WRONGFULLY CONVICTED ASSOCIATION.com

STORIES of the WRONGFULLY CONVICTED in CANADA

YOU'RE NOT ALONE!
Wrongfully convicted CANADIANS feel continuously RAPED of their rights. It's TIME THAT STOPS.

TELL US YOUR STORY NOW !!!

OR read about other Canadians fighting for their rights after a wrongful conviction.....

DAVE ROBERTS/Ontario

JAMIE NELSON/Ontario

"Safeguards may help keep innocent from conviction" Published in the Burlington Post on July 12, 2000

Innocent people are not supposed to be convicted of criminal offenses in Canada. We have established many procedural and evidentiary safeguards to ensure that this doesn't happen. Some people believe that there are too many safeguards and that guilty people are getting off. These critics would like to see the rules relaxed so that it is easier to get convictions. They don't believe that innocent people are wrongly sent to jail. Unfortunately innocent people do get convicted and some of them spend a long time in jail. The following are just some of the best known examples in Canada.

In 1969, sixteen year old David Milgaard was charged with raping and murdering Gail Miller in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1992, after spending more than 23 years in jail, Milgaard was acquitted by the Supreme Court of Canada and released. Five years later, DNA testing proved that Milgaard had not raped Gail Miller. Tests done at the same time identified serial rapist Larry Fisher as the actual murderer. Fisher was finally convicted of that offense only within the past year.

In 1971, Donald Marshall, a 17 year old Micmac Indian, was charged with murder in Sydney, Nova Scotia. He was convicted and spent 11 years in some of Canada's toughest penitentiaries before he was exonerated and set free. The subsequent inquiry determined that witnesses had lied at Marshall's trial and that his defense counsel had been kept unaware of the existence of conflicting statements from some of the so called eyewitnesses.

In 1981, Thomas Sophonow was charged with strangling waitress Barbara Stoppel in Winnipeg Manitoba. He went through three trials and was convicted twice before the Manitoba Court of Appeal acquitted him in 1985. It was only last month however, fifteen years later, when police and government officials apologized to Sophonow and promised him both compensation and a public inquiry. This announcement came after DNA tests established that Sophonow had in fact been the wrong man.

Guy Paul Morin was 25 years old in 1985 when he was arrested for the murder of Christine Jessop in Queensville, Ontario. He remained in jail for almost ten months before he was acquitted following his first trial. This decision was overturned on appeal and a new trial took place. Morin was convicted of first degree murder in 1992 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He spent six months in jail before he was released on bail pending an appeal. In 1995, the Ontario Court of Appeal set aside the conviction and acquitted Morin after a comparison of semen found on Christine Jessop's panties to Morin's DNA profile demonstrated that Morin was not the donor of the semen and after Crown counsel conceded that the evidence proved as an indisputable scientific fact that Morin was not guilty.

In 1990, twenty-two year old Chris McCullogh was charged with murdering Beverley Perrin in Hamilton. He too was convicted and spent almost nine years in jail before being acquitted by the Ontario Court of Appeal. Like both Morin and Sophonow, McCullogh was convicted after jailhouse informants testified against him in return for money and other favours.

These five young men were all wrongfully convicted of murder in Canada. They spent time in jail before that mistake was corrected. At age 39, David Milgaard had spent 23 years of his life in jail for a crime he had not committed. Thank goodness none of these men had been executed before the truth prevailed. Some in other jurisdictions have not been so lucky.

These five are not alone. There are many other Canadians who have been wrongfully convicted of less serious crimes. Many of them have also gone to jail for something that they did not do. Canada's criminal courts provide procedural and evidentiary safeguards to accused people so that we might keep the number of wrongfully convicted as small as possible.

That makes those safeguards worth preserving.

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 EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE A RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH as well as JUSTICE!

 

* CHECK OUT the Ontario Court of Appeal and see how many cases are being heard or have already been heard this year alone.

 

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