as a university
lecturer under Dr. Francis, testified that
“quite frankly, they [Dr. Francis Camps and Dr.
Simpson] detested each other”. He further said,
“I feel Keith Simpson used this case to kick
Francis Camps.”
I feel confident that during the “fresh evidence”
portion of the appeal process the AIDWYC lawyers
won every issue presented. I was equally
pleased to hear how perceptive and precise the
five Justices were in the questioning all the
witnesses who testified over the three-week
period.
During an interview with Kathy Mueller, a reporter
from “A” Channel in London, I was able
to recount a number of events from 1959 and
explain how terrified I was giving testimony at
the trial.
The panel of judges of the Ontario Court of Appeal
will now make a determination as to the evidence
that will be allowed to be argued before
them in January 2007 when Steven Truscott’s
case returns to the Court of Appeal. If the next
two phases of the appeal process proceed as well
as this one, I cannot imagine anything less than
a favourable outcome for Steven Truscott.
the Wait is Not over:
romeo Phillion case uPdate
- continued from Page 1
on that date. A 1968 document that had not been
disclosed to his trial lawyer was amongst papers
that Phillion’s parole officer discovered and
mailed to him in 1998. The police report clearly
states that Phillion had been investigated and his
alibi checked out, and that it would be impossible
for him to have been at the scene of the
crime when Roy was killed.
• Are the recent expert reports on the reliability
of Phillion’s confession admissible on appeal to
the Court of Appeal?
Gisli Gudjonsson, a prominent British forensic
psychologist and an expert on false confessions,
examined all documents related to Phillion’s
case. Gudjonsson spent a day interviewing
Phillion before he expressed his expert opinion
in writing to the Justice Minister. Gudjonsson
suggested that Phillion likely confessed to
Roy’s murder to gain attention and cause mischief
for police.
If the appeal court answers either of the questions
in the affirmative, Justice Minister Toews
says he will ask the court to hear the case as if it
were an appeal. If the answer on both questions
is no, Minister Toews will consider his options
at that time.
AIDWYC considers Minister Vic Toews announcement
very significant since it now puts
Phillion’s case back before the courts. “Phillion
should never have been charged, let alone convicted,”
said James Lockyer when interviewed
by the press after Phillion’s bail hearing. However,
Phillion’s hearing is predicted to be many
months away and in the meantime he has vowed
to wait “however long it takes” to be exonerated
of Roy’s murder. “I’ve got patience. I’m never
going to give up.”
In February, Romeo Phillion flew to Prince
George, British Columbia (after being given
permission by the courts) to be by his twin
brother’s side as he lingered near death suffering
from the effects of emphysema. Don Phillion
seemed to rally miraculously upon Romeo’s
arrival at his hospital room but succumbed to his
illness shortly after Romeo returned to Mississauga
a few weeks later.
On a happier note, Romeo Phillion visited the
CN Tower for the first time in June as a guest
of the CBC which recently did a short piece on
what life has been like for him since being released.
On July 1st, Phillion enjoyed a wonderful
Canada Day celebration at the home of Marlene
and Steven Truscott with other supporters
and friends.
Romeo Phillion attended Steven Truscott’s fresh
new evidence hearing at the Ontario Court of
Appeal in June to support Steven in his quest
for justice.
Recently Romeo Phillion shared his story with
law students at Osgoode Hall Law School.
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 5

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
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PAge 6 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD

Justice for truscott
Mr. Truscott has not been given a fair trial and
the crown has acted in a manner inconsistent
with the seeking of justice. Although not legally
bound to provide information to the defense in
1959 beyond what they did provide, they are
morally bound by human decency and ethics to
seek justice. They did not. Instead they sought
a conviction.
Mr. Truscott’s conviction should be overturned
immediately and apology issued to him as well
as financial compensation for the way that he
has been treated by his country. At the very least
Mr. Truscott’s conviction should be set aside
and a new trial ordered immediately. Anything
less would be the continuation of what can only
be considered a conspiracy to convict someone
for this horrible crime, regardless of their innocence
and regardless of the evidence.
John C. Last
the soft-sPoken hero
Steven Truscott’s reaction to Mr. Sayeau’s testimony
captured in Kelly Patrick’s National Post
piece on June 23rd is reflective of the special
man his supporters know him to be. The story
says Steven “felt no ill will toward Mr. Sayeau,
one of the last surviving officers responsible for
his 10-year prison stay. ‘He was kind of a pawn
to the higher-ups, so I don’t blame him for any
of the stuff that went on,’ he said.”
This amazing capability to show forgiveness is
an inspiring example of an extraordinary human
being and it is a consistent reaction he often
displays. Steven, the shy, soft-spoken man
has never shown any signs of bitterness. He is
a Canadian hero for bravely going public and
challenging our Justice System.
I am most grateful to AIDWYC, most notably
Win Wahrer and James Lockyer, but there is a
very special woman behind the scenes. Marlene
Truscott has tirelessly championed her
husband’s case in the same quiet but powerful
manner in which Steven has displayed.
Marie Adsett
BackBone needed
Will Steven Truscott ever truly be given justice?
Maybe only when someone has the backbone to
stand up and say we made a mistake.
Julie Ann Sawdon
fighting the good fight
letters to the editor
Thank you to Steve and AIDWYC for never
giving up and for fighting to clear his name.
This can only make the system better.
Karen Doherty
Behind the scenes
The people of Canada are indebted to the lawyers
who work so diligently on behalf of the
wrongly convicted. Yes, indebted also to the
Staff Members whose names don’t make the
columns of the national press.
M.D. Stienburg
time to face the facts
I am 30 years old and learned about Mr. Truscott’s
story when I was 14 years old and have
been a supporter ever since.
When will the courts face the facts, admit their
error and give Mr. Truscott his life back? I am
disappointed in the judicial system for allowing
this to go on for so long.
I believe that Steven will get his justice and pray
every day that he does!
JuSTice NOW
Paula Oakley
disgraceful ePisode
I am about the same age as Steven Truscott and
was living in Ontario when he was arrested,
charged, and convicted. What happened 47
years ago was a disgraceful episode in Canadian
history.
the never-ending Journey
It seems such a never ending journey that Steve
Truscott has had to walk all these years.
My father was his chaplain in Guelph and I
remember so well the talks around the supper
table about the injustice done to Steve and how
Dad was 100% certain he was innocent.
Dad’s with his Maker now but would be so glad
this is proceeding.
Maribeth Curry
Waiting for Justice
I did a project on Steven’s case for my grade 12
law class back in 1974. Back then there was not
a doubt in my mind that he was innocent, based
on the facts. A couple of years ago I jumped at
the opportunity of taking a petition around to
obtain signatures from like minded individuals,
in order to help in some small way. I’m now
50 years old and am still waiting to see the justice
system ‘work’ for Steven Truscott and his
family.
Vanessa.
the scaPegoat
How is it that an innocent 14-year-old boy was
convicted of a crime he did not commit and only
now, nearly 50 years later, certain pieces of information
(or should we say misinformation)
are coming to light, evidence and testimony
that would have changed the course of Steven
Truscott’s life back in 1959? Our country’s judicial
system railroaded a child, used him as a
scapegoat, to cover up what really happened.
Well now it’s time to set things right and give
Steven (now a grandfather) what he deserves, to
have his name cleared.
Carol McPherson
losing faith in Justice
I’ve been following this case for 30 years and
still can’t believe the miscarriage of justice committed
here. To have this man trying to clear his
name after 47 years is ridiculous. I think all the
evidence presented recently proves that this man
has been accused of a crime he did not commit. I
did at one time have faith in our judicial system,
but after all this time, that faith no longer exists.
I greatly admire and respect Steven and Marlene
Truscott and their families for the loyalty and
devotion they have to Canada. I hope that those
responsible will see their terrible mistake in this
tragic case and right a wrong that was committed
so many decades ago. Then perhaps my faith
in our system will return.
Janet Cogger
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AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
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aidWyc Welcomes
co-President elisaBeth Widner oPerations manager tanya gerBer
After Mel Green, the
previous Co-President,
was appointed a judge,
Elisabeth Widner was
asked by AIDWYC’s
Executive Committee
to consider filling the
vacancy left by Mel’s
departure. Fortunately
for AIDWYC, Elisabeth
agreed to take on the responsibilities of
co-president with long time Board of Director
and co-president, Paul Copeland, much to his
relief.
Elisabeth Widner is a graduate of the University
of Toronto Law School. She was called to
the Ontario bar in 1989. Elisabeth articled and
worked at the prestigious law firm of Ruby &
Edwardh until 1995 when she joined her husband,
Julian Falconer’s law firm of Falconer
Charney LLP. Elisabeth’s area of expertise
lies in constitutional and human rights litigation,
civil litigation, criminal appeal work,
employment law and coroner’s inquests.
Elisabeth was a member of Guy Paul Morin’s
legal team and it was Elisabeth’s client Donzel
Young who became AIDWYC’s first adopted
case. She recently submitted a s.696.1
application to the Justice Minister on behalf
of AIDWYC client Gaston St. Pierre. She is
also the team leader of lawyers looking into
the tragic Wilbert Coffin case.
Elisabeth has been a vital part of AIDWYC
as a volunteer lawyer for two years, primarily
reviewing French cases.
She is a busy lawyer whose first priority is to
her husband and two sons.
Welcome aboard Elisabeth.
PresideNt’s rePort
By co-President elisaBeth Widner
When Mel Green was appointed to the Ontario
Court of Justice, Paul Copeland did me the honour
of asking me to assist him as co-president of
AIDWYC. Although I had been a member of
PAge 8 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
The Board of Directors of AIDWYC is pleased
to announce that we have hired Tanya Gerber
as our new Director of Finance and Operations,
beginning September 2006. This new position
was created as a result of AIDWYC’s adoption
of a strategic plan for future growth and the
continued generous funding support from the
Law Foundation of Ontario.
Tanya comes to AIDWYC with many years of
experience at both the managerial and casework
level in community and non-profit agencies
in Toronto. Tanya has worked closely with
the Boards of these agencies in developing and
implementing programs and strategic plans. In
addition, Tanya has spent many years working
with clients and is eminently suited to all aspects
of her new position with us. Tanya has
invaluable experience in fund-raising and donor
programs, all of which will greatly benefit
AIDWYC in our ongoing quest to increase and
stabilize our funding and our capacity to assist
the wrongly convicted.
“I’m very excited to
be joining AIDW-
YC. I have been so
impressed by the
commitment and
passion I’ve witnessed
by the lawyers,
volunteers, donors,
staff and
wrongly convicted
individuals and their
families. I’m thrilled to be part of this new
phase in the organization’s development and to
be applying my experience toward achieving
justice for the wrongly convicted. I look forward
to working together.”
the Review Committee for several years, I had
no idea how much work it takes to run an organization
like AIDWYC and why the presidency
truly requires two people to keep it together
This past year has seen some significant changes.
The Board of AIDWYC adopted a two-year
strategic plan that has as its principal goals the
financial self-sufficiency of AIDWYC, an expansion
of our education mandate and a formalization
of some of our processes.
As a first step, we have been fortunate to hire
Tanya Gerber in the newly-created position of
Director of Finance and Operations. Beginning
this September, Tanya has begun familiarizing
herself with AIDWYC’s operations and we
warmly welcome her.
As we all know, Win Wahrer has shouldered
so much of the burden of running virtually
every aspect of AIDWYC over the years, we
are pleased that she will now be able to focus
fully on her excellent work as Director of Client
Services. Those of us who review cases appreciate
the key role Win plays in working with
our clients and in managing applications and the
review process.
AIDWYC’s adopted cases have had significant
progress this year and are discussed in articles
within this issue of the Journal. The evidentiary
hearings in the Steven Truscott case are now
completed and the appeal in this matter is scheduled
before the Court of Appeal on January 27,
2006. AIDWYC has also had lawyers appear
on its behalf at both the Commission of Inquiry
Into Certain Aspects of the Trial and Conviction
of James Driskell and the Commission of
Inquiry into the Wrongful Conviction of David
Milgaard. Another of our adopted cases, Robert
Baltovich, represented by AIDWYC directors
James Lockyer and Joanne McLean will have
his retrial sometime in 2007. On September 20,
2006 AIDWYC officially adopted the Wilbert
Coffin case, a case of great historical and legal
significance, and our lawyers continue to work
for William Mullins-Johnson who continues to
wait for the Justice Minister to render his decision
regarding his s.696.1 application and Romeo
Phillion, whose case has been referred to
the Court of Appeal for Ontario for answers to
certain evidentiary questions.
AIDWYC survives on the work of volunteer
lawyers, investigators and other members of the
community who donate so generously of their
time in reviewing cases and working on righting
some terrible miscarriages of justice. Outside
of law schools, we are the only organization in
Canada devoted to this issue and I believe we
cannot underestimate our impact on the justice
system. We thank all of the volunteers and hope
you will continue to work with AIDWYC.

lamer iNquiry rePort released
By erin Breen (LAWYER WITH SIMMONDS KENNEDY)
On June 21, 2006
the Government of
Newfoundland and
Labrador released
Commissioner Antonio
Lamer’s report
regarding the cases
of Ronald Dalton,
Gregory Parsons,
and Randy Druken.
Commissioner Lamer
presided over the
Inquiry since September 2003. Robert Simmonds
Q.C. and Jerome Kennedy Q.C. represented
Mr. Dalton and Mr. Parsons at the Inquiry.
At two phases of the Inquiry (the hearing on
the terms of reference and the systemic phase),
AIDWYC lawyers James Lockyer and Mel
Green made submissions. James Lockyer also
testified before the Inquiry as an expert on
wrongful convictions. Mel Green prepared the
AIDWYC written submission on systemic issues
and the submission was favourably received
and commented upon by Commissioner
Lamer.
BACkgROUND:
In 1989, Ronald Dalton was wrongly convicted
of the murder of his wife, Brenda Dalton, and
spent the next eight years in prison waiting for
his appeal to be heard. His appeal was eventually
successful and a new trial was ordered. In
1998, after a second trial, Mr. Dalton was acquitted.
In 1994, Gregory Parsons was wrongly convicted
of the murder of his mother, Catherine
Carroll. Mr. Parsons’ appeal was granted in
1996 and a new trial was ordered. In 1998, after
DNA evidence proved that Brian Doyle killed
Catherine Carroll, an acquittal was entered. The
Newfoundland and Labrador government has
since financially compensated Mr. Parsons.
In 1995, Randy Druken was wrongly convicted
of the murder of his girlfriend, Brenda Young.
In 1999, the conviction was overturned on the
basis of fresh evidence and a new trial was ordered.
In 2000 the Crown entered a stay of proceedings
which has since expired.
Until the release of the Lamer Report, the Provincial
Government had not publicly acknowledged
the cases of Ronald Dalton and Randy
Druken as cases of wrongful conviction. Neither
Justice sPeaks From the rock
Mr. Dalton nor Mr. Druken have been financially
compensated by the Government. Following
the release of the Lamer Report, Justice Minister
Tom Marshall accepted that Ronald Dalton
was innocent and that Randy Druken should not
have been charged. Minister Marshall publicly
encouraged legal counsel for Mr. Dalton and
Mr. Druken to begin dialogue with government
officials as soon as possible regarding financial
compensation.
Commissioner Lamer’s findings were limited
by terms of reference that did not allow him
to examine the wrongful conviction of Ronald
Dalton. Commissioner Lamer was confined
to examining only the reasons for the delay of
Mr. Dalton’s appeal. Similarly, Commissioner
Lamer was not permitted to make a finding of
factual innocence for Mr. Druken.
INDIvIDUAL FINDINgS:
Specific to the individual cases, Commissioner
Lamer came to the following conclusions:
RONALD DALTON
C o m m i s -
sioner Lamer
found that
the delay in
the hearing
of Mr. Dalton’s
appeal
was attributable
to several
factors: mainly, the inaction of his appeal
counsel, David Eaton and then David Day Q.C.;
the rigid policies of the Legal Aid Commission
with respect to the claw-back of legal fees and
the use of staff lawyers; the Crown, the Director
of Public Prosecutions and the Law Society
of Newfoundland for ignoring Mr. Dalton’s
situation and direct pleas for assistance; and the
Newfoundland Court of Appeal, who for five
years engaged in written correspondence with
Mr. Dalton while he was awaiting the hearing
of his appeal. Commissioner Lamer highlighted
the actions of three individuals in assisting Mr.
Dalton: Deputy Registrar of the Court of Appeal,
Madonna Morris; Sandra Burke (Mr. Day’s
junior counsel); and Jerome Kennedy who took
over Mr. Dalton’s appeal from Mr. Day.
Deservedly, Commissioner Lamer’s highest
words were directed towards Ronald Dalton
and his perseverance over the eight years of his
incarceration. Commissioner Lamer outlined
the arduous journey of letter writing and document
filing that Mr. Dalton undertook without
assistance while in jail. Commissioner Lamer
concluded:
“Mr. Dalton withstood his tortuous situation
with remarkable magnanimity. It is difficult to
imagine what more he could have done in the
circumstances to advance his cause.”
gREgORY PARSONS
C o m m i s s i o n e r
Lamer examined
Mr. Parsons’ wrongful
conviction and
identified key contributing
factors.
Those included:
· the inexperienced and untrained Royal Newfoundland
Constabulary’s fatally flawed police
investigation that was laden with errors and
tunnel vision;
· the failure of the Crown in its responsibility
to exercise a “challenge function” to the police
theory;
· the non-objective, overreaching and aggressive
style of advocacy utilized by Crown trial
counsel, Catherine Knox and Crown appeal
counsel, Wayne Gorman;
· the Public Prosecutions Office’s demonstration
of a “Crown Culture” that accepted and
supported the police tunnel vision; and
· errors made by the trial judge.
Commissioner Lamer concluded:
“The investigation and prosecution of Gregory
Parsons became a ‘runaway train’, fuelled by
tunnel vision and picking up many passengers
along the way.”
Commissioner Lamer had these words to say
about Gregory Parsons:
“Gregory Parsons played no part whatsoever
in the murder of his mother, Catherine Carroll.
He is completely innocent… Gregory Parsons
and the family and friends who supported him,
including his lawyers, should be proud of what
he has achieved. The premium that he and Tina
Doyle placed on his education, in spite of all of
their financial and emotional obstacles, demonstrated
great foresight and determination. He
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AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
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excelled academically with many achievements.
He is a firefighter with paramedic qualifications
in the St. John’s Regional Fire Department…
The resilience of Gregory Parsons and those
who supported him bears witness to the strength
of the human spirit.”
RANDY DRUkEN
Commissioner
Lamer examined
the prosecution
of Randy Druken
and identified the
key contributing
factors. They included:
· again, the inexperienced and untrained Royal
Newfoundland Constabulary’s fatally flawed
police investigation that was laden with errors
and tunnel vision;
· the failure of the Crown in its responsibility
to exercise a “challenge function” to the police
theory;
· the reliance of the prosecution upon a highly
unreliable jailhouse informant (Mr. X);
· the police and Crown’s treatment of vulnerable
witnesses, including a key child witness;
· the non-objective, unfair and overreaching
advocacy demonstrated by Crown trial counsel,
Wayne Gorman; and
· the Public Prosecutions Office’s demonstration
of a “Crown Culture” that accepted and
supported the police tunnel vision.
Commissioner Lamer concluded:
“In my view, Randy Druken never should have
been charged with the murder of Brenda Young.
The police had ample reason to focus on him
immediately as the prime suspect. But when the
pieces began not to fit they should have modified
their perspective of the facts. Instead, they
worked on changing the evidence of vulnerable
witnesses. Mr. X was embraced with open
arms when he should have been recognized as a
scoundrel. The laying of the obstruction charges
and related arrests were abusive.”
NOTABLE RECOMMENDATIONS:
(i) Crown Culture
Of the many compelling aspects of the report,
several recommendations are outstanding.
Justice sPeaks From the rock
lamer iNquiry rePort released - continued from Previous Page
PAge 10 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
First, Commissioner Lamer found that the existence
of a “crown culture that is not objective
but over-reaches to pursue every possible legal
avenue that will make life difficult for the accused”
was a driving force in the legal proceedings
against Gregory Parsons. In relation to
the Randy Druken prosecution, Commissioner
Lamer stated that “the existence of the Crown
culture discussed in the previous chapter, is reinforced
by the similar dynamics in the prosecution
of the Parsons and Druken cases. In both,
there are weak circumstantial cases but highly
skilled, motivated and industrious Crown attorneys.
In both cases, they accept the police
focus on one individual as the perpetrator, to the
exclusion of other reasonable possibilities. In
both, they marshaled all of their skills as advocates
to ‘shore up a weak case’ and achieve a
conviction.”
Significantly, Commissioner Lamer concluded
that the evidence before him suggested that this
culture may still exist in the Crown Attorneys’
Office. Commissioner Lamer stated:
“All of these people (former prosecutors involved
in the Parsons case) have now left that
Office but there was no evidence before me that
this culture has changed since the prosecution of
Gregory Parsons. Over the course of the second
investigation and throughout this Inquiry, the
RNC actively pursued reforms in response to
identified problems. There was little indication
of improved training, mentoring, review of decisions
or encouragement of contrarian thinking
amongst the law offices of the Crown.”
Commissioner Lamer recommended the establishment
of an independent review of the Office
of the Director of Public Prosecutions to ensure
that steps have been taken or will be taken to
eliminate the aforementioned “Crown culture”.
Retired Court of Appeal Justice, William Marshall,
is currently heading up the review.
(ii) Amendment to Section 649 of the Criminal
Code
Commissioner Lamer recommended that
“a specific exception be added to section 649 of
the Criminal Code (Jury Secrecy) which would
take into account the unique problem and recently
identified frequency of wrongful convictions.
This wrongful conviction exception would allow
a juror to be interviewed where a Commission
such as this one has been established.”
Commissioner Lamer then listed several condi-
tions necessary to allow juror interviews. Commission
Lamer recommended that Justice Minister
Tom Marshall pursue such an amendment
with his federal and provincial counterparts.
(iii) Amendment to the Criminal Code – Modified
Test for Directed Verdicts
Commissioner Lamer recommended that the test
for a Directed Verdict be modified “to allow trial
judges to throw out cases where the evidence
can colloquially be characterized as ‘garbage’.”
Commissioner Lamer stated that the test for the
“sufficiency” of the evidence to be met before a
case goes to a jury should be articulated in the
Criminal Code to require a judge to enter a verdict
of acquittal where there is:
“…no evidence or the evidence is so manifestly
unreliable on any essential element of the offence,
that it would be dangerous to convict.”
Further, Commissioner Lamer recommended
that where defence counsel does not make an
application, the trial judge should be required to
act on his or her own initiative. Again, Commissioner
Lamer recommended that Justice Minister
Tom Marshall pursue such an amendment
with his federal and provincial counterparts.
(iv) Use of the Stay of Proceedings
The Lamer Inquiry heard how the Crown arbitrarily
implemented stays of proceedings in the
Gregory Parsons case (in relation to both the
murder charge – though an acquittal was ultimately
entered – and an assault charge against
Greg Parsons while he was on bail) and entered
several stays of proceedings in the Randy
Druken case (in relation to the murder charge
and obstruction charges against Randy’s mother
Shirley Druken and step-father John Ring).
Commissioner Lamer focused on the prejudice
that an accused person suffers after a stay of
proceedings is entered. He noted:
“A stay of proceedings may leave an impression
with the public that the charge is merely
being ‘postponed’ or ‘the authorities’, in a broad
sense, still believe in the validity of the charge.”
Commissioner Lamer noted that the laying of
a charge in a murder case attracts much public
attention and the stay of proceedings denies the
accused person of the opportunity to be exonerated
publicly.
Commissioner Lamer found a number of shortcomings
with respect to the current Newfoundland
and Labrador Crown policy regarding the

