Canada not yet facing how flawed its justice system is

Steven Truscott, Guy Paul Morin and David Milgaard are reasons why Canada must create an independent tribunal, says a prominent Canadian lawyer and advocate of the wrongfully convicted. Toronto lawyer James Lockyer was involved in these high-profile cases and founded the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted in 1993. The association was formed following the case of Guy Paul Morin, who was wrongfully convicted of killing Christine Jessop and later exonerated by DNA evidence. Lockyer was in Sudbury on Thursday to speak to Laurentian University students.

Since its inception, the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted has pushed Canada to adopt an independent tribunal, like that in the United Kingdom, to investigate claims of wrongful convictions. The United Kingdom implemented the system in 1997 and has referred 380 cases back to court. Lockyer said between 75 and 80 per cent of those cases have been overturned as wrongful convictions. "The numbers themselves speak volumes of how we need a similar system here," Lockyer said, "because the number of wrongful convictions that we've examined and dealt with in this country in the same 10-year period is 14. When you compared the two numbers, you can see there is something obviously wrong here."

While the public inquiry system is successful in preventing future wrongful convictions, Canada has not properly addressed how to uncover the wrongful convictions of the past, he said. "We know they're there and we know they're there in large numbers," said Lockyer. "And yet the system seems to carry on and just assume perhaps we will uncover the ones that really matter. But, of course, we're not able to do that. We don't have the funding or the resources to do anything other than scratch the surface of these cases." Five public inquires have recommended the creation of an independent tribunal to deal with cases in which people were wrongfully convicted.

Lockyer and other advocates of the British system assume the inquiry looking into disgraced pathologist Dr. Charles Smith's work will arrive at the same recommendation. Yet there's resistance. "It's quite clear the federal government has a huge reluctance to give up their exclusive power to look at allegations of wrongful convictions and hand it over to a tribunal that should be doing it," Lockyer said.

Lockyer traces his interest to the wrongfully convicted to 1968 when he picked up a copy of the Manchester Guardian that contained the story of Timothy Evans. Dec. 17 1949, the developmentally handicapped man was arrested for murdering his wife and daughter. He was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. Eighteen years later, the British government determined Evans was innocent and that the real killer was another man who was a tenant in the same house, who went on to kill more people.

When Lockyer began defending the wrongfully convicted, there was the belief that the Canadian criminal justice system was ideal. "We're far from perfect, but we're certainly better than some countries - we're a lot better than south of the border," he said. The justice system is human and therefore not foolproof, said Lockyer. From faulty investigations to fabricated witness accounts, the legal system is subject to human error. Sometimes, the prosecution doesn't disclose material evidence, suppresses evidence or uses faulty scientific evidence, such as in the case of Dr. Smith. "Science can sometimes solve wrongful convictions. It can also create them," he said.

Lockyer is currently in a race against time. Lockyer and a team of lawyers are trying to exonerate Erin Walsh, a New Brunswick man who was convicted of murder in 1975. Walsh is dying of cancer and has mere weeks to live, said Lockyer. His dying wish is to be recognized as an innocent man. The province admitted last week that the man's conviction was likely a miscarriage of justice. New Brunswick Chief Justice Ernest Drapeau scheduled a hearing for March 14 to decide whether Walsh deserves a complete exoneration before he dies of cancer.

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