Canadian Supreme Court: A long-overdue attempt to penalize negligent police

After a previous failure in State courts -- see my post of Sept. 29, 2005

An aboriginal man who was wrongly jailed for a bank robbery he did not commit is taking the police to the Supreme Court of Canada today to determine if criminal investigators can be held legally negligent for shoddy probes and whether they should be forced to pay compensation when they fail. The court's decision is expected to set a guide for lower courts across Canada, who have handed down mixed rulings on police responsibility when they finger the wrong person. The Supreme Court is tackling the issue at a time when there is growing concern internationally about the plight of the wrongly convicted.

Jason Hill, of Hamilton, Ont., contends the local police violated his constitutional rights by failing to re-investigate his case in the mid-1990s, despite mounting evidence of his innocence. ''There is a simple question at the heart of the appeal,'' Hill's lawyers, Louis Sokolov and Sean Dewart, say in a written court brief. ''Where substandard policing causes a miscarriage of justice, should the victim be able to obtain compensation from the police service which caused his or her losses?'' The Hamilton-Wentworth police force counters, in a court brief, that imposing legal liability for negligent investigations ''is inconsistent with the long-established principle that police owe a duty to society as a whole, not to any particular member thereof.''

Hill was 26 years old when he was charged with 10 counts of robbery following a police investigation in 1994 and 1995. He was convicted on one count and he spent 20 months in jail before his conviction was overturned on appeal. He was later cleared in a new trial. Police maintained they had the right man even when the bank robberies continued, while Hill was in jail, and they received fresh evidence from an anonymous tip two days before Hill's arrest, which eventually led them to the true thief.

When he was freed, Hill filed a lawsuit against the Hamilton-Wentworth police force, alleging malicious prosecution, negligence and breaches of his Charter rights. One of his complaints was that witnesses were asked to identify him from a photo-lineup that included one aboriginal person and 11 photos of Caucasians, which singled him out, especially when police were looking for a man with dark skin.

''This case has many of the usual ingredients of a wrongful conviction,'' say his lawyers.'' Among other things, police ''solved'' the case by jumping to conclusions, the accused was a member of a racial minority who was falsely identified by unreliable eye witnesses, and police wilfully ignored any evidence that didn't fit their theory, says Hill's legal brief. His lawyers further assert the ''law of negligence must be brought to bear on the problem of wrongful convictions'' to keep police tactics in check.

The case is drawing several intervenors on both sides, including the Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)