AIDWYC ON THE MOVE
GEORGE ALLAIN: A MAN OF VISION
BY WIN WAHRER
nity for the wrongly convicted to educate students countless unpaid hours to the investigation of
and answer questions about their cases, the causes both these cases.
In 2004 George Allain and his Humberview Sec-
and effects of being wrongly convicted.
ondary School law class designed and engi-
George Allain well deserves the deep respect
neered a website devoted to the Steven Justice Truscott AIDWYC and the wrongly convicted are gratitude and admiration of AIDWYC and its cur-
sPeaks From the rock
case. In 2005 George Allain’s law class studied indebted to George Allain and his students for rent and potential clients for his unwavering
lamer the case iNquiry of Christopher rePort Bates, a released young man con-
continued taking such from a Previous worthwhile Pagevision
and making it determination to educate students, teachers and
victed in Quebec of a murder he did not commit. into a reality. Despite some negative response parents alike about the wrongly convicted and the
use of the stay. Commissioner Lamer recom- in the rest they of Canada. remained It committed continually to amazes their ambitious me admit plan that changes the adversarial that must system occur just in the does Criminal not Justice
But Mr. Allain does not confine his concern for
mended that the current policy be replaced with that after
to
the
share
reports
the
of
plight
the Marshall,
of the wrongly
Morin,
convicted
and work withas
well System as we in think order it that does. innocent Our system people stop being
those wrongly convicted to the classroom. In
a detailed, clear and consistent policy which Sophonow
high
Inquiries,
schools
all
throughout
provinces
Ontario.
have not ad- of justice is convicted based upon and the spending prevention irreplaceable of the years in
2005, Mr. Allain contacted Win Wahrer of
stipulates that “a stay of proceedings is approopted the The recommendations. Law Symposium Instead, was a huge provinces success attract- conviction prison of the for innocent. crimes they It is did this not goal commit. that
AIDWYC and shared his vision of Humberview
priate where there is a reasonable likelihood of spend millions ing 700 of law dollars students after from the fact as far holding away as we Sudmust
all Also strive this for past and year, if the George system Allain must was able to
hosting a one day Law Symposium for high
recommencement of the proceedings but it has their own bury, inquiries Ontario. only to Steven, be told to Marlene adopt the and change, Ryan so convince be it.” Humberview Secondary School to
school students from across Ontario and asked
become necessary, for example, for the police to prior recommendations. Truscott participated Throughout in two his workshops. report, The
Win
Lamer
sponsor
Report can
the
be
successful
accessed
Steven
at:
Truscott “JUSwhether
she would be interested in participating
conduct further investigation that was previous- Commission Wahrer Lamer conducted continually two workshops recommends with William TICE NOW!” bracelet fundraising campaign
and advising him whom to invite from the
ly unforeseen. It is not a basis to stay proceed- that the Newfoundland Mullins-Johnson government and Chris Bates, adopt as the well as http://www.justice.gov.nl.ca/just/lamer.
pri- (You will find information about obtaining JUSwrongly
convicted community, media, lawyers
ings merely because a judge has made a ruling recommendations vate investigator of the Morin Sean Gladney and Sophonow who contributed TICE NOW! Bracelets below.)
and others. Win Wahrer was eager to help with
unfavourable
what she
to the
considered
Crown.”
to be a wonderful opportu- inquiries. It will be interesting to see how the
The policy also clearly states when it is ap- Lamer report is received by other provinces and
propriate for a Crown Attorney to withdraw a whether any province other than Newfoundland
charge or to call no evidence and request an ac- and Labrador will choose to implement its rec-
JUSTICE NOW!
quittal. The policy further mandates a written ommendations.
report summarizing the reasons for the decision Jerome Kennedy, AIDWYC’s Atlantic repre- The AIDWYC Message Bracelet is now avail-
to be filed with the Senior Crown Attorney. Sigsentative who represented both Ronald Dalton able in Support of Steven Truscott.
nificantly, the policy also states that the basic
reasons for exercising the discretion should be
expressed in open court. Please see pages 322-
324 of the Lamer Report to review the complete
policy.
CONCLUSION:
and Gregory Parsons, made the following observations:
“I am more than pleased with Commissioner
Lamer’s report and the government’s commitment
to implement all its recommendations but
I ask myself why does it have to come to this?
The white silicone rubber bracelet is embossed
with the words JUSTICE NOW! Included is a
Steven Truscott information postcard.
And the cost is only $5.00 CAD each.
You may purchase JUSTICE NOW! bracelets
While the wrongs done to Ronald Dalton, Gregory
Parsons, and Randy Druken can never be
righted, the Lamer Report is an important step
in bringing awareness to the public of the travesties
of justice that occurred. Though Gregory
Parsons has received a public acknowledgement
of his innocence and financial compensation, his
life will obviously never be the same. Ronald
Dalton continues to struggle to have the Government
of Newfoundland and Labrador fully
acknowledge his innocence and to fairly compensate
him. Randy Druken has been ignored
by the Government and a cloud of suspicion allowed
to hang over his head. It is time for the
Government to fully acknowledge the injustice
of the Dalton and Druken cases and accept re-
People’s lives are ruined and yet the police and
the Crown are never fully held accountable and
they rarely accept responsibility. How many
more innocent people are languishing in jail
while the justice system refuses to accept its
errors? The system of criminal justice in this
country needs to be overhauled completely.
Everything needs to change from the way investigations
are conducted to the way Crown
prosecutors are trained to the way judges are appointed.
And defence counsel have to be willing
to adapt. Maybe it is time for all of us to
by contacting the AIDWYC office, indicating the
number of JUSTICE NOW! bracelets you
would like to order, your method of payment and
your shipping address.
Proceeds from the sale of the JUSTICE NOW!
bracelets help make AIDWYC’s work possible.
Please consider purchasing JUSTICE NOW!
bracelets for yourself, your family and friends.
They make a meaningful gift that anyone would
be proud to wear.
Thank you for your interest and support.
sponsibility.
Advocates for the wrongly convicted will undoubtedly
welcome Commissioner Lamer’s recommendations.
Minister Marshall has publicly
stated that the Government of Newfoundland
and Labrador will implement all of Commissioner
Lamer’s recommendations. The practical
implementation of the Commission’s findings
will determine how effective the Inquiry was
in making improvements to the administration
of justice in Newfoundland and Labrador and
ASSOCIATION IN DEFENCE OF THE WRONGLY CONVICTED — PAGE 33
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 11

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
roN daltoN: reacts to lamer rePort
By ron dalton
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
On June 21, 2006 the Newfoundland and Labrador
Justice Minister Tom Marshall released
the report of Commissioner Antonio Lamer into
the wrongful conviction cases of Ronald Dalton,
Gregory Parsons and Randy Druken. The
486-page report is the culmination of the public
inquiry announced in March 2003 and includes
some 45 recommendations arising from the
commission’s three-year operation. Commissioner
Lamer, former Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court of Canada, addressed each of the
cases individually as well as addressing general
systemic failings.
The Dalton case focused on the failure of counsel
for Mr. Dalton, crown attorneys, legal aid
officials, and justices of the Court of Appeal
to attend to their respective duties in a timely
fashion. Commissioner Lamer concluded, “The
criminal justice system did not ‘see’ Mr. Dalton
for almost eight years and, for that, we are all
responsible.”
gREgORY PARSONS
Commissioner Lamer’s findings in relation to
Mr. Parsons are summarized in the opinion, “...
that Gregory Parsons is and was a good person
to whom bad things happened.” In detailing the
failings of the Crown and police officers in the
Parsons’ case, Commissioner Lamer repeatedly
returned to note the strength of character displayed
by Gregory Parsons, his wife and other
family members.
RANDY DRUkEN
The largest portion of the Lamer Commission
report is devoted to a detailed analysis of
the arrest and prosecution of Randy Druken.
Commissioner Lamer concludes his exhaustive
analysis with the finding that “…there was no
reliable evidence on which to base his prosecution.”
While prohibited by his terms of reference
from retrying the Druken matter, Commissioner
Lamer clearly recorded the absence of evidence
to support the prosecution of Mr. Druken and
listed the substantial evidence pointing towards
another (now deceased) suspect.
The key recommendation for improvement of
the systemic failings calls for “…an independent
review of the Office of the Director of Pub-
PAge 12 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Justice sPeaks From the rock
lic Prosecutions, with a view to ensuring that
steps have been taken or will be taken to eliminate
the ‘Crown Culture’ that contributed to the
wrongful conviction of Gregory Parsons, and
was also evident in the prosecution of Randy
Druken.” Other key systemic recommendations
relate to provision of increased and improved
resources for the police and crown officials as
well as improved screening of potential judicial
appointees.
The full report, available at www.gov.nl.ca/just/
Lawyer Jerome Kennedy (left) confers with Greg Parsons
and Ronald Dalton in the inquiry room.
photo from CBC file
lamer, contains the intriguing details of three
horrific miscarriages of justice together with the
full text of Commissioner Lamer’s recommendations.
The initial printing of the report immediately
went out-of-print and while government
officials have promised a reprint it has yet to be
made available.
To the Justice Minister’s credit the government
indicated at the official release of the report it
would accept all of the Commissioner’s recommendations
and work towards early implementation.
The Minister also announced the
appointment of retired Supreme Court (Appeal
Division) Justice William Marshall to conduct
the recommended review of the prosecution service.
The Minister took the occasion of the release
of the report to officially apologize to Mr.
Dalton, Mr. Parsons and Mr. Druken. He also issued
an invitation to counsel for Mr. Dalton and
Mr. Druken to commence negotiation of compensation
for their wrongful convictions. (Mr.
Parsons had been compensated earlier with an
increased amount awarded during the Commission
hearings.) The day following the release of
the report the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
of Appeal issued a formal apology to Mr. Dalton
for the inaction of the Court of Appeal as noted
by Commissioner Lamer. The government also
concluded an undisclosed settlement with the
daughter of the victim in the Druken case immediately
following release of the report.
The overall reaction to the report has been positive
and the government’s professed acceptance
of the recommendations gives rise to hope for
needed improvements. As one of the subjects of
the Inquiry I remain sceptical pending implementation
of the recommendations and conclusion
of ongoing settlement negotiations. Only
Mr. Parsons and Mr. Druken can fully appreciate
the horrific experiences we have lived through
and identify with the ongoing negative impact
on our lives and those of our family members.
Despite those reservations we appreciate the
thorough and respectful manner in which Commissioner
Lamer examined our respective cases.
It was comforting to find he “got it” in terms of
seeing the weaknesses which led to our wrongful
convictions. We all have much to learn from
the mistakes of the past in hopes of improving
what I consider will always be a flawed system.
Ron Dalton was a keynote speaker at the Criminal
Lawyers’ Association (CLA) conference on
November 4th in Toronto. Ron was introduced
by AIDWYC director James Lockyer. In the audience
was Ron’s daughter Allison from PEI and
Win Wahrer, AIDWYC’s Director of Client Services.
At the completion of his address Ron received
thunderous applause and a standing ovation
from the packed room of attendees. Master
of Ceremonies, David Humphrey, referred to
Ron’s address as spellbinding and mesmerizing
and acknowledged that this was the first time
any speaker had been given a standing ovation
at a CLA conference. Anyone wishing to have
Ron Dalton speak at a venue please contact Win
Wahrer at 416-504-7500.

By Win Wahrer
On July 17, 2006 James Driskell’s Inquiry got
underway in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Justice Patrick
LeSage is the Inquiry Commissioner whose
mandate is to investigate the conduct of Crown
Counsel and to decide whether it fell below the
professional and ethical standards expected of
lawyers and agents of the Attorney General
enacting prosecutions at the time. The Commission
of Inquiry will also look into whether
the Winnipeg Police Service failed to disclose
material information to the Crown before, during
or after James Driskell’s trial and, if so, consider
whether the non-disclosure contributed to
a likely miscarriage of justice. The Commission
must also consider the role of the RCMP Laboratory
in the prosecution of James Driskell, and
to review any systemic issues that may arise out
of its role.
AIDWYC applied for and was granted standing
at the Commission of Inquiry. AIDWYC lawyers
James Lockyer (Toronto) and Al Libman
(Winnipeg) are representing James Driskell.
When interviewed by Dan Lett of the Winnipeg
Free Press, James Lockyer said that he hopes
the main outcome is an admission by the justice
system that Driskell is factually innocent.
Although it is not part of the inquiry’s mandate,
Lockyer is confident Manitoba will be forced
to make this admission once all the details of
the case come out at the inquiry. “I think there
will be an acknowledgment of Jim Driskell’s innocence,”
Lockyer said. “That’s something we
hope comes as a result of the commission, not
from the commissioner directly. There needs to
be an acknowledgment from the government of
Manitoba that Driskell did not kill Perry Dean
Harder.”
Jerome Kennedy, AIDWYC’s Atlantic representative
is AIDWYC counsel at the Inquiry.
THE FIRST FIvE WEEkS
The first factual issue to be dealt with in the
inquiry was the question of non-disclosure of
financial benefits requested by the Crown witness
Ray Zanidean and/or non-disclosure of the
financial benefits granted to Zanidean. The second
factual issue that was dealt with involved
the negotiations with Zanidean as to what he
was seeking and what he received. The third
area of factual inquiry dealt with whether Zanidean’s
sworn testimony at the trial was materially
false, incomplete, or misleading in such
a way that there was an ethical obligation on
caNadiaN uPdates
uNder the microscoPe: James driskell inquiry
Crown Counsel to correct the false, incomplete,
or misleading evidence. The fourth issue to be
dealt with is whether the forensic scientific evidence
of the Crown expert, Todd Christianson,
was in accord with appropriate professional
standards. The Commission will also be considering
whether and in what way a determination
or declaration of wrongful conviction can be
made in cases such as Jim Driskell’s. The Commission
is having at least one or more papers,
including Professor Kent Roach’s, published on
this topic.
SURPRISE ADMISSION
On the second day of the inquiry, after claiming
no independent recollection of the events
surrounding the wrongful conviction of James
Driskell, RCMP Inspector Ross Burton admitted
that he had put a detailed, internal report together
in 2003 about the Driskell affair and sent
it to his superiors. Burton explained that he was
afraid that files may have been destroyed and
wanted his role known. His lawyer and justice
officials were unaware of information he had
from the early 1990s regarding Driskell’s case.
Once the RCMP higher-ups received the detailed
report they did not disclose it to Manitoba
authorities or share it with commission counsel;
they kept that vital information to themselves.
Manitoba Senior Crown prosecutors knew of
the arson charges being dropped against Zani-
dean and even upon the urging of the Manitoba
Justice Department to disclose that information
to Driskell’s lawyer, they opted not to.
The Saskatchewan Justice Department did
quash arson charges against Zanidean who received
immunity in exchange for his testimony,
which was first reported in the Winnipeg Sun in
1993 but it was ignored. According to Burton,
Winnipeg police had called him to ask him not
to charge Ray Zanidean with arson. They felt
that once he testified as a key witness against
Driskell under the belief that he had been granted
immunity that it would be “an abuse of process”
to charge him.
HIDDEN REPORT
Winnipeg police Chief Jack Ewatski was questioned
about a review he conducted along with
retired Inspector Robert Hall in 1993 into victim
Perry Harder’s murder. The report that was produced
as a result of the investigation was kept
under wraps for almost a decade. Information
contained in the report would have been beneficial
to Driskell. The 175-page report was never
released to Crown or defence lawyers. Hall
and Ewatski gave an interview to the Winnipeg
Free Press in October 2000 to answer questions
based on their review of Driskell’s case. During
the interview they revealed new and unknown
facts that lead to AIDWYC demanding access
to the report.
The new facts include:
· An admission a Winnipeg police officer was
implicated in Perry Harder’s murder;
· Confirmation that police negotiated a witness
protection agreement for a key Crown witness
that was never revealed to the jury;
· The fact that despite evidence that same witness
tried to recant his testimony after Driskell
was convicted, Hall and Ewatski failed to interview
the witness for their review.
Ewatski stated that it wasn’t his responsibility
to disclose information to the defence; that was
the job of the Crown attorneys. He further stated
that he believed the Crown knew everything that
was in the report.
Ewatski’s co-author of the report, retired Inspector
Robert Hall, stated in his interview with the
inquiry’s lawyer, Michael Code that he believes
there was information contained in that report
that Manitoba Justice might not have known.
Hall has not been called to testify.
After hearing Ewatski’s testimony, James
Driskell told reporters that he felt Ewatski
should not be the chief of police and should resign.
The lead prosecutor in Driskell’s case, George
Dangerfield, testified that he did not know of
the immunity deal and compensation paid to his
star witness but former assistant deputy attorney
general Stuart Whitley, who also testified at the
inquiry, contradicted Dangerfield’s testimony
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Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
uNder the microscoPe - continued from Previous Page
by saying that Dangerfield liked to be in charge
and would have demanded to know all the details
behind a deal to secure testimony from a
key Crown witness. Whitley, who oversaw both
Bruce Miller, the former director of prosecutions
who took charge of Zanidean’s compensation
negotiations and George Dangerfield, said
that it would be highly improper and would corrupt
the trial process if information were kept
away from Miller and Dangerfield. He said an
arrangement like that was completely inconsistent
with the personalities and nature of both
Miller and Dangerfield. “George had a temper,
he’d go ballistic if he knew he was being kept in
the dark,” said Whitley.
RE-ExAMINE PROSECUTOR’S CASES
George Dangerfield admitted on the stand that
he knew enough about Zanidean’s compensation
package to know he was lying at Driskell’s
trial. He tried to backtrack on this statement
while being questioned by his lawyer as his testimony
came to a close.
James Lockyer questioned Dangerfield on other
similar cases he had prosecuted including the
cases of Thomas Sophonow wherein a key witness
had a deal to have criminal charges dropped
and to avoid deportation if he testified against
Sophonow and Frank Ostrowski (still in prison)
whose jury did not hear about a deal that a key
witness made to avoid drug trafficking charges
in return for his testimony.
Dangerfield denied making any deals.
All the Manitoba cases in which hair sample
comparison was offered as evidence has been
overturned (Jim Driskell, Kyle Unger, Robert
Sanderson and Robert Starr) had Dangerfield as
the Crown prosecutor.
James Lockyer called for a re-examination of
the cases that Dangerfield prosecuted as a senior
Crown attorney.
Dangerfield, asked by Lockyer if he had anything
to say to Driskell, replied, “Yes, I’m sorry
he put all that time in prison. But I didn’t intentionally
try to get him into prison. I didn’t
intentionally do things to damage his chance to
acquit himself.” He continued, “and I honestly
think today that had he gone into the (witness)
box, he might well have been acquitted.”
APOLOgY
Whitely also testified about Miller’s decision
to offer Zanidean a $20,000 lump sum payment
in June 1991, after the completion of the trial.
Miller at the time of making the offer did not
have the approval of the deputy attorney general,
who is the only person who can sign off on
witness payments.
PAge 14 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
caNadiaN uPdates
Whitely apologized to James Driskell both privately
and publicly saying that based on what he
has heard so far and in his opinion only, Driskell
did not get a fair trial. “He has a constitutional
right to a fair trial. It was on my watch. It was
my responsibility, as head of Prosecutions for
Manitoba, to make sure that that happened. It
didn’t happen, and I regret that,” said Whitely
from the witness stand while being questioned
by James Lockyer.
Since the opening of the inquiry, there has been
a lot of finger pointing going on between the
RCMP and the Winnipeg police department neither
one wanting to take responsibility for the
immunity deal and compensation package given
to Ray Zanidean. It is very clear that numerous
officials in law enforcement, the Crown’s office
and the RCMP Laboratory played a prominent
role in James Driskell’s wrongful conviction
and 13-year incarceration. Will they be held accountable?
SUPPORT
Thomas Sophonow, who was convicted of a
murder he did not commit and who received
compensation after an inquiry in 2000 into his
wrongful conviction has been present at the inquiry
to offer his encouragement and support to
his friend James Driskell throughout most of the
proceedings
James Driskell is hopeful that as a result of the
inquiry people will be held accountable for the
role they played in his wrongful conviction.
Driskell believes that the police and Crown culture
which led to his wrongful conviction still
exists and that what happened to him could happen
to anyone. He hopes at the conclusion of the
inquiry that charges of perjury and obstructing
justice will be laid.
“People’s lives aren’t games,” he said. “My
family’s been torn apart — I’m still struggling
in some areas to get the connections back.”
Driskell said he has eight children and 14 grandchildren.
While he was in prison, his kids were
ridiculed at school, got into fights, and were
suspended. His kids grew up thinking that being
searched when they went to visit him at Stony
Mountain was a normal part of life.
Al Libman spoke to me from Manitoba and said
that “the inquiry is going brilliantly, at a very
quick pace”, he is pleased on how the Commissioner
and the Commission counsel are conducting
the inquiry. “It is on target and on schedule.”
He also said that “Mr. Driskell is quite pleased
that questions he has had for a long time are finally
being answered.”
The commission of inquiry concluded proceedings
on August 17th, and resumed sitting on
September 18, 2006 when a panel assembled to
discuss in a round table format, together with
the commissioner and counsel, Crown Stay of
Proceedings.
The panel experts are Professor Kent Roach
from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law,
Bruce MacFarlane, Professor at University of
Manitoba Faculty of Law (former Manitoba
Deputy Attorney General), Kerry Scullion, head
of the s.696.1 Review Unit in Ottawa, Professor
Tim Quigley, a criminal procedure expert from
the University of Saskatchewan, Geoff Gaul,
Director of Prosecutions for the B.C. Attorney
General, William Marshall, Retired Justice of
Newfoundland Court of Appeal (who has undertaken
a review of the stay power in Newfoundland,
as a result of the Lamer Inquiry) and
Rob Frater, representing the federal Attorney
General.
Chief of Police Ewatski’s cross examination
resumed on September 19th proceeded by the
testimony of Todd Christianson.
The inquiry is scheduled to conclude on October
31st and has a deadline of December 31, 2006 to
report its findings.
UPDATE:
The “evidence phase” of the Driskell Inquiry
concluded on Friday, September 29th with the
testimony of Crown attorney Dale Schille.
At the conclusion of Schille’s testimony, Commissioner
Patrick LeSage said “Conduct notices
will be sent out later today (Friday, September
29th).”
The conduct notices are designed to let witnesses
and their lawyers know LeSage is eyeing disciplinary
or regulatory recommendations about
them in his final report.
Witnesses who received notices can respond
during the final phase (closing arguments) of the
Inquiry when it resumed on October 30th.
Commission Counsel, Michael Code was one
of eight lawyers who presented final arguments.
Code highlighted 23 issues and concerns, almost
all dealing with a failure by the justice system to
disclose pertinent evidence to Driskell’s lawyer.
Evidence which could have helped Driskell to
defend himself of first degree murder charges in
1991
James Lockyer in his closing arguments said the
power to hold individuals and institutions accountable
– a power deliberately withheld from
other inquiries – should be used for the benefit
of the entire justice system.
Final arguments concluded on November 1st
Complete coverage of the Driskell Inquiry can
be viewed at its official website, http://www.
driskellinquiry.ca

david milgaard iNquiry
By Win Wahrer
David Milgaard
photo from CBC file
The inquiry
into David Milgaard’swrongful
conviction
resumed before
Justice Edward
MacCallum on
January 16, 2006
and was adjourned
on June
29th until August
28th. Former
Milgaard lawyer,
David Asper
and Inspector Murray Sawatsky were the first
two witnesses called when the inquiry resumed
sitting.
At the time this article was written over 131
witnesses have testified before the inquiry
which is to conclude hearing from witnesses at
the end of September. However commission
counsel, Doug Hodson, has said that, “We will
do a proper job, we will not compromise on any
of the evidence we get from these witnesses. We
will not compromise on the rights of any party
to ask questions they think are appropriate.”
I must confess that this article has been the most
difficult to write: I expected so much more from
this inquiry whose mandate is to search out the
truth as to why a 16 year old young man, a free
spirit of the 60’s who would not have hurt anyone,
was wrongly convicted of a brutal, senseless
murder of an equally innocent nursing student,
Gail Miller.
This inquiry has been continually frustrated in
its search for the truth.
Witnesses who were likely responsible either directly
or indirectly for David Milgaard’s wrongful
conviction either can’t remember, or refuse
to admit that they did anything wrong.
There is a whole lot of denial going on, which
I believe is the reason it took David 23 long,
tortuous and painful years to regain his freedom:
the parole board continually said David
was in denial because he would not admit to the
murder of Gail Miller and as a result year after
year, the board denied David his freedom while
the actual killer (Larry Fisher) was allowed to
continue raping women.
I have the deepest respect and admiration for
AIDWYC lawyers, James Lockyer, Joanne
McLean, Hersh Wolch and AIDWYC client
caNadiaN uPdates
Joyce Milgaard, who day after day, week after
week, month after month have to go into an inquiry
room rife with tension as their quest for the
truth has met with roadblock after roadblock.
It was extremely disappointing when Justice
Robert Laing of the Court of the Queen’s Bench,
overruled Justice MacCallum’s previous ruling
and exempted the former justice minister and
short term Prime Minister, Kim Campbell from
being questioned at the inquiry. In my view
Kim Campbell has a lot to answer for when as
justice minister she refused in 1988 a request to
review David Milgaard’s case.
David Milgaard’s request to be exempt from
testifying at the inquiry, stating that doing so
would be emotionally stressful and conjure up
all sorts of negative images he was struggling to
forget, was denied.
Justice MacCallum did however agree to a compromise
and allowed David to testify by videotape
on March 6th; if David had refused to
comply he would have lost his right and his
lawyer’s right to participate in the inquiry. David’s
testimony was viewed by the inquiry on
April 24th.
Joyce Milgaard underwent gruelling questioning
for 11 consecutive days in May and 4 days
in June. She was asked about mistakes she
made while valiantly trying to prove her son’s
innocence. Did she make mistakes? Indeed she
did, but she was delving into uncharted waters
and sometimes the waves were choppy but she
did do what no other person had been able to
do; bring world wide attention to her son’s case
and, with the help of dedicated lawyers and
Centurion Ministries, secure David’s freedom.
She has become to countless Canadians an inspiration
for her courage and her unwillingness
to give up.
When David Asper, Milgaard’s former lawyer,
took the witness stand he did not mince words
when he accused federal investigator Eugene
Williams of being biased in his approach to
witnesses supporting Milgaard’s claim of innocence.
He pointed out the significant difference
in how he treated those witnesses as opposed to
former Crown prosecutor Bobs Caldwell who
handled the original case against Milgaard.
Williams never investigated the possibility that
Linda Fisher’s suspicion of her husband, Larry
Fisher, was correct. Asper also testified that Wil-
liams neglected to investigate Fisher’s record in
enough detail to discover that Fisher had pleaded
guilty in Regina to crimes he had committed
in Saskatoon. Williams incorrectly assumed,
instead that Fisher pleaded guilty in Regina to
crimes that were committed in Regina.
Inspector Murray Sawatsky who was the RCMP
investigator appointed in 1993 to investigate allegations
of wrongdoing by police and justice
officials after David was freed, testified that he
did not believe key witnesses Nichol John and
Ron Wilson when they told him Milgaard was
never out of their sight the evening of the murder.
Wilson claimed he had been intimidated by
the police to implicate David Milgaard or be accused
of the murder himself.
Sawatsky concluded after his investigation that
there was no evidence to support allegations of
criminal wrongdoing by the Saskatoon police
or other justice officials. Joyce Milgaard has
called Sawatsky’s report a “whitewash”.
However, Sawatsky took a short breather from
his testimony rife with denial of any wrongdoing,
to admit he was influenced by the findings of the
Supreme Court of Canada, which said it had not
heard any evidence of police wrongdoing.
He continues to maintain even after DNA evidence
had identified Larry Fisher as the killer/
rapist that the evidence collected did not point at
Larry Fisher, but that the preponderance of the
evidence pointed squarely at David Milgaard.
Sawatsky was asked by federal justice officials
to swear out a warrant to force Larry Fisher to
give a DNA sample, but he refused. If Sawatsky
had acquired the DNA from Fisher then the issue
would have been resolved one way or the
other as to whether Fisher had any connection
to the murder. But David Milgaard would have
to wait until 1997 when his DNA sample was
sent to the UK, for testing which led to his exoneration.
David Milgaard has been re-victimized during
this inquiry by the shameful conduct of those
who, instead of accepting responsibility for
their actions, choose instead to blame the victim
for his own wrongful conviction. According to
Sawatsky it was the fault of Joyce Milgaard, the
lawyers and the media that the justice department
dug in its heels and tried to avoid dealing
with Milgaard’s case.
Murray Brown, a senior official with the
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Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
david milgaard - continued from Previous Page
Saskatchewan Justice Department admitted that
the media campaign and Milgaard supporters
were probably the key to winning a review of
Milgaard’s murder conviction. He maintained
however, that the media campaign also eroded
the public’s faith in the justice system.
Joyce Milgaard testifying at inquiry
photo by Gord Waldner/ The Star Phoenix
Murray Brown
hurled insult
after insult at
the media and
in particular
at Dan Lett of
the Winnipeg
Free Press
who he claims
was treated
by the Milgaard
camp
as a “cheap
whore” for
the many insightful articles he wrote about the
Milgaard case.
And he said it was the media’s fault that the Saskatoon
police didn’t do their job. However his
comments weren’t all mean and degrading. He
did offer an excuse for the Saskatoon police for
not doing their job even when DNA evidence
pointed at another suspect by saying, “The publicity
came back to bite (the Milgaard defence
team) because (Saskatoon) police by that time
didn’t have just an intellectual investment, they
had an emotional one.”
Dan Lett was then, and is now, considered to be
one of the best Canadian investigative reporters
in the business. For Brown to attack Lett’s
professionalism because he didn’t like him and
other reporters having the guts to search out the
truth is more telling of the flaws in Brown’s
character and the way he does his job than of
Lett.
When Winnipeg Free Press editor Bob Cox was
reached and asked to comment on Brown’s character
assassination of Dan Lett and the integrity
of the Winnipeg Free Press he had this to say:
“Tell me, if an accurate reporter is a cheap
whore, what does that make people who imprisoned
and kept imprisoned an innocent man?”
Murray didn’t seem to be particularly moved or
embarrassed by the fact that the Winnipeg Free
Press was right in their reporting and that the
caNadiaN uPdates
justice department was dead wrong. His next
revelation gives a scary insight into the attitude
of the Saskatoon police. When Murray informed
the police that DNA evidence identified Larry
Fisher as Gail Miller’s killer, the police refused
to believe him and let Fisher, a convicted serial
rapist, leave the city.
Brown’s attack on the media during his testimony
explains some of the problems leading to
David Milgaard’s wrongful conviction. Tunnel
vision is as in this case one of the prominent
causes of innocent people being convicted of
crimes they did not commit.
We should be able to rely on the justice system
to do its job in an unbiased and professional
way. If it weren’t for DNA, David Milgaard
would still be considered a murderer. Think of
all the cases in which there is no DNA. What
happens to the innocent when, as in Milgaard’s
case, no one in the justice system can recognize
the truth? Even worse they run as far away from
it as humanly possible.
David Milgaard deserves so much better!
David Milgaard has been trying to move forward
in spite of the nightmares from the past.
His future now embraces the birth of a son born
on January 29th. Congratulations, David and
Christina.
UPDATE:
After 133 witnesses over 191 days, the inquiry
concluded testimony on October 4th.
Final submissions will be prepared by all
14 parties with standing. Commissioner Edward
MacCallum will hear final arguments on
December 11th and 12th.
You can acquire complete transcripts of the daily
proceedings at the inquiries official website:
http://www.milgaardinquiry.ca.
PAge 16 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
robert baltovich :
neW trial
Robert Baltovich appeared in the Ontario Court
of Appeal on October 21, at which time a re-trial
date, September 10, was mutually agreed upon
by both the Defence and Crown. Robert will
be represented by AIDWYC lawyers Joanne
McLean, James Lockyer and Heather McArthur.
Robert Baltovich at the Court of Appeal
Photo by Toronto Star

NavigatiNg my course
By William mullins-Johnson
With help from AID-
WYC, my screams
of innocence of murder
had to be finally
taken seriously.
William Mullins-Johnson
Photo by Tammy Knezic
September 21, 2005
was definitely a
day that I thought
I would never see.
I was released on
bail from a courthouse
in Toronto,
and to be honest, I
was not fully prepared
for the atten-
tion that I received. The expressions of personal
support from people were overwhelming to me.
Then, I had to deal with the onslaught of media
coverage.
Looking back on the last year, my life did an
about-face that has left me with opportunities
and possibilities that I did not have in the 12th
and final year of my incarceration for a crime I
did not commit.
The first month of freedom went incredibly fast.
Strangers who had heard of my story from the
media approached me. Each person brought sentiments
of support and congratulations, which
surprised, and in some ways embarrassed me to
a small degree. However, none of these people
crowded me or forced themselves on me; they
simply gave me their support. The most surprising
were two women in Richmond Hill who sent
letters of support to me through the AIDWYC
office. As I read each letter, the encouragement
they gave me along with their personal views
and feelings touched me very deeply. Each of
them mentioned how much my story moved
them and they wanted to help me in the only
that they could. They gave me a financial donation
totalling $350.
The community of Toronto showed me tremendous
support. The first night of freedom,
I attended the AIDWYC benefit concert at the
MOD Club. The place was packed and after participating
in a press conference and other media
interviews, I did party a little bit. Over the next
month, I went to dinners, baseball games at the
Sky Dome, and a Toronto Maple Leaf game, all
courtesy of various supporters of AIDWYC. I
even attended a Leaf game in April 2006 against
caNadiaN uPdates
my favourite team, the New York Islanders.
Ironically, at each sporting event that I attended,
the Toronto team won - even the game against
the Islanders.
In late October 2005, I returned to Sault Ste.
Marie with AIDWYC’s Win Wahrer, in order to
relocate my mother to Toronto. While there, I
did a few interviews with the television show
W5. Most of the show was filmed in downtown
Sault Ste. Marie at one of my old haunts - an
arcade that was transformed into a pool hall and
bar. Sault Ste. Marie and the reservation where
I am from seemed smaller to me than I remembered.
There were very few people around
downtown Sault Ste. Marie, which surprised
me since it was Halloween weekend. On the last
day of the weekend, my Uncle Gord and Aunt
Anna organized a spectacular barbeque. While
there were people who came to see me, including
great uncles and second cousins, nobody
from my immediate family (aunts, uncles and
first cousins) came to see me, except one of my
brothers. This did not surprise me or bother me.
Much of family had turned their backs on me
the night I was arrested in 1993: “simply by accusation
I was guilty” seemed to be what they
believed. In the end, I really did not feel like the
reservation or Sault Ste. Marie was my home
any longer. Therefore, it did not bother me to
leave again.
Upon my return to Toronto, as luck would have
it, I aggravated a past back injury by pulling our
U Haul trailer out from where it had become
wedged. I did not think I injured my back as
badly as I did and began work at a warehouse in
shipping and receiving, a full time job courtesy
of my cousin’s wife. I slid into the position very
well. Interestingly, this was the type of work I
had when I was arrested in 1993. In a way, I
found it almost comical because in the realm
of a “normal life”, I was starting over from the
point when I was taken from “normalcy” and
put into an abnormal existence - prison life. The
people at work were nice, supportive, and not
intrusive. They allowed me space to adjust to
the job, helped when they saw I was not doing
something properly or if I asked for clarification.
However, because of complications with
my back, this job only lasted about six weeks.
In mid-December 2005, while I was getting
dressed, my back gave out and I landed on my
face in my bedroom. After being rushed to Sunnybrook
Hospital, I underwent emergency back
surgery to repair the damage. What had occurred
was that one disc fell onto another, while
pinching nerves at the same time. Fortunately,
the surgeon only had to remove part of the disc
and I have neither a rod nor fused discs in my
back. With a lot of time and patience, my back is
almost completely healed. In fact, I have begun
exercising again on regular basis, which seems
to be helping me regain mobility.
I was released from the hospital two days before
Christmas and my mother and I went to a
dinner at Jenny Reid’s (my former lawyer) with
her family and friends. After the New Year came
and passed, my mother and I moved to where
we are living now. Our troubles did not stop
there, however. Over the next eight months,
my mother had to go to the hospital quite a few
times, including once for salmonella poisoning
for which the both of us were admitted to hospital.
But as bad as things seemed to get at times,
in retrospect they weren’t that bad.
From the time of my release until now, I have
been preparing to enter school again. I was
made aware of the Transitional Year Program at
the University of Toronto. This program is set
up for people who have been out of school for a
while and is intended to give the participants an
introduction to university life: to get your feet
wet in a safe educational environment. From
what I gather, it concentrates on reading, writing
and research skills needed in university. The
benefit is a certificate and guaranteed acceptance
into first-year university, as well as 2.5 credits
towards a B.A. degree. I do not think it will be
a cakewalk, but I do think that I will learn a lot.
This course runs from September 2006 until
May 2007. I applied for funding through OSAP
and it was granted.
Overall, I do consider myself fortunate and better
off. People have commented to me over this
year that I seem to be acclimating to my new life
very well. As true as that may be I did encounter
a few incidents of high emotion and stress. With
each incident, I turned to my support network
that AIDWYC has provided. People like Win
Wahrer and David Bayliss were instrumental in
pointing out that my problems cannot be handled
in the way that I have dealt with problems
in prison: silently and alone, ready to fight. Oth-
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 17

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
NavigatiNg my course
- continued from Previous Page
er people like Billy Wine (AIDWYC volunteer),
Jenny Reid, and Lon Rose (AIDWYC director)
have shown me that friendships can mean just
that, “friendship”. I cannot speak highly enough
of these people who have worked so hard in
making me feel welcome in their lives. It has
helped me realize that I have to let people into
my life.
As the calendar gets ready to turn on my first
year out, I find myself pondering on some of the
“firsts” that I experienced over the last year. I
flew for the first time. I went to a professional
hockey game, an Islander game at that. I went to
my first Blue Jay’s game in many, many years,
actually since 1978. But now, I get to experience
a birthday again; the way they are suppose to be
experienced: with freedom.
I look with anticipation as to what new adventures
and experiences are awaiting me in
the coming year. With all these “firsts”, I look
forward to getting back into an educational environment
for the first time in years. This is an
environment where my sole purpose will be to
sit down, keep my mouth shut, and learn something.
But the most important time I am looking
forward to will be spent with people like my
Aunt Linda and her family, especially her son
Keith, whom I have not seen in years, and who
was like a brother to me when we were kids,
and with other people, like Vern Harper and his
family, whose spiritual influence while in prison
helped me survive in there, and adjust to life on
the outside. Vern Harper has demonstrated that
he wishes to continue to assist me whenever possible,
for which I will always be appreciative.
But without the continued support and dedication
of my mother who never wavered in her
belief in my innocence, I don’t know if I would
have been able to survive the first five years in a
prison setting. She suffered enormously but remained
strong and taught me never to give up.
As far as my case goes, there is a long hill to
climb. I wait anxiously for the day when the Justice
Minister will render a decision in my case.
Only when I am exonerated will I be truly free.
UPDATE:
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
William Mullins-Johnson is enjoying his studies
at the University of Toronto.
Bill celebrated his 36th birthday by attending a
Blue Jays game. Jay’s Won!
PAge 18 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
caNadiaN uPdates
michel dumoNt Forced to go to the uNited NatioNs
By Win Wahrer
Michel Dumont’s long,
frustrating and fruitless
five-year-fight for
compensation with the
Quebec government,
which in March refused
to compensate him for
the 34 months he was incarcerated
for a crime he
Michel Dumont did not commit, has appealed
to the United Nations
Committee for Human Rights for help.
In May 2006, the United Nations Committee
for Human Rights responded by sending a
request to the Canadian
government to explain why
it had not compensated
Michel Dumont.
The Canadian government
must submit an answer
within six months (i.e. November
2006) of the receipt
of the request along with
all pertinent information
and observations in regards
to the nature of the issue
(compensation for victims
of wrongful conviction).
Canada is a signatory to an
international pact on compensation for victims
of judicial error.
Michel Dumont has stated, “I urge all other
victims faced with the current government
stonewalling to file similar complaint; in numbers
there is strength and hopefully faced with
a potential black eye on the international scene
the Feds and the provinces will finally enact real
legislation to compensate their victims.”
Dumont was acquitted of rape in 2001 and since
that time has been addressing the issue of compensation
not only on behalf of himself but also
on behalf of other wrongly convicted persons
who have not as yet been compensated

the house oF lords rule iN Favour oF saudi arabia
By Win Wahrer
William Sampson,
Sandy Mitchell,
Les Walker and
Ron Jones had
won a huge victory
in October 2004
when the British
Court of Appeal
ended immunity
for torturers abroad
from claims in the
English courts.
William Sampson leaving court That meant the
victims of Saudi
Arabian brutality could now sue named individuals
for compensation – but not the Saudi
government.
Not surprising, the Saudi Arabian government
appealed against the decision in April 2006, arguing
that its officials are protected from civil
litigation in Britain under the State Immunity
Act.
However, the British government represented
by Christopher Greenwood QC, the international
lawyer who advised the attorney general that
the Iraq war was lawful, argued in support of
caNadiaN uPdates
Saudi Arabian officials accused of detaining and
torturing British citizens in Saudi jails.
The latest development in the case occurred on
Wednesday June 14, 2006 when five judges of
the House of Lords, Britain’s upper house of
parliament, ruled in favour of the Saudi position.
That doesn’t sit well with Sampson who has
publicly criticized Britain’s State Immunity Act
and accused the government of hypocrisy in refusing
to amend it.
“They are more concerned with holding cocktail
parties for torturers than in ensuring justice is
done for their own citizens,” he told reporters.
The men had been backed by the human rights
organizations Amnesty International, Redress
and Justice.
But the battle is not over yet as a lawyer representing
Walker, Sampson and Mitchell said they
would take the case to the European Court of
Human Rights.
Tamsin Allen of Bindman & Partners, the law
firm representing three of the men, said to reporters,
“Their argument is that state immunity is so
important it has to be protected. We say there’s
LITIGATION WITH A CONSCIENCE
FALCONER CHARNEY LLP
BARRISTERS AT LAW
JULIAN N. FALCONER, B.A., LL.B.
THEODORE P. CHARNEY, B.A., LL.B.
ELISABETH WIDNER, M.A., LL.B.
JULIAN K. ROY, B.A., LL.B.
KAREN R. SPECTOR, B.A., LL.B.
H. JACK PARSEKHIAN, B.A., LL.B
RACHEL HEPBURN CRAIG, LL.B
SUNIL S. MATHAI, B.A., LL.B
falconercharney@fcbarristers.com
8 PRINCE ARTHUR AVENUE, TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA M5R 1A9
TELEPHONE: (416) 964-3408 - FACSIMILE: (416) 929-8179
no challenge to state immunity and it’s not being
undermined. The Americans have specific laws
to allow torture victims to sue wherever the torture
happened. We don’t, and the government is
trying to argue against the court of appeal judgment
that established those rights.”
Sampson also told reporters that he was not surprised
at the decision, but lashed out at the Belgian,
British and Canadian governments. “They
have behaved with complete and utter moral and
ethical hypocrisy from the start,” Sampson said.
“They have allowed their citizens to be tortured;
they have prevented their citizens from seeking
redress or any form of justice and they continue
to do so.”
William Sampson and his fellow victims are going
to take their cases to the Brussels-based European
Court of Human Rights. There they will
seek justice under the European Convention on
Human Rights, which can supersede national
law within the European Union.
Sampson called the final avenue of appeal a
“good hope.”
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 19

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
On Saturday July 24, 2004, I stood outside the
front gates of the Duane L. Waters prison hospital
in Jackson, Michigan, as Maurice Carter
was driven out in a motor home after spending
nearly 30 years behind bars.
Carter had been sentenced to life in prison for
shooting and wounding an off-duty police officer
in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 1973 but
had always maintained his innocence.
Among the crowd waiting for Carter in a local
shopping centre were Carter’s fervent supporters
from AIDWYC including Win Wahrer,
Billy Wine, Paul Copeland and Scott McMaster
members of the Illegal’s Motorcycle Club.
Also there, pacing back and forth nervously was
Doug Tjapkes, the white middle-class broadcast
journalist who spear headed the massive effort
to free Carter in the face of an unmovable government
which fought tooth and nail against his
release in the face of overwhelming evidence
of his innocence and another man’s apparent
guilt.
“Sweet Freedom” is Tjapkes’ account of the
legal and political battle to free Carter – and
his personal refusal to lose faith in justice in the
face of massive assaults to dignity, truth and
reason perpetrated by judges, prosecutors and
politicians
“This was a story straight out of the old South,”
he learned at the outset, except, as a colleague
noted, “We don’t have lynchings here. We have
genteel lynchings. We bury them alive in prison.”
“Sweet Freedom” can be read as a text book for
those who are embarking upon the challenging
but often frustrating and unrewarding task
of freeing the innocent – a task which involves
factual investigation, mobilizing the community,
reaching to the public through the local and
international press, erecting bill-boards, politicking,
lobbying, and creative use of all of the
legal avenues available.
Towards the end, however, it takes on a powerful
emotional quality of a novel as Tjapkes
details the frantic efforts to have Carter freed so
he can obtain a liver transplant before he dies in
prison without tasting freedom.
Shame on the Michigan authorities for ultimately
releasing Carter because he was ill – thanks
to the refusal of the penal authorities to treat his
book revieWs
“sWeet freedom” (rememBrances of maurice carter) By doug tJaPkes
revieWed By harold levy
PAge 20 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
condition as Tjapkes relates – and not because
the man was innocent.
“Sweet Freedom” is all the more fascinating
because of Tjapke’s portrayal of Carter – who
became his close friend – as a man whose “faith
in God and mankind grew daily as we worked
together…who became more Christ-like as time
moved on.”
“Some days, our roles were reversed,” he writes.
“He would calm
me down saying
we were
going to leave
things in God’s
hands.”
While its pages
are peppered
with passages
from the scriptures,
Tjapkes
also provides
some memorable
passages
from secular
sources.
My favourite is his use of Stephen Sondheim’s
“Send in the Clowns” to depict some of the officials
in Berrien County’s criminal justice system.
“Where are the clowns? Quick, send in the
clowns,” the passage goes. “Don’t bother,
they’re here.”
“Sweet Freedom ends with a profound gift to
those who must bear the ups and downs involved
in freeing the innocent – the words spoken
to Pam Cytrynbaum (who worked with the
Center on Wrongful Convictions and the Death
Penalty) by Sister Helen Prejean after an in-
nocent man named Vernon Williams was convicted
of a death penalty offence following a
“grotesque trial.”
“The night after he was convicted, I sobbed to
Sister Helen. What can I do? I failed him.
She asked me, Have I failed the men I have
watched die?
Of course not, I said.
Why? she asked me.
Because you never gave up.”
That’s one of the many lessons in this valuable
book for us all.
Published by FaithWalk Publishing, book can
be purchased at www.amazon.com.
aidWyc’s library
AIDWYC is in the
process of creating a library. Anyone having
books, magazines, video or audio tapes, news
articles , or other items that you would like to
donate to the AIDWYC library please contact
Win Wahrer at 416-504-7500 or win@aidwyc.org.
APPRECIATION to LIBRARY DONORS
Marlys Edwardh
Judge Gregory T. Evans
Judge Melvyn Green
Peter Meier
Jerry Schram

“the death of innocents” By sister helen PreJean
revieWed By Win Wahrer
The Death
of Innocents
is the second
book
written by
Sister Helen
P r e j e a n ,
who became
world
famous after
her first
book, Dead
Man Walking
(1993)
was made
into a feature
film starring
Sean Penn
and Susan Sarandon. The current book was published
at the end of 2004 with the paperback edition
being published in January 2006.
Sister Helen travels extensively throughout the
world speaking out against the death penalty.
She gives an average of 140 lectures a year,
seeking to ignite public discourse on the issue.
When Sister Helen is not on the road speaking
she is working with the Death Penalty Discourse
Network in New Orleans.
“The book contains the stories of two men I
believe to be innocent who were executed and
whom I accompanied to their deaths. The stories
are going to break your heart.”
“Then there’s the story of the Supreme Court
and the appeals courts which deny constitutional
rights and rubber stamp death sentences
without ever allowing a fresh hearing of the
evidence. I encountered Justice Antonin Scalia
in the New Orleans airport. My encounter with
him opens the chapter entitled ‘The Machinery
of Death.’
“The last chapter is called ‘The Death of Innocents’
and tells stories of jurors and prosecutors
and judges and wardens and politicians who get
tainted and corrupted by the death penalty. In
the end, with government killings snaring both
innocent and guilty alike, we all lose our innocence.”...Sister
Helen Prejean
Dobie Gillis Williams, an indigent black man
from rural Louisiana with an IQ of 65, was accused
of a brutal rape and murder. William’s inept
defense counsel, later disbarred for unethical
book revieWs
practice for unrelated cases, allowed the prosecution’s
contrived scenario of the crime to go
unchallenged. In January 1999, less than two
years after William’s execution, the Supreme
Court ruled it unconstitutional to kill a man so
mentally disabled.
In 1986, Joseph Roger O’Dell was convicted
of murder in Virginia despite highly circumstantial
evidence from a jailhouse snitch. For
12 years, O’Dell sought DNA testing on the
forensic evidence that he claimed would exonerate
him, but the courts refused. After his
execution on July 23, 1997, the state destroyed
the evidence.
Sister Helen Prejean & Dobie Gillis
Photo by 1991 Random
As a result,
its conviction
of Joseph
Roger
O ’ D e l l
could never
be scrutinized.
“The reader
of this book
will be the
first ‘jury’
with access
to all the evidence the trial juries never saw,”
says Prejean. By using the withheld evidence
to reconstruct the crimes for which these two
men were convicted, Prejean shows how race,
prosecutorial ambition, poverty, election cycles,
and publicity play far too great a role in
determining who dies and who lives.
Prejean traces the historical underpinnings of
executions in the United States, demonstrating
that it is no accident that over 80% of executions
in the past 25 years have been carried out
in the former slave states. She also raises profound
constitutional questions about an appeals
system that decides most death cases on procedural
grounds without ever examining their
merits.
To date, 113 wrongly convicted persons have
been freed from death row. If constitutional
protections – due process, assistance of counsel,
and equal justice under law – are truly
being respected, how is it possible that these
people were convicted in the first place? And
how can we accept a system so rife with error?
Sister Helen Prejean takes us with her on her
spiritual journey as she accompanies two possi-
bly innocent human beings to their deaths at the
hands of the state. Prejean implores us to reflect
on what is perhaps the core moral issue of the
death penalty debate: honorable people disagree
about the justice of executing the guilty, but can
anyone argue about the injustice of executing
the innocent?
Sister Helen’s book was published by Random
House. It can be purchased at Amazon.com
“cry raPe”: the true story of
one Woman’s harroWing
quest for Justice Written
By Bill lueders
This book dramatically
exposes
the criminal justice
system’s capacity
for error
as it recounts one
woman’s courageous
battle in
the face of adversity.
In September
1997, a visually
impaired woman
named Patty
was raped by an
intruder in her
home in Madison, Wisconsin. The rookie detective
assigned to her case came to doubt Patty’s
account and focused the investigation on her.
Using lies and pressure, he got her to recant,
then had her charged with falsely reporting a
crime. The charges were eventually dropped, but
Patty continued to demand justice, filing complaints
and a federal lawsuit against the police.
All were rebuffed. But later, as the result of her
perseverance, a startling discovery was made.
Even then, Patty’s ordeal was far from over.
“Although I am not proud of being one of the
characters in the book who, with the best of
intentions, initially contributed to the horrible
re-victimization of an innocent victim and the
injustices that took place in this case, I think it is
must reading for every single person concerned
about justice in the form of preventing the ar
rests, charges, and convictions of innocent persons.
In fact, I think it is must reading for all of
us working in the criminal justice system.
continued on Page 22
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 21

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
book revieWs
“losing their griP - the case of henry keogh”
By dr. roBert n. moles
revieWed By rosalind giBson “cry raPe” - continued from Page 21
Gripping from the
first paragraph, the
remainder of the book
becomes compelling
reading. The author
systematically presents
the facts of the
case, setting the scenario
for an alleged
murder. The book is
essentially a critique
of the investigation,
trial, conviction and
appeal of Henry Keogh
for the murder of his fiancée. It begins with
all the elements of an Agatha Christie plot which
is made all the more chilling by the knowledge
that the book refers to real people and real tragedy.
Despite the initial coverage of somewhat repetitive
police statements, the author provides a meticulous
analysis of the evidence presented for both
the prosecution and the defence in this case.
The characters are captivating. The accused was
a divorced man who had been sufficiently charismatic
to be able to win the love of a young
and attractive lawyer. Adding considerably to
the intrigue and appearing initially to complicate
the plot, were the accused’s ex-wife, his
former lover and another lover who was still in
a relationship with the accused at the time of his
fiancée’s death.
As the different characters involved in the investigation
emerge, the reader feels a growing
concern regarding the lack of qualifications
and experience of the person who conducted
the autopsy and acted as forensic pathologist
in the case. Added to this is a creeping concern
regarding the DPP (Department of Public Prosecutions)
prosecutor, so by the end of chapter
two the reader is left with a deep sense of foreboding
that a grave injustice is about to unfold.
This feeling is mingled however with an equally
grave reservation regarding the deceptive behaviour
of the accused in relation to his unfaithfulness
in relationships. One can imagine that this
evidence would have a negative impact on some
jurors but of course it must be acknowledged
that unfaithfulness does not necessarily indicate
a propensity to murder. Nevertheless, a negative
imprint is made at some cerebral level and is not
easily overturned, especially when evidence of
life insurance policies to which the accused is a
beneficiary become an issue in the case.
PAge 22 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Despite the fact that the initial police statements
indicated that there was no suspicion of murder,
the case against Henry Keogh slowly and
insidiously grew as each piece of circumstantial
evidence was accumulated. If readers allow
themselves to think like a juror (and not like a
lawyer) as the prosecution case is presented, this
results in an ominous weight of negativity being
built up against the accused. Once this negative
impression is formed it is difficult to shift, but
as the reader progresses it becomes obvious that
the author is clearly of the view that a terrible injustice
has occurred in this case and that Henry
Keogh was wrongfully convicted of murdering
the woman he was planning to marry. The jurors
of course did not have the benefit of the analysis
presented by the author, Dr. Robert N. Moles.
What follows in the book is a solid presentation
of evidence and expert opinions that leave the
reader in no doubt that the autopsy was conducted
in an inadequate manner. It also raises serious
questions about the objectivity of the DPP
involved in the case.
I suspect that some level of suspicion regarding
Henry Keogh may still lurk in the minds of
many readers despite their recognition of these
obvious deficiencies in the system. However,
the final chapter of the book which sets out
“Principles and Cases” does tend to consolidate
the thought that justice in this case has not
prevailed. Dr. Moles simply sets out a clear set
of legal principles and when the reader applies
these principles to what they have just read, it
should leave them in no doubt that a serious injustice
has occurred which should be rectified as
soon as possible.
I recommend this book to anyone who has an
interest in criminal law, criminal proceedings,
and justice, in the hope that they will add to the
groundswell of voices of people actively campaigning
for justice for Henry Keogh.
Dr. Robert Moles until recently was Associate
Professor of Law at Adelaide University. He now
works full time on the Networked Knowledge
project. This is a project that investigates alleged
serious miscarriages of justice that have occurred
in South Australia over the last 30 years.
Losing Their Grip – The Case of Henry Keogh
is published by Elvis Press, Adelaide, Australia
and can be purchased on eBay.
Rosalind Gibson is a lecturer on Criminal
Law Evidence and Procedure, Charles Sturt
University, Bathurst, Australia.
It is an example of how very competent, ethical,
well-intentioned, and community-oriented
police officers and detectives, in one of the most
progressive police departments I am aware of,
are capable of human error.
It shows how tunnel vision works and is also an
example of how the kinds of perfectly legal deceptive
interrogation practices, including ruses,
that most police departments train their officers
and detectives in (whether through formal specialized
training or informal peer training) can
compel innocent people to confess to things
they did not do under pressure from interrogators.
I think Leuders did an excellent job of
letting the facts speak for themselves and I am
recommending this book to everybody.
Being intimately involved in the case, I combed
the book for factual misrepresentations, and was
able to find only one minor error which is really
totally irrelevant to the case. I believe it is particularly
important for commission members,
and all those interested in making justice accessible
to all, to read this book. It is also very
tightly written, which makes for fast reading.
Barry Scheck, from the New York Innocence
Project, had this to say about the book: “Cry
Rape provides a chilling account of how tunnel
vision can lead even well-meaning police officers
into forming conclusions that are flat-out
wrong, how powerful interrogation techniques
can lead innocent people to confess to crimes
they did not commit, and how DNA can correct
mistakes for the lucky few.”
For more information on the book, including
newspaper coverage of the case, and an article I
wrote while a Detective Lieutenant for the Madison
Police Department, defending the actions
of the detectives and department at the time the
controversy existed, go to www.cryrapebook.com.
This case is a personal reminder to me everyday
of the importance of humility when you have
the authority of the state behind you.”
Cry Rape is published by Terrace Books. It can
be purchased at www.amazon.com
Cheri Maples is the Assistant Attorney General,
State of Wisconsin, Department of Justice.

Dudley George, shown in this 1993 photo, was shot and killed
when police fired on First Nations people occupying Ipperwash
Provincial Park. The photo shows George at what is
claimed to be a sacred Indian burial ground. (CP Photo) 1996
(Port Huron Times Herald/Tony Pitts)
When, along with my colleague Peter Edwards,
I began reporting on the events at Ipperwash
that led to the death of Dudley George, I had no
idea how deep the racist elements would run. I
eventually realized that racial intolerance was at
the heart of the tragic incident because I could
not find any other way to explain the failure of
the Harris government to consider the powerful
spiritual attachment of native people to their ancestral
burial grounds. I also am now aware that
some OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) uniform
and civilian officers bore an express hatred of
First Nations people that must have played some
role in how events played out on the ground.
Here is what we have learned about that hatred
– and the puny response of the OPP to it – over
the past decade. It is not a pretty lesson.
In January 1994, television viewers were
shocked to see a police video that showed two
Ontario Provincial Police officers caught on tape
making obscene racist comments the day before
protester Dudley George was shot and killed in
a confrontation at Ipperwash Provincial Park.
On the tape, obtained by the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation under federal access to
information legislation, one officer, posing as
media, asks the other, “Is there still a lot of press
down there?”
The other replies: “No, there’s no one down
there. Just a big, fat, f--- Indian.”
In another part of the tape, one officer says:
“We had this plan, You know? We thought if we
could get five or six cases of Labatt 50, we could
bait them and we’d have this big net and a pit.”
“Creative thinking,” says the other. “Works in
the south with watermelon.”
Although the OPP and the Ontario Provincial
Police Association promptly apologized for
the comments, Sam George, Dudley George’s
caNadiaN tragedies
hoW race taiNted iPPerWash: the dudley george case
By harold levy
brother, publicly wondered whether any other
indications of racist attitudes would be revealed
after the Ipperwash Inquiry.
Sam George had already been jolted in April
1996 when the Toronto Star revealed that OPP
officers involved at Ipperwash had manufactured
and distributed “Team Ipperwash 95” coffee
mugs and T-shirts with the OPP crest on top
of a feather, which appeared to represent a dead
Indian.
“I was disgusted when I saw it,” Sam George
said at the time. “It made me angry.”
The OPP vowed at the time to conduct a thorough
probe into the possible existence of racial
memorabilia in the hands of its officers.
Sam George’s worst fears about possible connections
between racist attitudes and his brother’s
death were borne out during the course of
the inquiry when police audiotapes were filed
that contained “impugned remarks” made by officers
and OPP civilian employees.
A four-page summary filed with the inquiry this
summer includes the following “impugned remarks”:
· One officer asks the other “Any shooting?”
and the other replies, “not yet.” The first officer
asks, “Any killing” and the other replies, “not
yet.” The first officer then says he would like to
come to Ipperwash and bring his gun. He would
have the Park back in 15 minutes.
· “They’re native, they’ve all got long guns,” an
officer says. “AK 47’s… not confirmed… never
been confronted by a native with a long gun or
they would probably be a dead native by now.”
· One officer to another while discussing a press
release: “Ipperwash is a little more important
because the Indians are taking over the world
and we are letting them have it”.
· An officer referring to First Nations protesters
as a “bunch of arseholes… yup, actually that is a
very nice way to describe them… Being generous,
eh?… too generous.”
· The same officer refers to an earlier conversation
he had with another officer and states, “we
need to amass a f---ing army. Do these f---ers
up right.”
· An officer says, “what’s wrong with hating Indians”
and then refers to being on a taped line.
The document indicates that officers who had
not quit the force received “non-disciplinary”
sanctions, such as letters of reprimand on their files.
The race factor persisted into the waning days
of the inquiry.
It erupted again on May 11th when Commission
Counsel Derry Millar revealed the existence of
yet another T-shirt designed by officers which
he said could prove offensive.
Millar told the inquiry that OPP Commissioner
Gwen Boniface was “shocked and appalled” by
the existence of the T-shirts which had not been
captured in the force’s 1996 investigation.
The T-shirts depicted a broken arrow and the acronyms
for the forces Tactics and Rescue Unit
(TRU) and Emergency Response Team (ERT).
The officer who distributed the T-shirts defended
them as signifying a new level of cooperation
between two groups of OPP officers who were
previously at odds.
But Boniface didn’t buy this. Although investigators
in the force’s Professional Standards
Bureau concluded that the officers involved
with these T-shirts did not intend to demean aboriginal
people, Boniface said the fallen feather
indicated “death” and “defeat” to her, and that
making a “momento out of someone’s death is
“highly offensive.”
Apart from downright
racist words and images,
Commissioner Sidney
Linden also heard
evidence that OPP
officers had not been
trained to understand
the religious beliefs,
customs and traditions
of the native people
they were dealing with
at Ipperwash.
Harold Levy, reporter with
The Toronto Star
Retired Inspector Wade
Lacroix, head of the riot
squad that advanced on
the three dozen protesters bearing head-to-toe
body armour, face masks and shields, told Linden
that he had not expected that the protesters
would hold their ground in face of the massive
show of force.
Lacroix said he now realizes that the standard
techniques did not work because, “Those people
whom I met that night, they firmly believed that
they were on sacred ground.”
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 23

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
By elisaBeth Widner
On August 5,
1954, following
a mere 30
minutes of deliberation,
a jury
of 12 men in
Percé, Québec,
convicted Wilbert
Coffin of
murder, whereupon
Judge
Gerard Lacroix
Wilbert Coffin: Photo taken 1953 of the Court of
Queen’s Bench,
pronounced the sentence of death by hanging.
The death sentence ultimately was carried out
on February 10, 1956 at the Bordeaux Jail in
Montréal, following unsuccessful appeals, a
special reference to the Supreme Court of Canada
and pleas for clemency. Some years after
the execution, Mr. Justice Brossard conducted
a Commission of Inquiry that validated both
the conviction and the conduct of the police
and prosecution. At every step of the judicial
and political process, Wilbert Coffin’s guilt had
been affirmed.
So why is this case still so controversial? It has
been written about, most notably by Senator
Jacques Hébert, who earned himself a contempt
conviction for his passionate writing on this
case, and has been the subject of television and
film treatments. Now, AIDWYC has accepted
the challenge of attempting to establish Wilbert
Coffin’s innocence.
On May 2nd of this year, 50 years after the hanging
of Wilbert Coffin, Win Wahrer and I flew
into Gaspé for a two-day visit. We met members
of Mr. Coffin’s family, most notably his sister,
Marie Stewart, members of a local community
group and members of the municipal government.
It became clear that the passage of 50
years has not wiped this case from the collective
memory of the Gaspé area.
THE BASIC FACTS
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
In early June 1953, Eugene Lindsay, his son
Richard Lindsay and Richard’s friend, Frederick
Claar, having driven up from Pennsylvania,
went bear hunting in the Gaspé bush. They never
returned home. On July 15, 1953, a search party
found Eugene Lindsay’s body. The remains of
Richard and Frederick were discovered some
distance away on July 23, 1953. Wilbert Coffin,
a local prospector, was charged and convicted of
the murder of Richard Lindsay, his remains being
the only ones bearing apparently definitive
caNadiaN tragedies
FiFty years oF PaiN: the WilBert coffin case
PAge 24 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
marks of bullet wounds. The remains of all three
had decomposed and had been mauled by bears.
Post-mortems on Eugene Lindsey and Frederick
Claar were inconclusive.
Evidence at trial established that Wilbert Coffin
met the hunters while he was prospecting in
the bush on June 10, 1953 and drove Richard
Lindsay to Gaspé to buy a new fuel pump for
the Lindsay truck. After returning Richard Lindsay
to his hunting party, Coffin left the group
that now included two other American hunters
who had arrived in their Jeep while Coffin and
Richard Lindsay were in Gaspé. Coffin left and
continued his prospecting in a different area, before
coming out of the bush on June 12, 1953.
On his way out, he waited a couple of hours by
the Americans’ truck to see if they needed any
further assistance. He saw no one and continued
on his way to Gaspé. Later that night, Coffin left
for Montreal to visit Marion Petrie, his common-law
wife, and their son.
The Crown relied almost entirely on the fact
that, after he came out of the bush on June 12th,
Coffin had in his possession property belonging
to the American hunters, including the new fuel
pump, a small valise containing binoculars, towels
and clothing and a knife belonging to Richard
Lindsay. The Crown also called evidence
to suggest that on his drive to Montreal, which
seemed to involve a fair amount of drinking,
Coffin was generous with money, both American
and Canadian, although the total amount
spent was less than $100, far short of the $650
said to be in the possession of Mr. Lindsay when
he arrived in Gaspé. No money was found with
the bodies of the hunters.
Coffin did not testify, a fact that continues to
haunt this case. His version of events was presented
to the jury through statements made to
the police and other witnesses. Coffin stated that
Richard Lindsay made him a gift of the knife
and Eugene Lindsay gave him US$40 for his
trouble in taking a day to drive Richard to Gaspé
and back to buy the fuel pump. In his affidavit
filed before the Supreme Court of Canada, Coffin
admitted to stealing the fuel pump and the
valise and its contents from the Lindsay truck on
June 12th, while he was under the influence of
alcohol and waiting for the Americans to return.
Coffin asserted in his affidavit that his counsel,
Mr. Maher, made the decision that he, Coffin,
should not testify. According to people who
spoke to Coffin after his conviction, he lived in
the hope that he would one day get a new trial
and be able to testify.
Coffin’s statement that he left the Lindsay party
with two other American hunters was attacked
by the Crown, who called evidence from two
Americans who had been bear hunting in the
Gaspé woods but had left before the Lindsay
party arrived. After the trial, however, evidence
was uncovered from a number of parties that a
Jeep such as the one described by Coffin had in
fact been seen in the area in the days around the
time of the murders. One witness even recalled
that the two Americans asked after the Lindsays.
Over the years, the two unknown Americans
have been the focus of much suspicion and there
is much speculation that Coffin was indeed telling
the truth about the unknown pair who had
joined the Lindsay party and been left alone
with them after Coffin’s departure.
THE PROCEEDINgS
Although the Crown’s case was circumstantial,
the defence case was virtually non-existent.
Not only did Coffin not testify, but having announced
his intention of calling a multitude of
witnesses, perhaps as many as one hundred, Mr.
Maher got up at the close of the Crown’s case
and stated, “the defence rests”.
Judging this case from today’s perspective, the
trial proceedings appear grossly unfair. At the
time, however, only two justices of the Supreme
Court of Canada agreed that the proceedings
were fatally flawed and required a new trial.
Coffin’s defence team, now led by Arthur Maloney,
had been refused leave to appeal by the
Supreme Court of Canada. Public outcry was
such, however, that the Governor-in-Council
made a special reference to the Supreme Court
of Canada asking for its opinion in the case as if
leave had been granted, (Reference re R. v. Coffin
[1956] S.C.R. 191).
The majority (five of seven justices), in two
written judgments, held that if leave had been
granted the appeal would nonetheless have been
dismissed. In particular, the majority held that
the evidence was so overwhelming against Coffin
that, even if some “irregularities” occurred in
the trial, there was no miscarriage of justice. In
particular, Coffin’s failure to offer any explanation,
or any reasonable explanation, for items in
his possession was seen as fatal.
Cartwright and Locke JJ. in dissent, held that
a new trial was justified based on a number of
errors. The first of these errors was the improper
hearsay evidence pertaining to a police search
for a rifle believed to be in Coffin’s camp in the
woods. Evidence at trial established that Coffin

FiFty years oF PaiN - continued from Previous Page
had borrowed a rifle more than a month prior to
the murders. The Crown called evidence from
which the jury could infer that in August 1953,
at a time when Coffin was already in custody,
he told his brother Donald that the rifle was hidden
at his camp and that Donald went in, got the
rifle and disposed of it. Donald Coffin was not
called, nor any other witness who allegedly provided
the specific information as to the location
of the rifle. What the justices did not know was
that Coffin’s lawyer, Raymond Maher, had in
fact gone in and retrieved the rifle, later throwing
it off a bridge, a complicated tale of lawyer
misconduct that merits a separate article.
The second error addressed by the dissenting
justices was the improper cross-examination by
the Crown of Coffin’s common-law wife, Marion
Petrie, even though she was not declared
caNadiaN tragedies
a hostile witness. Repeatedly, Crown counsel
cross-examined Ms. Petrie on her evidence
from the preliminary inquiry, although she was
not truly giving different evidence. However,
by cross-examining Ms. Petrie, Crown counsel
sought to undermine Ms. Petrie’s evidence that
Coffin did indeed tell her that the last time he
saw the Lindsay party, they were with two unidentified
American hunters.
The third error was the fact that police officers,
who were also Crown witnesses, took the jurors
to the cinema one evening. The fourth error was
the trial judge’s refusal to grant an English-language
trial, instead opting for 6 English-speaking
and 6 French-speaking jurors and a bilingual
format. The final error related to misdirection on
the use of circumstantial evidence.
marie coFFiN steWart: a Woman on a mission
By Win Wahrer
Madonna Tapp & Marie
Coffin Stewart (Gaspe Spec)
“Cause justice does leave
holes that the innocent
sometimes fill” (is a line
from a song written and
recorded by Dale Boyle
in his album “In My
Rearview Mirror: A Story
From a Small Gaspé
Town”).
Marie Coffin-Stewart is
a woman on a mission,
a woman who for far too
long has felt isolated and
hopeless. She has become an inspiration to everyone
who has had the honour of making her acquaintance.
In 1956, her beloved brother Wilbert (Bill) was
hanged for the murder of one of three American
hunters whose bodies were found ravished by
bears nearly a month after their disappearance
in June 1953. Marie Coffin-Stewart never believed
that her brother committed the murders
and now, 50 years later, she is fighting to have
her brother’s name cleared.
She never misses an opportunity to collect petitions
and share her brother’s tragic story.
Marie and her family spend countless hours
collecting signatures on a petition requesting
the government to re-open Bill’s case. Raynald
Blais, the federal MP for the riding of Gaspésie-
Îles-de-la-Madeleine, has already presented a
petition with 1,200 signatures to the House of
Commons. Over 2,000 new signatures have been
gathered since then and the ongoing petition has
been made available on-line at www.wilbertcoffin.com.
Marie and her family are gathering a
groundswell of support including that of the Bloc
Québécois justice critic, Réal Ménard.
In May, Marie announced to AIDWYC
Co-President Elisabeth Widner and AIDWYC
Director of Client Services Win Wahrer that she
is determined to help AIDWYC defray the costs
connected with the investigation and review of
her brother’s case.
She is a woman of her word who is not prone
to let too many blades of grass grow under her
feet before springing into action and fulfilling a
promise. On July 14th, Marie held a bake sale in
the Gaspé Carrefour shopping mall. Her many
hours of toil and the help of people who donated
baked goods, and those who spent hours with
her selling them, raised a handsome sum of
$787.63 which was deposited in a bank account
for AIDWYC; but Marie isn’t done yet, she has
planned a whole host of fundraising ventures on
AIDWYC’s behalf.
There is not a local event that Marie and her family
have not targeted to raise awareness and money.
At the Malbay Festival, Marie sold tickets for
a hand-knit blanket for a total of $630.00. The
Malbay Festival donated an additional $204.00.
The blanket was at the Gaspé Spec office in
New Carlisle, along with copies of the petition
for two weeks. Within those two weeks 110
tickets were sold and a additional 160 names
were collected on the petition.
On August 4th, a benefit concert was held at the
AIDWYC’S MANDATE
AIDWYC’s work on this case is just beginning
and a team of lawyers has agreed to participate
in this review. The analysis of the case begins
with the transcripts and documents, but beyond
that is the search for positive evidence of innocence,
a search that is being actively assisted
by various individuals and community groups
dedicated to uncovering the truth and establishing
the innocence of Wilbert Coffin. This case
presents unique challenges arising both from
the death of Wilbert Coffin and the lapse of 50
years, but the ongoing interest is such that we
have hope of achieving a resolution and restoring
some peace to the Coffin family.
Barachois Legion, Branch 261. Musicians volunteered
their time and talent. Madonna Tapp,
treasurer of the Legion, presented Marie with a
cheque in the amount of $775.00. Ms. Tapp said,
“I had seen the warm reception of the people towards
the Wilbert Coffin affair at the Malbay
Festival and decided that the Barachois Legion
should also contribute to the cause. An amateur
show was organized in two days.”
The local people have been overwhelmingly
supportive, which has been a source of encouragement
and blessing to Marie and her family.
As if all that wasn’t enough Marie, at the age of
75, picked blueberries and sold them by the gallon.
She filled 39 orders.
Marie Coffin-Stewart’s dedication to seeing justice
prevail in memory of her dear brother is inspiring.
Marie’s goal is to raise $10,000.00 and anyone
wishing to help her realize that goal can do so
by making donations to Marie Coffin-Stewart
in Trust at the TD bank in Gaspé or to the
AIDWYC office.
UPDATE:
In Ottawa on October 18, Marie Coffin
Stewart, Jim Coffin (Wilbert Coffin’s son)
and other family members accompanied by
AIDWYC’s Elizabeth Widner, met with Kerry
Scullion of the Criminal Convictions Review
Group (CCRG) and Bloc Quebecois supporter
Raynald Blais. The family was afforded the
opportunity to ask questions regarding the
CCRG process.
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 25

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
PAge 26 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD

dyiNg declaratioN?: the Jeff BoPPre case
By lon rose
Jeff Boppre is serving
two life sentences
for the 1988
shooting deaths of
Richard Valdez and
Sharon Condon.
The murders occurred
in 1988 at
a remotely located
house just outside
of Scotts Bluff,
Nebraska. Late in
the evening of September
18th or early in the morning of September
19th, Jeff Boppre had spent the evening of
September 18th in the company of friends Alan
Niemann and Ken Wasmer using cocaine at the
trailer home shared by Niemann and Wasmer.
Boppre had made several trips over the course
of the evening to Valdez’s house to get drugs.
Later in the evening the three men discussed going
to Arizona that night. They had in the past
discussed driving to Arizona to sell drugs, and
the three drove to Arizona in the early hours of
September 19th. While in Arizona, Boppre telephoned
home and learned of the murders and
that he was wanted in connection with them.
The three men promptly returned to Scotts Bluff
where Boppre was arrested.
The bodies of Richard Valdez and Sharon Condon
had been discovered the morning of September
19th. At the scene the letters “JFF BOPE”
were found written in white grease on the floor
next to Valdez’s body. White grease was found
on two fingers of Valdez’s right hand and a tube
of grease was found near his body. “JEFF” was
written in what appears to be blood on the doorframe
near Valdez’s head. These writings were
introduced in evidence as “dying declarations”
against Boppre. A pair of pants with blood and
grease on them was found at the trailer home belonging
to Niemann and Wasmer.
At trial Niemann, Wasmer and Boppre testified.
Niemann testified that Boppre had gone
to Valdez’s house approximately six times over
the course of the evening. He stated that before
the last visit to Valdez, Boppre announced that
he was going to go to Valdez’s house, kill him
and take his money. According to Niemann he
tried to dissuade Boppre and decided to go with
Boppre to try to talk him out of killing Valdez.
Niemann testified that when Boppre and he got
to Valdez’s house, Boppre went to the door and
when Valdez answered the door Boppre shot
him. Boppre then brought items to the car from
the house, went back in and shot Valdez’s girlfriend,
and returned to the car with more items
from the house. Niemann further testified that
iNterNatioNal cases
they went back to the trailer, picked up Wasmer
and drove to Arizona. Niemann testified that on
the way to Arizona he and Wasmer took the gun
from Boppre, dismantled it and tossed it into a
riverbed in New Mexico.
Wasmer’s testimony was substantially consistent
with Niemann’s. Wasmer testified that he
was not at the scene and that Boppre had announced
his intention to kill Valdez before he
and Niemann went to Valdez’s house. Niemann
and Wasmer testified that when Boppre came
back to the trailer he was wearing jeans that
had some blood on them. The jeans were seized
from the trailer.
At trial, Jeff Boppre testified that he had been
using drugs that night with Niemann and Wasmer
and had gone to Valdez’s house a number of
times the evening of September 18, 1988 to purchase
drugs. Boppre testified that at one point
later in the evening Niemann and Wasmer had
suggested that the three of them go to Arizona
that night, with a view to selling drugs, as they
had discussed in the past. Boppre testified that
he had advised them that he would go but would
first have to go to his parent’s house, where he
had been living, to pick up some money. He testified
that he arrived home at around midnight,
spoke briefly with his father, got some money
and returned to the trailer. When he arrived at
the trailer he noticed Niemann’s car had been
moved. Niemann and Wasmer immediately
emerged from the trailer, ready to leave and
visibly nervous. They drove to Arizona shortly
thereafter. Boppre testified that he knew nothing
about the murders until advised during a telephone
call home while he was in Arizona.
Jeff Boppre was convicted of both murders in
1989. Niemann was charged with robbery and
given a five to seven year sentence after he
agreed to testify against Jeff Boppre. Wasmer
was never charged.
Lawrence Whelan has been representing Jeff
Boppre for a number of years but was not trial
counsel. His father, Dennis Whelan, who recently
passed away, was a private investigator and
worked tirelessly for 17 years to have Jeff Boppre
exonerated. Shortly after Boppre was convicted,
Niemann contacted Dennis Whelan, recanted his
testimony and advised Dennis Whelan that Boppre
was not at the scene of the murders. He provided
a sworn statement recanting his testimony
and advised that he was pressured by the State
to incriminate Boppre. In a subsequent interview
with a State Patrol investigator, Niemann
acknowledged his recantation but then recanted
his recantation advising that he just recanted so
that the Whelans would “quit bothering him”.
Furthermore, it has come to light that there was
likely an eyewitness who was in the house at the
time of the murders and was hiding under a bed.
It appears that the State likely knew about this
witness prior to Boppre’s trial. The witness does
not want to come forward to assist Boppre.
There have been numerous motions, appeals and
petitions made on behalf of Jeff Boppre over the
past several years. Figuring prominently in the
proceedings have been Niemann’s recantations,
the existence of an eyewitness, allegations that
the State knowingly elicited perjured statements
from Niemann and Wasmer, the lack of sufficient
scientific testing and competency of trial
counsel.
Lawrence and Dennis Whelan approached
AIDWYC in 2004 for assistance. Members of
AIDWYC reviewed the materials regarding Jeff
Boppre’s case, spoke with him and met with the
Whelans. Particularly encouraging was the possibility
that proper scientific testing of the physical
evidence in the case, if it still existed, could
provide evidence undermining the State’s case
against Boppre and could perhaps be used to
prove the guilt of another person or persons. In
particular it was believed that the pants found in
the trailer, the grease on the floor and the blood
on the doorframe could all potentially provide
evidence of Jeff Boppre’s innocence and someone
else’s guilt. At that point it was not known
what items, if any, remained in the possession of
the State. We contacted the Director of the Innocence
Project in New York City who advised
that the Innocence Project would be willing to
look into the case with regard to any DNA issues
that may assist Mr. Boppre.
Colin Starger, a lawyer with the Innocence Project
in New York, began to work with the Whelans
in determining whether any of the physical
evidence in the case had been preserved. After
several months of investigation it was determined
that in fact several items had been preserved
by the State, including the pants from the
trailer and a part of the floor that had the “dying
declaration” written on it in grease. As a result of
the efforts of the Whelans and the New York Innocence
Project, Jeff Boppre’s case was brought
before the District Court of Scotts Bluff County,
Nebraska. The Court ordered that a number of
items be sent to a lab for forensic testing. It is
anticipated that the results will be available in
September 2006 and the matter brought back
before the Court shortly thereafter. Jeff Boppre
is optimistic that he will be exonerated in the
near future.
UPDATE:
Jeff Boppre’s lawyers are reviewing a
250-page report received from the laboratory
which conducted the DNA testing.
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 27

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
cy greeNe uPdate
By myron Beldock
Myron Beldock & Cy Greene
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
After 22 years in prison, Cy Greene was released
in February 2006 when Judge Michael
Pesce, the original trial judge, made his smashing
decision granting a new trial based on ineffectiveness
of counsel.
Judge Pesce wrote a long and well-annotated
decision. He found that in 1985 trial counsel
had been ineffective in that it had failed to conduct
any investigation of available witnesses,
although there was one available eyewitness
who had been on the subway platform watching
the crime as it occurred, and although there
were several who gave descriptions of young
African Americans fleeing from the subway
station where the mugging/robbery and fatal
stabbing of the victim, John Choi, took place.
SLIgHT OF HAND
The various height descriptions given by the
witnesses interviewed by the police on and
around the day of the crime, June 14, 1983,
seriously undermined any identification of Cy
Greene. Most significantly, the height description
given by Mr. Kim, Mr. Choi’s companion,
didn’t even approximate a description of the accused.
Mr. Kim first described the killer as six
feet tall and then in a second interview later the
same day, gave the height as 5’9”. Mr. Choi was
5’6” tall, Mr. Kim 5’4” tall and Cy Greene 5’2”
tall. The discrepancy between the accused’s
height and that of the actual killer as given by
Mr. Kim was most compelling in accepting this
crusade, as was the fact that Cy Greene has always
steadfastly maintained his innocence and
had given consistent statements as to where he
was and why he was not involved, and this from
the time he first spoke to the police through his
trial testimony and through years of post-conviction
proceedings.
There was the slight-of-hand pulled off by the
District Attorney at trial when he had Mr. Kim
PAge 28 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
iNterNatioNal cases
testify that when he gave identification information
in feet and inches he did not understand and
that, having been raised in Korea, he only measured
in meters and centimeters. Unfortunately,
defense counsel never really challenged that dubious
testimony even though he had available
that witness’ use of “two feet” to give a distance
description on a transcription of a taped interview
that night at the precinct. Also most significant
in the Judge’s decision, trial counsel could
have had available but did not make the effort to
obtain the original tape recording on which Mr.
Kim described the killer as a “tall guy”. It was
our discovery that those two words were on the
original tape but left out of the transcript that
was provided by the District Attorney to the trial
lawyer that gave us our initial basis to make the
motion to re-open the case.
It was originally for that reason, the non-disclosure
and suppression of the words “tall guy”,
that we claimed prosecutorial misconduct. We
raised a number of other related issues as we
went along in the proceedings, but in time we
also claimed ineffectiveness of counsel. At one
point, at a bench conference, the judge indicated
that he was not prepared to make a finding based
upon prosecutorial misconduct, but was beginning
“to drink of the waters from the well of ineffectiveness
of counsel”. Although we disagreed
with his rejection of our claim of prosecutorial
misconduct, we are nonetheless most gratified
to have obtained a resounding ineffectiveness of
counsel decision freeing Cy Greene.
Key to that decision was my locating, along
with our investigator Evrard Williams, the eyewitness,
Abdul Rahman, who had been on the
subway platform when the event took place. He
had given descriptive information which put the
group of young men who attacked the victim at
approximately 5’8” in height. He was a vendor
and he was in a prime position to have watched
the whole event. He also picked up the knife that
was left on the subway stairway after the stabbing,
protecting it in a cellophane wrapper, and
gave it to the first officer who came down to the
station platform.
WITNESS CRUCIAL TO CASE
When I first started working on the case, I
thought finding that witness was essential. Mr.
Williams and I kept receiving tantalizing leads
which had us doing fieldwork in various parts
of Brooklyn and Manhattan, but we never could
find Mr. Rahman. Fortunately, after almost twoand-a-half
years, we located him at a nursing
home in Brooklyn. He had end stage renal disease
and was being kept alive by regular dialysis
treatments. Mr. Williams and I walked into the
nursing home one day and there he was about
to play chess with someone, but he gave up the
game and readily told us the whole story of what
he had actually seen. It was his testimony that
ultimately persuaded the judge that had he been
interviewed by the trial lawyer and called as a
witness there would have been the likelihood of
an acquittal. Incidentally, Abdul Rahman’s testimony
was given during a very dramatic scene in
a small hospital room, while he was in a wheelchair
and in a great deal of pain, with the Judge,
the reporter, two district attorneys, several attendants
and me gathered around. Later he returned
to the nursing home, but as I write, he is again
hospitalized. We are indeed very grateful to Abdul
Rahman for having come forward and told
the truth.
NOT OUT OF THE WOODS
We are hardly out of the woods since the District
Attorney filed a notice of appeal and will
be submitting an appellate brief in early August.
We will be filing opposition papers by early October
and will also claim that we should have
been granted relief based upon prosecutorial
misconduct. The appellate process will not be
determined until mid-winter 2007, at best.
MOTION FOR DISCOvERY
In the meantime, we have just filed a notice of
motion for discovery concerning the DNA on
the knife and the knife itself. We had the amazing
result of the police laboratory having found
DNA on the 23-year-old knife - an effort we
made very much with Cy Greene pushing the
idea. Then when his DNA was compared, it was
found to exclude him. The motion was required
because we could not get the District Attorney
to cooperate and allow DNA testing of a number
of police and medical examiner personnel who
might have touched the knife in order to offset
or confirm the DA’s claim that the DNA results
are inconsequential since the DNA might be that
of one or another person who had touched the
knife.
My current motion seeks to obtain DNA evidence
from those persons and make comparisons
for exclusion or matching purposes. The
motion also questions the vague claim recently

cy greeNe uPdate
- continued from Previous Page
made by the District Attorney about the chain of
custody of the knife being inadequate, that is,
about the knife being kept in the District Attorney’s
file, apparently for years, when we have
information indicating it was kept at the police
property clerk’s office, except when it was being
examined at the police laboratory in 2004 and
the Medical Examiner’s office in 2005.
On Friday night, July 14, 2006, Cy Greene came
into the office to get a copy of the motion papers
and to bring me a resume. With a 22-year gap,
finding steady work has been very difficult and
finding rewarding jobs next to impossible. He
has been working in various odd jobs, most recently
in construction, but he is looking forward
to getting a better opportunity.
Myron Beldock is a New York City attorney
who has been involved in numerous high profile
cases but the best known is that of Rubin
“Hurricane” Carter. Myron along with Professor
Leon Friedman
represented
Rubin Carter for
many years pro
bono. He and
Professor Friedman
succeeded
Myron Beldock
crime he did not commit.
in obtaining his
exoneration and
release from a
New Jersey prison
in 1984 after
19 years of incarceration
for a
Myron was approached by AIDWYC to review
and assess the merits of Cy Greene’s case in
1999 and true to form has been representing pro
bono ever since. In 2004, Myron Beldock won
the Gould Award for Outstanding Advocacy.
iNterNatioNal cases
Freedom is Not Just aNother Word: cy greene case
By Win Wahrer
Cy Greene was granted bail by Judge Michael
Pesce in the Brooklyn Supreme Court on February
1, 2006. The judge’s decision was met
with uproarious applause from Cy’s family
and friends who attended the court proceeding.
Cy Greene was overwhelmed by the sudden
thought of freedom after 22 hard years of incarceration.
He and his family greeted each other
with tears and laughter, handshakes and hugs.
But it would take another day before all the necessary
paperwork could be completed and the
dream of walking out of prison became a reality.
To welcome him outside the prison walls was
his devoted wife Clara.
Cy’s first venture into a world that had changed
considerably was to go clothes shopping and
then to Red Lobster for what he describes as
the best meal he has had in years. Cy spent
some quality time with his mother who is now
blind but whose strength and support were unwavering
throughout her son’s long and painful
ordeal. After visiting good friends and family
members, Cy enjoyed a nice relaxing bath. Cy
spent the first week of freedom seeking employment
which he was able to obtain two weeks
after his release. Cy has found it hard to obtain
full-time employment facing the stigma of his
incarceration with perspective employers. He
has managed achieve his initial employment
goals through temporary construction work
along with short time employment as a fitness
trainer and maintenance man in an apartment
building.
He has been to Atlantic City, and to a New York
Nicks game, but more exciting and satisfying
than that has been the quality time he has spent
with his much loved and respected mother. He
has also spent a great deal of time at the law
office of Myron Beldock
discussing current
events, job opportunities
and, of course, his
case.
Cy most appreciates
being able to get up in
the morning and decide
what he wants to do
that day, being able to
breathe and enjoy life
without the stringent
rules and destructive
and negative atmo-
sphere of prison.
A month ago, Cy experienced one of the most
joyous and memorable days of his life when
he was reacquainted with his daughter, Cykiya,
who flew from Florida with his six-yearold
grandson, Ladarius, whom he describes as
beautiful.
Cy is persistent and charming. He has been his
own best advocate, working endlessly and tirelessly
on his case. He is extremely grateful for
those who have kept his dream of freedom alive.
Cy has expressed deep appreciation for AIDW-
YC’s Win Wahrer. He states that without her,
and her support in contacting witnesses, private
investigators and experts his release would not
have happened.
He has grown extremely fond of Myron Beldock
whom Win contacted to review Cy’s case
on AIDWYC’s behalf. Myron not only agreed to
review the case but has represented Cy pro bono
for the past six years. Besides his own family
and friends, Cy is grateful to Myron’s wife, Karen
and to Elisabeth Newman, a paralegal with
Myron’s office.
Cy has dreams he wants to fulfill. Visiting
Canada tops his list, as does eventually owning
sporting goods stores and helping the wrongly
convicted. Cy is hard-working and ambitious
and there is no doubt that one day he will accomplish
his lofty ambitions to become an entrepreneur
and a spokesperson for the wrongly
convicted.
In the meantime, Cy is living one glorious moment
at a time and anxiously awaiting the day
when he will be exonerated and truly free!
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 29

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
iNterNatioNal cases
the marlborough mystery: scott Watson case
BY MIKE KALAUGHER
In late June 2006, AIDWYC member Mike
Kalaugher sent a petition to Dame Silvia Cartwright,
Governor-General of New Zealand,
asking for the exercise of the Royal Prerogative
of Mercy for Scott Watson who is serving
a sentence of at least 17 years for the murders
of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope who vanished in
the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand on New
Year’s Day 1998. The petition was sent with the
encouragement and support of AIDWYC, which
has endorsed Mr. Watson’s case.
The Watson case is one of New Zealand’s most
controversial murder convictions. Three books
and a number of television documentaries have
been produced on the case and there is widespread
concern as to whether there has been a
miscarriage of justice.
No forensic evidence of murder or injury, including
the bodies of the two victims, has been
discovered. Because the two teenagers are still
missing, it is presumed that they are dead and
were probably murdered. The evidence that a
deliberate killing took place was Scott Watson’s
alleged confession to two jailhouse snitches.
The Crown case was that Scott Watson had
been, more or less, identified as the man last
seen with the missing pair. His yacht was in
the general area of the bay where the pair were
Sketch of suspect
drawn by Anna
Hollings
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
Scott Watson 1998
New Zealand Herald file
last seen in the company of a man, who escorted
them to a yacht. The petition is accompanied by
affidavits from the two witnesses who had, more
or less, identified Scott Watson at trial and both
witnesses now clearly state that Watson was not
the man they had seen. In their affidavits the
witnesses express their dissatisfaction with having
been effectively misled by the police.
The young couple went missing on 1st January
1998 and it was not until April 1998 that the
police managed to obtain a quasi-identification
of Scott Watson. No witnesses identified Watson
as being the last person seen with the couple
until a special photo of him was taken by a detective
that caught Watson part way through a
blink and was out of focus. In this way some of
the identifying features of the suspect were portrayed
in a photo of Scott Watson. That both witnesses
had described the suspect as having long
hair was ignored in this identification of a photo
of a person with very short hair. The assumption
must have been that the person had later had a
haircut. However, a photo in police possession
that showed Scott Watson with very short hair at
the time the couple went missing was not shown
to the witnesses.
Witnesses who testified at trial did not
identify the mystery yacht as belonging to
Scott Watson.
One witness did say at trial that he thought the
yacht to which the couple were delivered was
in the general area where Watson’s yacht was
moored and that the couple were delivered to a
yacht that was tied to four or five other boats.
However the one witness, who said that, now
says he was honestly mistaken. It was proved by
the evidence of witnesses and photos that Scott
Watson’s yacht was tied to two other yachts.
This leaves a situation that there are no witnesses
who identify Scott Watson as the person
last seen with the couple. There are no witnesses
who claim that the yacht the couple was
delivered to was in the general area of Watson’s
yacht. There are now no witnesses who claim
that the unidentified yacht was tied to other
boats. This represents a collapse of the Crown
case against Scott Watson. As both the judge at
trial and the Court of Appeal have already determined
that these questions make up the basis
of the case, the petition asks for a full pardon in
preference to a referral of the case back to the
Court of Appeal.
From a Canadian perspective,
in the light of
the Morin and Sophonow
inquiries, the Macfarlane
report and the Canadian
Ministry of Justice report
on Miscarriages of Justice,
it will be interesting
to see if anyone argues
that the conviction should
continue to be upheld because
of Scott Watson’s
alleged confession to
two jailhouse snitches. I
PAge 30 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
suspect that such a position would be overly
bold.
The wheels of justice, or at least the wheels of
law, move slowly. Scott Watson’s trial lasted
three months with about 500 witnesses being
called, so it does take a while to get a grasp of
the essentials of the case.
We will have to wait and see whether factual
innocence may be a sufficient basis on which to
release Scott Watson.
The petition asks that any queries be directed to
Mike Kalaugher and AIDWYC board member
Lon Rose.
Anyone wishing more detailed information regarding
the Scott Watson case please contact
Win Wahrer at the AIDWYC office. A copy of
the petition referred to in this article is available
upon request.
Mike Kalaugher is a
chartered accountant
and a “yachtie” who
became quite concerned
after reading news articles
regarding the ketch
identified as the one the
missing pair had been
last seen boarding. Ultimately
his interest grew
to the point that he be-
Mike Kalaugher gan to investigate Scott
Watson’s case, which led
to his belief that Scott Watson is innocent. In
December 2000, Tandem Press published a
book, “The Marlborough Mystery” penned by
Mr. Kalaugher.

Max Soffar was
convicted (February
2nd, 2006)
and sentenced to
death a second
time on March
2, 2006, after
Harris County,
Texas, judge
Mary Lou Keel,
refused to allow
his jury to be told that another man had confessed
to committing the triple killing for which
Soffar was being prosecuted.
Soffar was on trial for the July 1980 murders
of three young people in a bowling alley in
northwest Houston. Although no forensic evidence
has ever connected him to the crime and
although Soffar did not match the sole survivor’s
description of the killer, he has been prosecuted
twice for the murders because he confessed in
1980 to helping commit them.
FALSE CONFESSION
Soffar’s confessions conflict with many of the
known details of the crime, which the United
States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
recognized in 2004, when it overturned his first
conviction and death sentence. Soffar has long
maintained that the few accurate details of the
crime in his confession were from television and
newspaper reports. He also has maintained that
he confessed because he was trying to get out of
trouble for driving drunk and for marijuana possession,
and because he wanted to receive the
$25,000 reward that authorities were offering
for information about the crime.
Although Soffar was drunk when arrested by
police in 1980 and was persuaded by police not
to ask for a lawyer, the judge for his most recent
trial refused to suppress Soffar’s confession to
the crime. She also refused to allow his defense
lawyers to show the jury the 1980 newspaper
and television news reports about the crime,
which meant that jurors never knew that every
detail that Soffar’s confessions got right about
the crime had actually been reported first in the
media.
EvIDENCE NOT ALLOWED
In 2000, while Soffar was on death row in Texas,
a man named Stewart Cook came forward
iNterNatioNal critical case uPdates
Worst Nightmare realized: sentenced to death
By Win Wahrer
Max Soffar & Attorney Kathryn Kase
at trial (Houston Chronicle)
and said that Paul Reid, now on death row in
Tennessee, had confessed in 1982 to having
killed three people in a bowling alley in Houston.
Cook said Reid made this confession while
the two of them were participating in a robbery
in the Houston area. The crimes for which Reid
is on death row in Tennessee are similar to the
bowling alley murders. Moreover, a photograph
of Reid from July 1980 shows that he looked
very similar to a drawing of the bowling alley
murderer that the Houston Police composed
with the assistance of the sole survivor of the
murders.
However, the jury at Soffar’s re-trial heard none
of this evidence when the trial judge refused
to grant Cook immunity from prosecution for
a crime that he and Reid committed together.
Cook refused to testify without immunity.
ADDITION TO LEgAL TEAM
David Dow, a professor of law at the University
of Houston Law Center and the Executive
Director of the Texas Innocence Network, will
represent Soffar on appeal.
Although Max and wife, Sandi Soffar were devastated
at the jury verdict, they are nevertheless
pleased that attorneys from the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) have joined his legal
team. They are convinced that the truth will be
revealed and that Max will be exonerated and
regain his freedom.
Max Soffar has informed me that the trial record
has finally been transcribed and that his
attorneys are busily preparing the appeal for a
January filing date. Once the appeal is filed it is
hoped that the Court will deal with the matter
in a timely manner. No time limit is given to
the judges.
There is no air conditioning in the prison Soffar
is incarcerated and this summer Texas has experienced
record hot temperatures in excess of 100
degrees Fahrenheit. Soffar has had to limit his
activities to reading and art work. The isolation
is very difficult to deal with and therefore visits
from Sandi are paramount in keeping his determination
alive to continue to fight his case.
A quote from a recent letter from Max Soffar:
“I will never give up, or give in.”
William mayo - georgia
A Writ of Certiorari
was filed on
May 12th by attorney
Douglas
J. Davis LLP on
behalf of William
Mayo with the US
Supreme Court.
A review of his
request for a new
evidentiary hearing
based, in part,
William Mayo
on the suppression
of exculpatory evidence by the State Prosecutor,
was considered by members of the Supreme
Court on September 25th.
To succeed, Mayo would need four of the nine
justices to vote to grant him a writ of certiorari.
This is called the “rule of four”. The great majority
of cases brought to the Supreme Court are
denied certiorari (approximately 7500 petitions
are presented each year, between 80 and 150 are
granted).
On October 2nd William Mayo was advised that
his petition had been denied.
William’s counsel and supporters are presently
considering what options may be available to
him. The Petition submitted to the U.S. Supreme
Court is very informative and a copy can
be obtained by contacting Win Wahrer at win@
aidwyc.org.
government
revieW grouPs
CRIMINAL CONvICTIONS REvIEW
gROUP (CCRg)
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE CANADA
http://canada.justice.gc.ca
Section 696.1 application procedure can be
found in “Publications”
CRIMINAL CASES REvIEW
COMMISSION (CCRC)
Alpha Tower, Suffolk Street Queensway,
Birmingham, B1 1T
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 31

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
critical cases
JohNNie savory- illiNois
In October 2005,
seven members of a
15-member Illinois
Prisoner Review
Board voted to grant
Johnnie Savory parole.
Savory needed
eight of the parole
board members
to rule in his favour.
On September 12,
Johnnie Savory
2006 Steven Drizen,
the legal director at
Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful
Convictions and the Death Penalty and the newest
member of Savory’s legal team, accompanied
by other Savory supporters, attempted to
sway one of the parole board holdouts to vote
to grant Savory parole. Savory is awaiting the
parole board’s decision.
In other proceedings, attorney Chris Tompkins
entered a passionate plea in front of a panel of
three judges at the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals,
on behalf of Savory regarding his constitutional
right to have requested DNA samples tested.
Savory awaits that decision as well. Savory
has been trying since 1997 to have DNA testing
done.
On another front, Savory continues to wait for
Governor Blagojevich to render a decision on
his petition for clemency.
keviN cooPer - caliForNia
Kevin Cooper
PAge 32 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
A three-judge panel
of the 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals
heard oral arguments
in the case of death
row inmate Kevin
Cooper on November
2nd, 2006, in a San
Francisco courthouse
as his attorneys continue
to fight to save
his life.
Kevin Cooper’s attorneys and the prosecutors
were each given 30 minutes to address the justices
on the merits of Cooper’s requests to have
his 1985 murder conviction overturned. Cooper
has steadfastly claimed that his conviction and
death sentence came as a result of corrupt and
inept police, corrupt prosecutors, erroneous legal
rulings and bad defense lawyers.
Decisions of the three-judge panel can be appealed
to a larger panel of the same Appellate
Court.
Cooper informed his supporters, upon being
given news of his hearing. “I want both sides to
be told, I want the truth to be told. I want this
case to be truly heard “on its merits”.
iNterNatioNal
advocacy grouPs
CENTURION MINISTRIES
221 Witherspoon St.,
Princeton, New Jersey 08542 USA
www.centurionministries.org
CENTER ON WRONgFUL CONvICTIONS
Northwestern University School of Law,
357 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611
www.law.northwestern.edu/wrongfulconvictions
EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIvE of ALABAMA
122 Commerce Street
Montgomery, Alabama 36104 USA
http://www.eji.org/staff.html
INNOCENT
20 W. Muskegon Avenue
Muskegon, Michigan 49440
http://aboutinnocent.org
JUSTICE DENIED MAgAZINE
P.O. Box 23255
Pleasant Hill, CA. 9523 USA
www.justicedenied.org
SOUTHERN CENTER for HUMAN RIgHTS
83 Poplar Street NW
Atlanta, Georgia 30303 USA
www.schr.org
TALk LEFT
www.talkleft.com/injustices.html
THANK YOU
THE INNOCENCE PROJECT (DNA only)
AIDWYC is deeply grateful for the generous
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
financial contributions of the following organizations:
55 Fifth Avenue, 11th Floor
New York, New York 10003-4391 USA
• Anonymous Donor
www.innocenceproject.org
• Criminal
Includes
Lawyers’
list of all
Association
U.S. and international
(CLA)
• Humberview Innocence Projects. Secondary School (Bolton,
Ontario)
• Law TRUTH Foundation in JUSTICE of Ontario
www.truthinjustice.org
• River Run Centre (Guelph, Ontario)
• Trillium vOICES Foundation UNITED4JUSTICE PROJECT
• McNally Juan Roberto Robinson Melendez Booksellers
• Darryl www.voicesunited4justice.com
Gill of Dimplex North America Ltd.
• Printing by Stanton Press 416-661-3445
ASSOCIATION IN DEFENCE OF THE WRONGLY CONVICTED — PAGE 37

deNNy WhelaN gave
me hoPe
By Jeff BoPPre
A miracle started 18 years ago on June 7, 1989.
I was an innocent man who had just been sentenced
for a crime I did not commit. Denny
Whelan and his son Lawrence (Mick) Whelan
visited me in prison to interview me about my
case. I will never forget that day, because it was
on that day Denny told me that he knew I was
innocent and he was going to do everything he
could to get me out of prison.
Dennis Whelan was a man of his word. His
friendship was like no other I have ever known.
He helped me through the hard times and never
asked for anything in return. He became my best
friend, but he was a father figure to me as well.
He once told me he never gives up on his kids.
He gave me hope for a better tomorrow.
I have the deepest respect for Dennis Whelan,
for the true friendship and respect he gave not
only to me but to all his friends, and for the
work he did each day to help those in need, even
when they had no money to pay him. He would
say, “We will work things out.”
Denny helped me become the person I am today.
He showed me how to be patient when I
had lost hope and grew frustrated and depressed.
He showed me that things had a way of working
out no matter how bad they seemed to be at
the time. He shared his wisdom and knowledge,
laughter and tears. He was an honourable man.
He never misled me. He became my hero.
He brought so many wonderful friends to me
during our 18 years, good people. I owe Denny
so much for being the man he was, a man who
was always true to his word. Dennis Whelan is
my angel in heaven and I know he will see me
achieve my freedom. I will miss him and never
forget what he did for me and the great work
he did while gracing this earth. His mission will
not cease with his passing; his legacy will be
continued on by those of us he has helped so
unselfishly.
I take comfort in knowing that he is now with
his beloved wife Mary who I am sure welcomed
him with open arms.
When he comes into my thoughts, he brings a
smile to my face. He will be with me forever.
coNdoleNces
a tribute to a legeNdary iNvestigator
By sidney d. kirkPatrick
My 14 year-old son once asked me about the
telephone calls I receive from inmates in prison.
I told him they were friends of Denny Whelan.
That’s all I needed to say. In our household, if an
inmate was a friend of the legendary private investigator
Denny Whelan, of Omaha, Nebraska,
he was a friend of ours.
I first met Denny Whelan in 1989 when I was
hired by a Los Angeles film producer to interview
him for a made-for-television movie. The
54 year-old investigator who greeted me at the
Omaha airport was pencil thin, about five-footfive,
with dark
circles under
his eyes and
a nervous
twitch in the
corner of
his mouth.
His coffee
and smoke
stained teeth
were the
color of old
newspapers.
Denny Whelan, Photo By Sidney
Kirkpatrick
He looked at
me so intently
that I had the
unnerving feeling that in his mind’s eye he was
holding a pistol to my head. He had a way of
getting right to the point. “What do you want to
know?” he asked.
“About you,” I said, jumping right in. “Tell me
what gets you up in the morning.”
“My friends,” he replied. “I’ll introduce you.”
30 minutes later we stood at the entrance to his
office in a southwest Omaha shopping center.
The front door was identified by number only.
There was no sign. The only thing that distinguished
it from the office next door was a wall
of photographs of children and young adults
whom he had helped over the course of his twodecade
career.
“Meet my friends,” he said. “Every time I want
to call it quits I just look at the photographs.
Have I done everything I can on this particular
case? Am I missing something? What have I
overlooked? There’s always more you can do.”
That’s how Denny Whelan operated. These
were his friends. Young people mostly, who
had gotten into trouble with drugs or alcohol, or
who had dug themselves into a hole from which
they couldn’t climb out. He was the person you
turned to in Omaha when there was nowhere
else to go. His door was always open. It didn’t
matter if you had money or not. Once he took
your case, Whelan would never let up. Relentless
is the only way to describe it. If he hit a
brick wall, he would go around it. And if he
couldn’t get around it, he would try to have the
wall dismantled brick-by-brick.
“One person really can make a difference,” he
liked to say. “If you try hard enough, keep turning
something over and over in your mind, view
it from another perspective, talk to your friends,
there’s always a solution. Just because something
looks hopeless doesn’t mean that it’s a lost
cause. Lost causes are something I know a lot
about. I’ve been called one myself.”
Whelan’s reference was to his own young adult
years, when he would steal his father’s car and
cruise downtown Omaha with a beer in one
hand and cigarette in the other. He was called
“Kid Terror” for having punched his fist through
a neighbor’s windshield because he had teased
Whelan about his height. Before Whelan graduated
from high school in the early 1950’s, he
was an alcoholic. “I had all the classic signs,” he
said. “Blackouts mostly. There would be nights
when I’d wake up in the morning and have to
look out the window to see if I brought Dad’s
car home.”
Two years stationed in Korea in the Marines
complicated his condition. “I got hit with shrapnel
and put into a body cast. The medics had me
on morphine. I got so addicted to it that I used to
trade my liquor ration for a syringe. By the time
I got back home that’s all I was looking for. But
I couldn’t get it on the Omaha streets. What I got
was whiskey and uppers, and then heroin.”
With help from Mary Burrill, whom he married
in 1960, Whelan opened a pair of coffee shops
in downtown Omaha and an automobile repair
shop in Kansas City. But alcohol and drug dependence
promised to take everything he had.
“Night after night he came stumbling home
drunk,” Mary told me. “Or not come home at
all. Sometimes he’d call me from New Orleans,
or Miami, and not remember how he got there.
I made plans to leave with the kids. I had had
enough.”
Whelan also had had enough. It was 1968, and
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 33

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
“Kid Terror” was the 33 year-old father of four,
a full-time drunk and a part-time drug pusher.
Spurred on by the alcoholism-related death of
his mother-in-law, and guilty about ruining the
lives of his wife and children, Whelan locked
himself in his bedroom to dry out. 5 days later
he crawled out on his hands and knees, and with
the help of AA, he didn’t touch a drop of alcohol
or dangerous narcotic again.
Whelan enrolled in law school but soon returned
to the streets he knew so well, this time
teaching young people about the dangers he had
experienced. He opened his home to troubled
teens and started a drug rehabilitation center. It
was no surprise that he understood them like no
one else. His idea caught on and he opened other
centers. More and more young people turned to
him for help. A few years later he expanded his
rehabilitation program to include tracking down
runaway children. As he would later do as a private
investigator, Whelan organized teams of
friends in major cities across the country to help
him do his leg work. Known to the press as the
“bell-bottom brigade,” and later on television as
the “Mod Squad,” his contacts helped Whelan
to track down over 100 teenagers a month.
“When you take a kid out of a bad situation,
when you take a 14-year-old girl off a strip
stage, get her into counseling, there’s a hell of
a lot of satisfaction in that. It’s what keeps you
going.”
With his outreach program going full throttle,
Whelan had no intention of becoming a private
investigator. But then, in 1974, 14 year-old
Todd Bequette disappeared from a bus station
in downtown Omaha and his parents turned to
Whelan for help. “His parents were convinced
that he had not run away. No one else, not the
police nor social services, believed them. They
begged me to take a leave of absence and investigate.”
After 6 months of working on the case, Denny
Whelan discovered that a convicted sex offender,
Terry Holman, had been seen in the company
of a teenage boy who fit Bequette’s description.
Whelan used telephone and welfare records to
track Holman to Iowa and Colorado, and then
with the help of local police and the FBI, to a
remote cabin outside of Cottonwood, Washington
where Whelan rescued the boy. The police
issued Whelan a private investigator’s license
and the press put him into business.
coNdoleNces
a tribute to a legeNdary iNvestigator - continued from Previous Page
PAge 34 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
On the heels of the Bequette case, Whelan
was hired by the family of Ronald Abboud, an
Omaha real estate developer whose body was
found in a pasture west of town, shot twice in
the back and once in the head. Federal agents
who worked on the case couldn’t come up with
a suspect until Whelan focused on Abboud’s
business associates. Disregarding standard investigation
procedures, and openly breaking the
law, Whelan picked the lock on the suspect’s
house and illegally installed bugs in the rooms
and a wiretap on his phone. He even made his
own house key and buried a car battery under
the floor of the living room to keep the microphones
alive.
“I didn’t know the first thing about being a private
detective,” Whelan said. “But I learned
as I went along. I was so brazen about what I
was doing that I would wave to the construction
crew next door each time I broke into the
suspect’s house.”
Information Whelan obtained from the wiretaps
led to the arrest and conviction of two men. In
return for his help, the district attorney’s office
granted Whelan immunity from prosecution for
burglary, wiretapping and a myriad of other offences
he had repeatedly committed in the process
of making a case against the murderers.
“He would always go that extra mile, whatever
it took to solve a difficult case,” his attorney,
James Martin Davis, said. “It’s possible to hide
from the law, but it’s impossible to hide from
Denny Whelan.”
Whelan continued to go his own way when he
investigated the disappearance of 19 year-old
Mary Kay Harmer, an Omaha girl lured to a party
from which she never returned. He ran down
clues which indicated her murderer was Thomas
“Big Red” Nesbitt, known as a Hell’s Angels
“enforcer,” and a man Whelan had linked to
no less than three contract murders. Unable to
obtain a warrant for Nesbitt’s arrest, Whelan
staked out various Hell’s Angels’ homes until he
located a woman he believed could lead him to
the evidence he needed to make his case. But
she wouldn’t talk. So, in complete defiance for
the law, Whelan and Harmer’s father kidnapped
the woman, blindfolded her, and took her to a
remote cabin, where she provided them the evidence
which was used to convict Nesbitt. No
charges were filed against Whelan because she
had been blindfolded and couldn’t name who
had kidnapped her. Once the time limit for prosecution
had run out on the case, Whelan took
responsibility for what he had done.
The law caught up to Whelan in 1987 when he
and his son-in-law abducted a young girl from
Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church.
Before he could return her to her family, the girl
escaped, and Whelan and his son-in-law were
arrested for kidnapping. “They had no defense,”
said James Davis. “They admitted kidnapping
the girl.”
Davis always feared that it was only a matter of
time before Whelan would be arrested. Over the
years, his rescue team had abducted more than
50 young people from cults and placed them
in deprogramming centers around the country.
Though many other organizations had started
doing the same thing when Whelan began in
1976, his was one of the few that still operated
in the 1980s, when cult leaders organized criminal
prosecutions of the abductors. Though Davis
had reservations about some of Whelan’s techniques,
he and former cult members and their
families, admired the results.
In a landmark defense, Davis attacked Moon’s
Unification Church to prove that the young
woman had been brainwashed and that Whelan
was only trying to prevent her further harm. “It
was a choice of evils defense,” Davis said. “Like
when a truck is barreling down a hill toward a
blind man. Even though you could hurt the blind
man, you have to tackle him to save him from
greater harm.”
A Nebraska jury acquitted Whelan, but like the
Harmer case, this one made Whelan more enemies
than friends, and his activities took their
toll on family members. Mick, his youngest son,
who started working summers for his father
while he was in high-school, and later graduated
from law school, dreamed of becoming an FBI
agent or criminal prosecutor, a hope which was
dashed when he was charged with possession of
a concealed weapon while assisting on one of
his father’s investigations. Mick would eventually
devote a great portion of his career to keeping
his father out of trouble. Together they also
developed a nationwide reputation for helping
innocent people wrongly convicted of crimes in
Nebraska and surrounding states.
Among Whelan’s most important cases was that
of 25 year-old Michael Oman, who was serv

ing a life sentence for the murder of 49 year-old
Nathan Butcher, a wealthy Omaha businessman
found in his burning pick-up truck. Before
Whelan agreed to help Oman in 1986, virtually
no one but Oman’s family and friends believed
in his innocence. Police and prosecutors considered
the case against Oman “airtight.”
Like in so many of the cases Whelan chose to
take on, he was guided more by instinct than
common sense. But it was this instinct which
led Whelan to suspect Butcher’s wife, and then
later connect her to a cold-blooded deal with
her brother-in-law to kill her husband to collect
insurance money. As it turned out, all the evidence
Whelan collected
was brushed aside
by a judge and district
attorney intent on not
re-opening the case.
In spite of great personal
and professional
hardship, and repeated
threats on his life,
Whelan doggedly persisted
until he exposed
a secret plea bargaining
agreement between the
witnesses and the county attorney, thus setting
Michael Oman free and prompting a state-wide
ethics investigation.
There were 50 other important cases, each a picture
on Denny Whelan’s office wall. Though my
television movie about Whelan never got made,
we became friends. And being a friend of Whelan
was to join the network of people around the
country dedicated to helping children in need
and freeing the innocent. The case that brought
me into routine contact with Whelan in the years
to come was that of Jeff Boppre, a young man
from Scottsbluff, Nebraska, convicted in 1989
of double murder, and sentenced to two consecutive
life sentences without chance of parole. As
in the case of Michael Oman, Whelan steadfastly
believed in Boppre’s innocence, and logged
several hundred thousand miles on trips across
Nebraska, Colorado, and California while running
down potential witnesses and evidence.
In 2004, over 15 years after taking on the case,
Boppre was still Whelan’s top priority.
Whelan had hit the proverbial brick wall and
was reaching out for help in tearing it down.
That was when Whelan and his son Mick, Jeff
coNdoleNces
a tribute to a legeNdary iNvestigator - continued from Previous Page
Sidney D. Kirkparick
Boppre’s attorney, turned for advice and help
to AIDWYC. They met with Rubin Hurricane
Carter, Peter Meier, then president of AIDW-
YC, Lon Rose, one of AIDWYC’s directors,
and Win Wahrer, Director of Client Services.
Lon Rose reviewed the case on behalf of AID-
WYC and as a result contacted Barry Scheck’s
Innocence Project to see if DNA testing should
be conducted on various pieces of evidence recovered
from the crime scene. Based on AID-
WYC’s recommendations, the New York Innocence
Project accepted the challenge, evaluated
the case, and proceeded with having the DNA
testing done.
Both Denny Whelan and I, and my 14 year-old
son believed we would see the day when Boppre
would win his freedom. But as one new
door opened for Jeff Boppre—thanks to AID-
WYC and the Innocence Project — another
closed for our dear friend in Omaha. On June
28, 2006, as Boppre awaited the initial results
of DNA testing, 70 year-old Denny Whelan
died of cancer.
“I have lived a full life,” he once told me.
“What happens is up to God. If he wants me,
he’ll take me.”
God has now taken him, I tell my son. And I
add, in passing, that Denny Whelan, no doubt,
is back at work. Only the work he is doing for
Jeff Boppre is now from the other side.
Sidney D. Kirkpatrick is a best-selling author
and award – winning film director. He hopes
to someday publish a book on Denny Whelan
and the Jeff Boppre murder case. His critically
acclaimed books include A Cast of Killers,
Turning the Tide, Lords of Sipan and Edgar
Cayce, An American Prophet. He also produced
and directed My
Father the President, a
much loved documentary
film on President
Theodore Roosevelt as
seen through the eyes of
his daughter Ethel Roosevelt
Derby.
rememberiNg
deNNis g. WhelaN
By Win Wahrer
AIDWYC is saddened by the tragic loss of Dennis
G. Whelan, a remarkable man who was not
only a courageous private investigator but a
highly respected humanitarian. Denny passed
on June 28, 2006 in Omaha, Nebraska where
he had his own private investigative business.
Since 1997, Denny Whelan headed Free The Innocent
Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated
to helping free innocent people in Nebraska and
surrounding states. Denny Whelan spent countless
hours working pro bono on cases of potential
wrongful convictions.
He will be sorely missed by all those who knew
him and were recipients of his considerable
efforts on their behalf.
Have you seen the
AIDWYC
web site at:
www.aidwyc.org?
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 35

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
rememberiNg
breNda Pomeroy
Brenda Pomeroy
lost her
battle with
brain cancer
on September
14, 2005.
Brenda and
her devoted
Brenda Pomeroy & Dr. Kent Pomeroy
husband, Dr.
Kent Pomeroy, were longstanding members
and staunch supporters of AIDWYC, so much
so, that in 2001, they travelled from Phoenix,
Arizona to attend AIDWYC’s Annual General
Meeting in Toronto.
Kent Pomeroy kindly sent me a copy of a heart
wrenching tribute he wrote in loving memory of
his soul mate, simply titled “Remembering Brenda
Pomeroy”. In the book Kent shares how he
and Brenda championed the case of an Arizona
man who had been convicted and sentenced to
die for a murder they were convinced he did not
commit. Upon hearing of Brenda’s tragic death,
Dan Willoughby wrote from prison, “Brenda was
always my beacon of light and reasoning in some
of my darkest days. She will continue to help me
make decisions in death, just as she did in life.
Her picture will serve as a daily reminder of the
courage, love and determination of a red-headed
Brit who never gave up.”
Brenda’s continual and far-reaching expressions
of generosity, humour and true grit will be cherished
by the countless lives she impacted.
coNgratulatioNs
Paul receives aWard
PAge 36 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
On May 4, 2006,
AIDWYC Co-President
Paul Copeland became
the second person to be
presented with the Sidney
B. Linden Award,
which was created by
Legal Aid Ontario to
recognize those people
who have demonstrated
a longstanding commitment to helping low-income
people secure access to justice.
The award is named after Justice Sidney B.
Linden, the first chair of Legal Aid Ontario.
Paul is well known for his legal work with
the disenfranchised and the poor as well as on
national security issues.
Congratulations Paul on a well-deserved honour.
James lockyer hoNoured
James Lockyer
was officially
inducted into
the American
College of
Trial Lawyers
( A C T L ) o n
September 17,
2006 at the Annual
Meeting
of the American
College of
Trial Lawyers held at Grosvenor House in London,
England.
The ACTL was founded in 1950. It is an honourary
association comprised of experienced
trial lawyers in the United
States and Canada who
have mastered the art of
advocacy and adhere to
the highest standards of
ethical conduct and professionalism.
Fellowship
is extended by invitation
only, after a background
investigation. The organization’s
current membership
includes 5,400 lawyers
and Judicial Fellows.
Congratulations James on this significant honour.
The University of Guelph will be awarding
James the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris
causa, Wednesday February 21, 2007,
commencing at 10:00 am at the War Memorial
Hall on the University of Guelph Campus.
steveN craWFord:
laWsuit settled
On June 19, 2006,
Steven Crawford
settled a federal
wrongful conviction
lawsuit with
the state of Pennsylvania.
The terms of settlement,
which
also covered a second
lawsuit Crawford had filed, were not disclosed.
Neither Steven Crawford or the state of
Pennsylvania admitted any wrongdoing. But his
family considered it an exoneration for Steven,
who was convicted three times in the death of
his close friend, 13-year old Eddie Mitchell in
1970.
Steven Crawford’s sister, Linda Thompson said,
“For us, this is a verdict of innocence, it’s an
admission that a wrong was committed.”
The wrongful-death suit named the state, Dauphin
County and the city of Harrisburg as well
as a former state police chemist, a state police
trooper, and the estate of a county detective who
all testified about the validity of handprint evidence
that was later contradicted by the chemist’s
notes.
The other lawsuit, filed in Dauphin County, accused
13 state police commissioners of inadequately
training and supervising the investigators
who handled Crawford’s criminal case.
Steven Crawford now 49 is thankful to God that
the case has concluded. “Now my family and I
can move on with our lives and I will attempt
to restore mine after 28 years living in a cage,”
he said.

aidWyc oN the move
us sPokesPersoN JuaN roberto meleNdez sPreadiNg the Word
By Win Wahrer
AIDWYC’s United States Spokesperson has
been incredibly busy since he spoke at AIDW-
YC’s Annual General meeting on November 26,
2005.
Juan has travelled to Louisiana where he spoke to
students from all four of the state’s law schools.
He then went on a very successful European
tour, which included speaking engagements in
England, Paris and Germany. His popularity in
Germany was so immense that he was asked to
return.
Everywhere he goes, Juan speaks of his 17
years, 8 months and one day on Florida’s death
row and against the death penalty. His speeches
at Oxford Brookes University and at the BPP
(Brierly, Price, Prior) schools of law in London
and Manchester were no different.
The venues were packed to the rafters throughout
Juan’s European tour. There was a deep interest
by the Europeans as to how they can help
to abolish the death penalty in the United States
and elsewhere.
Juan also spoke at Loyola Catholic High School
and other faith-based events in Southern California
in the spring. At the Loyola event he
was introduced by Mike Farrell of M*A*S*H
fame, an actor and activist who is the president
aidWyc aNNual geNeral
meetiNg 2006
AIDWYC will be
holding its AGM on
November 25 at 11 a.m.
– 1:00 p.m. at Friend’s
House, 60 Lowther Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario.
Please notify the
AIDWYC office at
416-504-7500 or email win@aidwyc.org, if
you are able to attend or require further
information.
Refreshments will be served after the business
portion of the meeting by Jennifer Barratt and
Jeanette Huff. All are welcome to attend.
of Death Penalty Focus and a long-time opponent
of the death penalty. Juan is scheduled
to speak at a large conference in Los Angeles
from March 2-4, 2007 where 30,000 to 40,000
Catholics are expected to attend from countries
all over the world.
Despite his hectic schedule, Juan somehow
managed to spend some quality time with his
family in Puerto Rico this past summer.
Juan toured New Jersey and New Mexico for
a week each in September 2006. He returned
Juan Roberto Melendez
to California in October 2006 and was in
Mississippi as well.
Juan recently returned from California where
he did several speaking engagements and radio
Keynote sPeAKer:
MArie coffin steWArt
other sPeAKers:
Phil cAMPbell - steve truscott cAse
JAMes locKyer - JAMes DrisKell inquiry
JeroMe KenneDy - lAMer inquiry
JoAnne McleAn - DAviD MilgAArD inquiry
Win WAhrer - introDuction of Wrongly
convicteD
sPeciAl MusicAl PresentAtion
DAve MorAn - singer/songWriter
show interviews. Tookie Williams’s editor, Barbara
Becnell introduced Juan to the audience,
which was a very moving and memorable moment
for him. One attendee later said that she
had always been pro-death penalty, “but after
hearing Juan, I will fight to abolish it”.
He was in Wisconsin at the end of August, for
a few days of intense outreach. Wisconsin has
not had a death penalty for 150 years but voters
will be encouraged to vote for the return of the
death penalty in a state referendum in November
2006.
In November Juan will be speaking at three law
schools in North Carolina and recently he was
asked to speak in Europe over World Abolition
Day on October 10, 2007. The tour will include
events in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland
and Spain.
UPDATE:
55.5% of Wisconsin voters approved a referendum
on the death penalty which was introduced
by Republican Senator Alan Lasee. It has been
predicted that the bill won’t get far now that the
Democrats have won control of the Senate in
a recent vote which also re-elected Jim Doyle,
a death penalty opponent, to a second term as
Governor.
thaNk you
AIDWYC is deeply grateful for the
generous financial contributions of the
following organizations:
- The Criminal Lawyers Association (CLA)
- Gordon Folland
- Law Foundation of Ontario (LFO)
- University of Ottawa
- Anonymous Donor
iN-kiNd doNatioNs
- Douglas F. Brown Software Inc.
- Humberview Secondary School
- Pro Bono Law of Ontario (PBLO)
- Sack Goldblatt Mitchell
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 37

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
aidWyc oN the move -- studeNt PoWer
studeNt Website: dedicated to WilBert coffin
By george allain
In its relatively
brief
history, Canadian
courts
s e n t e n c e d
1300 men and
women to the
gallows; sending
them to
their fate with
the terse statement:
“You
will be hanged
by the neck
until you are
dead.” While
Wilbert Coffin at his camp 600 managed,
through acts of
providence, to escape the hangman’s noose, 700
others paid the ultimate price. Of these, the one
that is arguably the most contentious and best
exemplifies the problems inherent in a government’s
exercise of its supreme authority is the
Wilbert Coffin case.
On February 10th, 1956, a red flag flew and a
chime sounded seven times - signalling the execution
of a male inmate at Montreal’s Bordeaux
Jail. On this day, the man was Wilbert Coffin.
Despite a raft of contentious legal issues, which
resulted in the nation’s first Supreme Court
Reference in a criminal matter (the only two
others being in the Steven Truscott and David
Milgaard cases), the desire of the Duplessis
Union National government for a speedy resolution
was realised and Coffin was executed.
Although the man was now gone, the desire
for justice in his case would continue to live
on. Prominent Canadians, including journalist,
Nobel Peace Prize nominee and former Senator
Jacques Hébert, former Prime Minister, Pierre
Elliott Trudeau and renowned attorney Edward
Greenspan, have each publicly voiced their concerns
over the injustices evident in this case. In
fact, Mr. Greenspan has maintained, “You’re
talking about a case where the doubts are so
large and so palpable that it cries out as a total
and complete injustice.” (Montreal Gazette,
February 11, 2006)
For the past 50 years, members of Wilbert
Coffin’s family have sought his vindication,
with few palpable results. Today, however,
the battle to redress the injustices in this case
has been joined by AIDWYC whose involvement
has spurred a group of law students
at The Humberview School in Bolton, Ontario,
to launch an online website on the Coffin
case. Working with Wilbert Coffin’s family
and author Alton Price, whose book To
Build a Noose, has provided the students with
important insight into the case, the students’
goal is to educate Canadians about
Coffin’s case and motivate them to act. By
simply going to humberviewss.peelschools.org,
internet users can access historical and current
information about the case, download a petition,
which they can address to their Member of Parliament
and sign an online petition to Canada’s
Minister of Justice seeking a new, thorough and
speedy resolution to the ongoing injustices in
the Coffin case. When there are sufficient signatures,
the students plan to hand-deliver the
online petition to the Minister.
Humber View SS Peel School students Julia Bogdon,
Kamaldeep Singh, Neeta Sandhu, Philip Kim, Christine
Nguyen and Ankush Goyal
aPPlicatioNs For
iNterveNtioN
PAge 38 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
hill v hamilton WentWorth
Police services Board:
intervenor status granted
The Supreme Court of Canada granted AIDW-
YC’s application for intervention in Hill v. Hamilton
Wentworth Police Services Board et al.
The appeal was argued on November 10,
2006. AIDWYC Director, Louis Sokolov and
Sean DeWart are counsel to Mr. Jason Hill.
Elisabeth Widner and Julian Falconer of
Falconer Charney LLP are acting for AIDWYC
on the intervention. Hill is a significant case for
the wrongly convicted as it seeks to uphold the
tort of negligent investigation.
Supreme Court of Canada
reynolds v city of kingston
Police services
AIDWYC is also seeking leave to intervene in
Reynolds v City of Kingston Police Services et
al before the Court of Appeal for Ontario. Sheila
Block of Torys LLP is acting for AIDWYC on
this intervention.
The Reynolds case concerns the rule of witness
immunity/absolute privilege in a negligence
action against pathologist Dr. Charles Smith.
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edFord teacher educates studeNts oN WroNgFul coNvictioNs
By Win Wahrer and Jerry schram
When I asked
teacher Jerry Schram
why he introduced
AIDWYC’s
work to his grade
five and six students
he replied
as follows;
“The purpose of a
liberal education
for young people
Jerry Schram
must be more
than the expectations
expressed by the people in the Ministry of
Education.
No doubt students learning mathematics and
writing skills is important for the purpose of
seeking employment. Teachers must also encourage
students to engage in the real world.
The real world of this writing is defined as a
place where each person can be useful and helpful
in improving the human condition.
My students, ages 11-12, have been involved
in fundraising for various agencies around the
world. Helping such groups as, Afghan Children’s
Fund, Tornado Relief Fund of Oklahoma,
Forest Fire Relief of British Columbia, Doctors
without Borders, Operation Smile and our special
relationship with AIDWYC was very helpful
to their development.
The main purpose of this work is to encourage
students to be more loving and caring towards
those who need help to ease their pain whatever
the cause, human or nature.”
STUDENT, ISAIAH DETERINg, whose
sister Ariel was one of a group of students at
Bedford Public School who raised money for
AIDWYC, tells how he became interested in its
work on behalf of the wrongly convicted.
“It all started when Mr. Schram our grade six
teacher at Bedford Public School introduced me
to AIDWYC.
Mr. Schram supplied me with books, magazines,
and articles about AIDWYC and their cause.
Some described cases AIDWYC had conquered
while others were cases still being worked on.
Mr. Schram soon arranged phone calls with Win
the Director of Client Services.
aidWyc oN the move -- studeNt PoWer
AIDWYC is a great association that works for
a superb cause. When someone is wrongly convicted
AIDWYC steps right up to help that unfortunate
person and makes the world a better
place.
Wrongly convicted people are some of the most
unfortunate people on Earth. I can’t believe that
they can bear what was done to them, having
to listen to whispers about how you’re a filthy
animal and people glancing quickly at you and
when you turn they look away. As your reputation
turns sour, your name is said with distaste
on the end of people’s tongues. Then of course,
there is the injustice of it all. It’s unbelievable
how many wrongly convicted people leave jail
without bitterness and with no harsh feelings.
Even after they are free and were proved not
guilty, most of them have unjustly served and
wasted many years of their lives. The sad part
is no amount of money, treasures, or fame, can
give them their wasted years of life back.
An interesting case
involves a man by
the name of Johnnie
Savory, who
has been in prison
since 1977. Just like
Steven Truscott,
Johnnie too was
wrongly convicted
at the age of 14. He
was convicted of
Isaiah Detering
the murders of his
14 year old friend,
James Robinson Jr. and James’s sister Connie
Cooper who was 19. Mr. Savory was tried twice
for these murders. He has
consistently denied any
involvement in the stabbings
of the victims.
He approached AIDWYC
in 2003 after he heard of
their involvement in a
Californian case. AID-
WYC reviewed his case
and on April 15, 2004
they wrote to the Illinois
Governor supporting
Johnnie’s request for
DNA testing. Mr. Savory continues to seek parole.
He is a man of deep faith who believes that
one day he will be freed and he will be able to
help others who have suffered at the hands of
the criminal justice system.
AIDWYC is an excellent association working
for a legimate purpose. I hope to become a
member of AIDWYC.”
YOUNgEST MEMBER:
Louis Bousquet is at 12 years of age the youngest
member of AIDWYC. Louis is a recent graduate
of Bedford Public school and Jerry Schram’s
grade six class. Jerry Schram has encouraged
his students to be informed on wrongful convictions
having had Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and
Steven Truscott visit his students two years ago
at a student run library which sold second hand
books to raise money for AIDWYC and other
charities.
Louis has read all of the past and current AIDW-
YC Journals, visited our website and along with
friend Isaiah Detering would like to become involved
in enligthening students in other schools
about wrongful convictions and those affected
by them.
Louis has a social conscience and an eagerness
to make a difference in the lives of others.
His passion for educating others and bringing
awareness to the plight of the wrongly convicted
will hopefully help in rectifying those problems
within the criminal justice system that allow
wrongful convictions to occur.
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 39

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
hoW much do uNiversity studeNts kNoW about WroNgFul coNvictioNs
By dr. kimBerly a. cloW and James Bell
some of the causes of wrongful convictions.
James Bell and Dr. Kimberly Clow, Ph.D.
In March 2006, we decided to test the knowledge
of junior and senior students at Ontario’s
newest university, the University of Ontario
Institute of Technology (UOIT), to find out
just how informed these young adults were on
the subject of wrongful convictions. In particular,
we were interested in their knowledge
about some of the major underlying causes of
wrongful convictions, such as eyewitness misidentification,
prosecutorial misconduct, false
confessions, in-custody informants, junk science,
ineffective defence counsel, police tunnel
vision, perjury, police misconduct, stereotypes
and discrimination.
To do this, we created a wrongful conviction
survey. After consulting the academic literature
and some experts in the field, we produced 13
statements, some true and some false, pertaining
to causes of wrongful convictions. We also
included a self-report item, asking students to
rate how informed they were about wrongful
convictions. Finally, we asked students to produce
the names of actual Canadians who were
wrongly convicted.
Although UOIT does not offer a course specifically
dedicated to wrongful convictions, the
university does have a criminology and justice
degree, where many of the courses touch on
aspects related to wrongful convictions. For
example, Dr. Carla Cesaroni invited Bill Mullins-Johnson
and Lon Rose (AIDWYC Director)
as guest speakers for her Prosecution &
Sentencing course just last year. In addition, Dr.
Kimberly Clow and Dr. Hannah Scott found that
many criminology and justice majors at UOIT
wished to pursue careers as lawyers (37%) or in
law enforcement (22%). Thus, it was our hope
that these students would be aware of at least
aidWyc oN the move -- studeNt PoWer
As members of the Faculty of Criminology, Justice
and Policy Studies, Dr. Clow as a professor
and James Bell as a student, we wanted to investigate
whether criminology and justice students
would demonstrate greater knowledge about the
factors leading to wrongful convictions than
other students, majoring in fields such as engineering
and nursing.
In general, criminology and justice students
tended to be more knowledgeable about the underlying
causes of wrongful convictions than
the other students. Specifically, criminology and
justice majors were more aware of the fallibility
of hard evidence (e.g., eye-witness misidentification,
false confessions, junk science), the contribution
of racial stereotypes, and discrimination
against the poor than their peers. Although
students did not generally report to have much
personal knowledge about wrongful convictions,
criminology and justice students reported
possessing more knowledge than the other students.
To support this claim, the criminology
and justice students were
also more likely to accurately
produce the name
of at least one Canadian
who had suffered the pains
and injustice of a wrongful
conviction.
Surprisingly, criminology
and justice students did
not significantly differ in
their responses to questions
about police tunnel
vision, prosecutorial
misconduct, ineffective
defence council, the use
of criminal informants,
and plea-bargaining. This
lack of findings may have
arisen because even noncriminology
and non-justice
students tended to
agree that these factors
contribute to wrongful
convictions. Nonetheless,
it was disappointing
to discover that criminal
justice majors were not
more knowledgeable
PAge 40 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
about prosecutorial misconduct (specifically,
the failure of prosecutors to disclose exculpatory
evidence) and the inherent unreliability of
criminal informants, both frequent contributors
to wrongful convictions.
Dr. Kimberly Clow and James Bell have refined
their survey based on these findings. They are
currently testing the reliability and validity of
their new measure, as well as exploring other
facets of students’ opinions and attitudes about
wrongful convictions.

Malcolm McRae, Dominique Kennedy,
Natasha Morley, Andrew Wilkinson, Wade Rogers,
Kate Hilbig and Pamela Zbarsky
AIDWYC is grateful to members of the Criminal
Law Class Association at the University of
Ottawa and the executive, Kate Hilbig, Dominique
Kennedy, Pamela Zbasky, Natasha Morley
and Malcolm McRae who held their first BAND
AIDWYC Benefit Concert on January 13, 2006
to raise funds for AIDWYC and to draw the attention
of other students and community members
to the important work that AIDWYC does
on behalf of the wrongly convicted.
The Criminal Law Class Association raised a
whopping two thousand ($2,000) and plans to
challenge other universities throughout Canada
to follow their lead by implementing fundraisers
at their schools on behalf of AIDWYC.
We are excited to learn that the students are
planning a bigger and better BAND AIDWYC
concert for the present school year.
AIDWYC is appreciative for the student’s and
performer’s enthusiasm and commitment.
aidWyc oN the move -- studeNt PoWer
We are thankful to Université de Montréal law
students who have taken the initiative to learn
more about wrongful convictions and assist in
various aspects of the review and assessment
work of potential AIDWYC cases.
Criminal law professor Hughes Parent is supervising
the work of the students. Last school
year, four of the students, Jonathan Tatner,
Saleha Hedaraly, Julia Rys and Andrea Talarico
translated a s.696.1 application from French
to English on AIDWYC’s behalf. During this
school year, students will be involved in assisting
in other cases.
AIDWYC would also like to thank students
from the University of Toronto, York University,
CTS, University of Windsor and Humberview
Secondary School for their help and support
over the past year.
AIDWYC expresses its gratitude to all of its
volunteers for their dedication and commitment
toward seeking justice.
This fall marks the launch of a practicum pilot
with students at the Faculty of Criminology,
Justice and Policy Studies at the University Of
Ontario Institute Of Technology.
As part of their degree program, students participate
in work-experience opportunities for one
semester. AIDWYC is providing placements
for 20 students.
Students will work in teams to support
AIDWYC by helping to review cases of the
many applicants looking for endorsement
of their cases. Students will work with their
practicum assistant, supervisor and AIDWYC to
prepare a case summary and recommendation to
the International Review Committee by the end
of their term.
The students will help AIDWYC expedite cases
to the International Review Committee stage;
and will provide them with meaningful work
experience.
According to the practicum supervisor, Kim
Sorbara, “Students are sitting at the edge of their
seats waiting to get their hands on cases and
support AIDWYC’s mission to undo wrongful
convictions.”
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 41

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
Looking back at over half a century as a pathologist,
perhaps maturity entitles me to express
a few thoughts about the relationship of
doctors to the criminal justice system. In Britain,
Canada and the United States, recent years
have witnessed an increasing number of cases
in which the accuracy and veracity of the expert
medical evidence has been called into question.
I suspect that this increase is more apparent than
real, because such instances are now more readily
brought to light than in former years, with
a greater challenge by defence experts and a
heightened public awareness of the possibility
of error. I have been involved in four such Canadian
cases in the last few years, the most recent
being that of Steven Truscott.
Except where doctors are called as a “witnesses
to fact” (usually when they give evidence within
their personal knowledge about a patient) they
appear as “expert witnesses” to offer a professional
opinion on matters which are put to them
by lawyers or the court on circumstances about
which they had no previous knowledge. In the
context of this article, we are usually talking
about a pathologist and the circumstances usually
involve an alleged murder or serious assault.
The expert is commissioned either by the
Crown, often after having been employed by the
police to conduct an autopsy – or by lawyers for
the defence. In controversial cases, additional
experts may be sought, either to bolster or contradict
the opinions of the first pathologist or to
provide specialist expertise in a particular field
of medicine or science.
Of course, in many instances, these doctors
never actually get to court, such as if their report
is not favourable to the side who commissioned
them, they are politely paid off and told to get
lost! In former years – and in some jurisdictions
even now – lawyers might hawk the papers
around to numerous “experts” until they found
one whose opinion suited them, who would then
be called to give evidence. The court might then
never hear about the unhelpful or even contrary
opinions, but certainly in Britain, all such reports
are now “discoverable” and if the “other side”
learns about them, then they may call that expert
as one of their own witnesses.
This is a different matter from the “hired gun”,
where an expert earns a reputation for supporting
the side which pays his fee, even where the
veracity of his opinion may be questionable.
sPecial rePort
the medical WitNess aNd miscarriages oF Justice
reflections By Bernard knight cBe
Thankfully, this nefarious practice is much less
common than it was years ago, where, especially
in civil cases, certain so-called experts
were well known to be unreasonably partisan.
Perhaps more so in scientific matters than medical,
they would appear as “experts-on-everything”
– on maggots one week and on arson or
fingerprints the next. This is one reason why
courts now probe so deeply into a witness’
qualifications and experience and eventually it
is up to the judges to decide whether they think
the doctor is eligible to be considered as an
expert in the relevant topic.
It cannot be assumed that all or even most of
these pliable experts are liars and perjurers. It
Dr. Bernard Knight CBE
PAge 42 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
is usually more a question of them being unreasonably
selective in offering their opinions, in
order to be “helpful” to the side calling them.
I am sure many come to believe that what they
maintain in evidence is the truth, as they lack the
objectivity that is vital in an independent expert.
It is all too easy to be carried away by enthusiastic
lawyers and detectives, so that they feel part
of the team and must do all they can to support
“their side”. I remember a forensic pathologist
in London saying to me, “Well, we must always
do all we can to help the police’s case.” This
is a totally unacceptable attitude, as a medical
expert must be independent and impartial at all
costs. More than once, though police have not
actually asked me to bend my evidence, there
was a ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ effort along
the lines of, “We know this chap did it, doc, so
can you help us along?” Thankfully, my nature
has always allowed me to shy away from these
invitations, but I know of colleagues who were
more malleable.
I think that experts very rarely tell deliberate untruths
in their reports or in court, though I once
heard a senior forensic pathologist tell a blatant
lie whilst on oath in the witness box of London’s
Central Criminal Court (“the Old Bailey”). Most
often, their misdemeanour is evasion, bias and
often self-delusion about their own infallibility.
The doctor who gives incorrect or biased opinions
may do it for a variety of reasons. Firstly,
he or she may be uninformed, untrained or inexperienced
and just does not know what he or she
is talking about. Due to the shortage of trained
forensic pathologists in many countries, autopsies
on suspicious deaths frequently have to be
carried out by hospital pathologists, especially
away from large cities. The public may think that
a pathologist is a pathologist, but however proficient
one might be in say, paediatrics, neurology
or surgical pathology, it is totally different from
forensic pathology. Unfortunately, some non-forensic
pathologists consider themselves equally
expert in this branch and where the opportunity
to practise it is offered, may get carried away by
the undoubted notoriety that goes with it. There
is a definite cachet to be had from having one’s
name frequently in the newspapers or one’s face
on television news. Being in the public eye certainly
attracts some doctors who may be unsuited
by experience and temperament for the job.
Apart from an actual deficiency in forensic
knowledge, there is another factor which can
bias an expert opinion. Very little in medical
science is absolute and if the vast mass of
medical literature is explored, it is often possible
to find totally contrary opinions on the
same matter. The expert who wants to bolster
his own view can “cherry-pick” these opinions
from textbooks and journal articles, often taking
parts out-of-context to contradict the views of
another medical witness. The relative strengths
and dates of these views must be explored and
that is why in court one often hears an astute
counsel demanding that the next paragraph or
page of the article be read out, as it may radically
qualify the blinkered view that the crafty
witness is trying to get accepted.
Much of what has just been said applies to the
original trial and it is here that the damage may

the medical WitNess aNd miscarriages oF Justice - continued from Previous Page
be done when it comes to unjust convictions.
Unfortunately, the jury members have to make
up their minds on medical evidence when much
of it is incomprehensible to them, however
well the witnesses, lawyers and judge attempt
to clarify it. I have seen several members of a
jury fast asleep during a long, boring lecture by
a poor medical witness, and I have seen up to
a quarter of a jury having to have the oath read
aloud to them by an usher when being sworn
in, as they were educationally unable to read
the printed card. Without any disrespect, how
can such juries possibly appreciate the complex
nature of much medical and scientific evidence
upon which they have to adjudicate?
Furthermore, the weight of the expert evidence
comes not only from its actual content, but from
the personality and presence of the medical witness.
Some famous figures of the past varied
enormously in their ability “to get it over”. In
Britain during the first half of the 20th century,
the towering figure of Sir Bernard Spilsbury
dominated the criminal courts with his authoritative
manner, so much so that before a jury,
other equally eminent pathologists had little
chance against him, as he had been a “household
name” for decades. In fact, eventually even
the judges became uneasy with his dominance,
– and now a new biography being written after
the 50-year release of government documents,
strongly suggests that he was partly responsible
for a number of wrongful convictions, in a period
when the death penalty was in force.
In the 1966 Truscott Revision, two British forensic
pathologists (now long dead) offered
their opinions – indeed they almost forced their
way into the case. Dr. Keith Simpson was a superb
witness, a silver-tongued orator, whilst my
old chief Dr. Francis Camps was a much more
rough-and-ready character. It was no secret that
they detested each other and in London would
not even speak to each other. They had diametrically
opposing views on the medical evidence
in the Truscott case and it is patently obvious
that the strength of their opinions was coloured
by their mutual desire to denigrate each other’s
professional reputation. To those like myself
with a long memory of forensic personalities,
other examples of such professional rivalry and
jealousy can be recalled.
When on the stand, some expert witnesses are
often fond of claiming “long experience” as the
basis for a given view. Certainly, experience
is vitally important, as textbooks and lectures
alone can never make a competent pathologist.
But this experience must be genuine and
if possible, verifiable. It is all too easy for an
imposing, grey-haired witness to say that from
his 40 years’ working life and 50,000 autopsies,
he knows from experience that XYZ is a fact.
But when this alleged experience is analysed, it
often falls short of his claims.
The memory tends to amplify things, “I have
seen XYZ many times”, but perhaps “many
times” is really only five, three or even once.
The witness may come to genuinely believe in
this vast but elusive experience, but can rarely
prove it. As an example, a common source of
controversy is over the time of death but out of
that 50,000 autopsy load, probably 90% were
not suspicious and so the time of death was of
no interest. In the remaining 10%, time of death
may still frequently not have been an issue, so
the vast volume of relevant “experience” shrinks
to minuscule proportions, but is still quoted as if
it was an unarguable truth.
In the Truscott case, a major issue was stomach
contents as a time-marker of death. A number of
witnesses over the years put forward their experience
on the matter. But when examined critically,
we realise that in most autopsies, stomach
contents are never considered in the context
of time since death; they are neither measured
nor examined in the vast majority of autopsies;
neither does the pathologist know or even enquire
as to when the last meal was eaten, what
it consisted of and how large it was, or whether
other snacks had been taken. So where does this
claimed experience come from, when all the
necessary parameters are missing during those
40 years of looking at dead bodies?
To summarise, all these factors combine to make
much so-called “expert evidence” unreliable,
yet dogmatic witnesses will stick to their story,
sometimes to the detriment of justice. A reasonable
witness, faced with some new and compelling
facts, should readily admit to being wrong,
but some experts will dig their heels in and the
more they are pressed, the more obdurate they
become, their professional pride making them
even more stubborn.
From the rare crooked witness to the more common
misguided one who comes to believe his
own errors, the danger is that the jury, unable
to distinguish between competing technicalities,
may be swayed by the most persuasive voice,
aided by able counsel. It is therefore imperative
that the defence have a comparable level of challenge
from their own experts. I have seen many
a poor prosecution case succeed because of poor
performance by the defence team when it comes
to evaluating and challenging the evidence. Of
course, it works both ways, but the onus is on
the prosecution to prove their case “beyond reasonable
doubt” and if a good defence team can
scupper this goal, good luck to them.
If all this leads to a doubtful or even incorrect
verdict at the trial, it is very difficult to rectify
later, as cases such as Truscott show only too
clearly. Appeals are notoriously difficult to win,
partly because the Appeal judges have been very
reluctant to hear any expert evidence that could
have been available at the original proceedings.
I have spent many days sitting in the corridor
outside the Court of Appeal in London, England
never to be called into court because their Lordships
decided that since my evidence could have
been called a year or two before, they do not
want to receive it now. This seems against natural
justice and in recent years, because of public
opinion about a series of wrongful convictions,
the attitude of the courts has relaxed somewhat.
Another advance in Britain has been the establishment
of the Criminal Cases Review Commission
(CCRC), which has been of benefit
in providing an independent alternative route
around the previously almost-closed door of the
Appeal Courts. Even so, the prosecution establishment,
from the police through to the Crown
Law Officers to the judges, form a very tough
nut to crack when they close ranks and dig in
their heels to justify their original conviction.
They seem to resent any efforts to show that
they got it wrong.
In recent years, a new concept has crept into
clinical medicine and is equally applicable to forensic
pathology. This is “evidence-based medicine”,
according to which any contention about
diagnosis and treatment should be founded on
provable facts, rather than empirical beliefs and
“experience”.
Direct research and reproducible experiment
should be the basis of any argument. For most
of my professional life, I have taught assistants
and students that if you can’t prove it, don’t
claim it! It now seems that this approach is
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AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
medical WitNess
- continued from Previous Page
called “evidence-based medicine”, though at
the time it seemed like common-sense. In my
recent visit to Ontario, I was very glad to see
that the Coroner’s Office subscribes strongly to
this concept, which augurs well for the future
conduct of pathological investigations there.
The idea has a long pedigree. Opposite the title
page of my own textbook, I quote from Giovanni
Morgagni, an 18th century Italian pathologist
known as the Father of Morbid Anatomy. He
said,
“Those who have dissected or inspected many
bodies have at least learned to doubt, whilst
those who are ignorant of anatomy and do not
take the trouble to attend to it, are in no doubt
at all!”
This last part echoes some expert witnesses
whose stubborn dogmatism may be inversely
proportional to their ability and thus contributes
to miscarriages of justice.
Professor Bernard Knight CBE (Emeritus
Professor of Forensic Pathology, University
of Wales College of Medicine) was born and
educated in Swansea and Cardiff Wales,
qualifying in medicine there in 1954. Having
previously been a medical laboratory technician,
he entered pathology and later became
a Regular RAMC officer in Malaya during the
terrorist emergency, running the laboratory in a
hospital like in the sitcom M*A*S*H. In 1959
he was appointed Lecturer in Forensic Medicine
at The London Hospital, and later Senior Lecturer
in Newcastle before returning to Cardiff
where he became Reader and then Professor of
Forensic Pathology. He has been a Home Office
pathologist since 1965 and was called to the Bar
in 1966. A former President of the British Association
in Forensic Medicine and of the Forensic
Science Society, he was also a member of the
General Medical Council for Wales for 15 years.
He has been a consultant to WHO and Amnesty
International. He was awarded the CBE (Order
of the British Empire) in 1993. He is the author
of about thirty-five (35) books, including 20
mystery novels, biographies and popular
non-fiction, he has also written extensively for
radio and television.
PAge 44 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
sectioN 696 oF the crimiNal code oF caNada:
a Pale imitatioN oF Justice by JuliaN roy
In 2002, with much fanfare, Parliament enacted
sections 696.1 through 696.6 of the Criminal
Code of Canada. These amendments purported
to represent
a “unique, made-in-
Canada”¹ conviction
review process, much
improved over its
predecessor section
690. Before Justice
Committee hearings
leading up to the
amendments, AID-
Julian Roy of Falconer Charney
WYC had unsuccessfully
advocated for the
institution of a full-fledged independent commission
to review wrongful convictions modeled
on the United Kingdom’s Criminal Cases
Review Commission (“CCRC”).
In October 2006, David Kyle, a former Commissioner
with the CCRC, testified at the Milgaard
Inquiry (at which AIDWYC enjoyed standing)
concerning the U.K.’s conviction review process.
His evidence demonstrated that section
696 falls well short of the kind of independent,
accessible, transparent, and fair conviction review
process represented by the CCRC. In the
absence of a Canadian equivalent to the CCRC,
section 696 enacts little more than cosmetic
changes to a process that has long been condemned
as both ineffective and unfair.
The most glaring deficiency of section 696 is
that it preserves the exclusive role of the Minister
of Justice in determining whether cases
should be referred to the Court of Appeal, or
returned for a new trial. The continued role of
the Minister within section 696 creates an obvious
conflict between his or her responsibilities
for the administration of criminal justice on the
one hand, and the identification and remediation
of the justice system’s mistakes on the other.
It puts the fate of the wrongly convicted in the
hands of a decision-maker who is at the mercy
of public opinion. Constitutionally, it blurs the
boundary between the executive and judicial
branches of government.
By contrast the CCRC is constituted as a “nondepartmental
public body”, wholly independent
from the elected Home Secretary and her Ministry.
The Commissioners, drawn from both inside
and outside the legal profession, report through
their Chairperson directly to Parliament. The
CCRC accounts to the Home Secretary solely
with respect to financial and budgetary matters.
There is no political involvement whatsoever in
the case review process.
Consistent with its proactive, as opposed to reactive,
approach to the review of wrongful convictions,
the CCRC engages in comprehensive
outreach to the community, targeted particularly
to the hard to reach prison population. The application
form that initiates the CCRC’s review
process is concise and written in plain language.
There is no onus on the applicant to obtain the
relevant documents, or to gather new evidence
concerning his or her case. The CCRC takes
immediate steps to obtain files in the hands of
government agencies, and conducts its own investigation
into the safety of the conviction, including
the interviews of new witnesses, and the
consultation of forensic experts.
By contrast, an applicant under the section 696
process must engage the laborious and costly
task of gathering all of the relevant documents
in order to complete his or her application. The
application will not even be considered for investigation
if a prescribed list of documents
is not first provided. The 2005 Annual Report
of the Canadian Criminal Convictions Review
Group reveals that of the 35 applications received
between April 2004 and March 2005, 26
were deemed incomplete and accordingly had
not been subject to review. Under the Canadian
process, the onus is on the applicant to gather
the necessary fresh evidence to demonstrate that
an investigation is justified. Access to exhibits
for further forensic testing, or Crown and police
files, is often a matter of good fortune rather
than legal entitlement.
The CCRC has devised a formal and transparent
process that governs every stage of the case
review process. Each application is assigned to
a case manager, who is directed and supervised
by a Commissioner. There is an internal process
for identifying for special attention those cases
that have not been subject to a determination
within six months. A case memorandum, outlining
the case manager’s preliminary analysis
of the case, complete with a list of documents
that have been considered, is prepared and presented
before a Commissioner (or panel of three
Commissioners) for decision. The applicant is
provided with a formal “provisional decision”,
and disclosure of the results of the investiga

a Pale imitatioN oF Justice
- continued from Previous Page
tion, prior to a final determination as to whether
a case will be referred to the Court of Appeal,
and given an opportunity to make submissions
or provide further evidence. Detailed reasons
for the final decision are formally recorded so
that the applicant is left in no doubt as to the
basis for the determination of his case.
The section 696 process contains no similar
guarantees of consistency, transparency and
fairness. A review of the Department of Justice
website reveals no detailed prescriptions for
how an application will be processed. There is
no opportunity for an applicant to respond to a
provisional decision in respect of his or her case.
Most significantly, there is no entitlement to be
advised of the reasons underlying a preliminary
assessment that the case will not proceed to the
investigation stage. The applicant is in the unenviable
position of having to guess as to why
the application was deemed to be deficient.
The statistical disparity in relative functioning
between the CCRC and the Canadian conviction
review process is particularly telling. While the
CCRC accepted and completed over 900 applications
in 2006, the Department of Justice (in
2005) received a paltry 35 applications, completed
a mere 13 preliminary assessments, with
the Minister rendering only 6 decisions.²
The work of the CCRC has led to the quashing
of 198 wrongful convictions since 1997,
and in the process has contributed significantly
to the restoration of public confidence in the administration
of justice in the United Kingdom.
Canada will have to wait for an independent,
transparent, fair and effective conviction review
process. In the meantime the devastating human
and social costs of unremedied wrongful
convictions will mount.
¹ Applications for Ministerial Review – Miscarriages
of Justice, Annual Report 2005 at p.1
² The CCRC serves a population of approximately
65 million, compared to the Canadian
population of 33 million.
LOCKYER
CAMPBELL
POSNER
LCPBARRISTERS AND SOLICITORS
CRIMINAL TRIALS AND APPEALS
180 Dundas Street West
Suite 1515
Toronto, Ontario M5G 1Z3
Tel: (416) 847-2560
Fax: (416) 847-2564
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 45

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
PAge 46 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD

BECOME A MEMBER OF AIDWYC
Membership in AIDWYC costs just $50 annually and entitles you to
receive all information distributed regarding the organization's regular
activities, including the AIDWYC Journal.
If you would like to receive further editions, please use the form to
send us your subscription. Donations of any amount are always welcome.
Back issues of the Journal are available on AIDWYC's website
at www.aidwyc.org.
We also need the voluntary services of lawyers and private investigators
to assist in the process of determining which cases to adopt. If
you can give some of your time to investigate or review a case, please
contact us.
The activist and lobbying activities of AIDWYC preclude our giving
a charitable receipt for your AIDWYC membership dues and contributions.
However, we can provide a charitable receipt for general donations to
the JUR-ED Foundation, AIDWYC's educational division and its
special funds and projects which perform important research and
public education.
CAN YOU HELP AIDWYC?
ASSOCIATION IN DEFENCE OF THE WRONGLY CONVICTED
Please return this form and your cheque payable to AIDWYC (or the
JUR-ED Foundation) to:
AIDWYC, 85 King Street East, Suite 318, 3rd Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5C 1G3,
Canada
Yes, I would like to become a member of AIDWYC for 2006. Enclosed is my
cheque for $50.
Yes, I would like to make a donation to AIDWYC. Enclosed is my cheque in
the amount of:
$25.00
$50.00
$100.00
Other $___________
Name:_________________________________________________________
Organization:___________________________________________________
Address: ______________________________________________________
City: _________________________ Province: ________________________
Postal Code: ___________________ Country: ________________________
Telephone: ____________________ Fax: ____________________________
Email: _________________________________________________________
ASSOCIATION IN DEFENCE OF THE WRONGLY CONVICTED — PAGE 41
AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD --- PAge 47

AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
Winter 2006 / Vol. 7
Can AIDWYC Help You?
Association in Defence of the
Wrongly Convicted
If you, or someone you know, has been
wrongly convicted and think that AIDWYC
If you, or someone you know, has been wrongly
can be of help - please keep in mind the follow-
convicted and think that AIDWYC can be of help
ing criteria before contacting us:
- please keep in mind the following criteria
before 1. We contacting can only us: review cases of conviction on
serious offences (almost exclusively murder),
1. We can only review cases of conviction on
where you do not have the financial resources
serious offences (almost exclusively murder),
to hire competent defence counsel. With our
where you do not have the financial resources to
limited resources, we have to prioritize.
hire expert defence counsel. With our limited
resources, 2. The we evidence have to in prioritize. the case must be consistent
with factual innocence.
2. The evidence in the case must be consistent
with
3.
factual
You must
innocence.
have already been tried and convicted
and largely exhausted your possibilities
3. You
for appeal.
must have already been tried and convicted
and largely exhausted your possibilities
for appeal.
If you meet all three criteria, send the Director
of Client Services, Win Wahrer a brief outline
If you of the meet facts all of three the criteria, case and send its current us a brief status. outline
Please of the include facts of your the case name and and its address, current status. plus the
Include name, your address, name telephone and address, number plus and the email name,
address, (if available) telephone of a number relative and or friend email whom (if avail- we
may contact on your behalf. We will also need
contact information for your current or most
recent lawyer.
On receiving the above, we will send out an
CAN AIDWYC HELP YOU?
application form for you to complete which
will provide us the basic information regarding
your case, together with a release form which
authorizes AIDWYC access to any additional
able) information of a relative we may or need friend to whom properly we review may contact
your on case. your When behalf. we have We will received also your need com- contact
information pleted application for your form current we will or most contact recent you lawyer.
for any specifics required to begin the process
of reviewing and assessing the merits of your
On receiving the above, we will send out an
case, which will be conducted by a volunteer
information sheet for you to complete which will
lawyer, paralegal or law students. All work
give us the basic information on your case,
done by the volunteer is overseen by the Direc-
together with a release form to give AIDWYC
tor of Client Services and a Review Committee
access to any additional information we may
whose members largely consist of AIDWYC
need.
senior
When
lawyers.
we have received these completed
documents, we will contact you for any specifics
required
The volunteer
to get started
is given
on
a case
review.
referral sheet
which clearly outlines the steps he/she must
Once
follow
we
to
begin
ensure
the
that
review
a complete
process,
and thorough
we need to
find
review
a lawyer
of your
to
case
donate
is conducted.
time to read over the
materials and make an assessment of the merits
Once the review of your case has been com-
of the case. The lawyer will submit a recommenpleted
the volunteer will submit to the Director
dation to our Review Committee which will then
of Client Services and the Review Commit-
decide whether to adopt - or for international
tee a summary of your case accompanied by
his/her recommendations concerning your
ASSOCIATION IN DEFENCE OF THE WRONGLY CONVICTED
85 King Street East, Suite 318, 3rd Floor
Toronto, Ontario
M5C 1G3 Canada
Phone: (416) 504-7500
Fax: (416) 203-9088
email: clientservices@aidwyc.org
aidwyc@on.aibn.com
website: www.aidwyc.org
PAge 48 --- AssociAtion in Defence of the Wrongly convicteD
case. The Review Committee will ultimately
determine whether to recommend your case for
adoption or – for international cases, endorsement
to AIDWYC’s Board of Directors. For
international cases we offer our support in
various ways which will be clearly outlined in
a response letter to a potential applicant. All
applicants will be advised of AIDWYC’s deci-
cases, endorse - the case. For international cases
sion by mail.
we give our support in any way we can.
If the case is in Canada, where our lawyers
If the case is in Canada, where our lawyers prac-
practice, we will then make application for
tice, we will then make application for legal aid
legal aid in order to take the case further - to
the
to
appellate
take the
courts
case further
if possible;
- to the
to
appellate
the Minister
courts if
of
possible;
Justice under
to the
section
Minister
696.1
of
(formerly
Justice under
section
section
690)
696.1
of the
(formerly
Criminal
section
Code, if
690)
not.
of the Criminal
Code, if not.
Please also be aware that we receive a great
number
Please
of
also
requests
be aware
for assistance
that we receive
and that
a great
all
num-
of ber our of work requests to date for has assistance been accomplished and that all of our
with work very to little date funding. has been accomplished The process of with review very lit-
may tle take funding. months The or years process and of we review are depen- may take
dent months on the or voluntary years and assistance we are dependent offered to on us the vol-
by untary lawyers assistance and others offered who are to willing us by to lawyers give who
their are time willing and expertise. to give their While time this should and expertise. not
discourage While this anyone should from not applying discourage to AIDWYC, anyone from
it is applying important to to AIDWYC, have realistic it is expectations important to have
about realistic acceptance expectations criteria and about the acceptance amount of criteria
time and required. the amount of time required.
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