INNOCENT PERSONS  CONVICTED (part one)

There are few experiences a person can suffer from in life than be sent to prison for a crime that person really didn’t commit. Alas, innocent persons have been imprisoned far too many times.

                                                       

In 1968, a member of the Ontario Legislature, (the late Morton Shulman) contacted me and asked me to help a man find a job. The man previously had been convicted of committing a robbery in a park and was sentenced to prison for two years. He denied having committed the crime but the police, the prosecutor and the judge didn’t believe him. After serving a year in prison, the Supreme Court of Canada believed him and he was released from the prison as a free man.  

For months after he was set free, no one would hire him because they thought of him as an ex-con. Subsequently, he had to live on welfare. That is when I got the call from the legislator. Three days later, I got the man his old job back as an orderly in a hospital in Toronto.

Mr. Shulman then asked me to write a report on my thoughts  about compensating innocent persons sent to prison and give it to him so that he could raise the issue in the legislature. I suggested that I would be prepared to write such a report but I would need a member from each of the three political parties in the legislature to sit on a task force to study the issue before such a report be presented to the legislature. Mr. Shulman agreed with my proposal.

I met with the party whips (senior members of each party serving as legislators)  and they each asked a member from their parties to serve on my task force. Mr. Shulman offered to be one of the legislators to join the other two legislators.

Eventually my task force comprised  of  three legislators, three law professors, two criminal court judges, five lawyers in which one was later to become the chief justice of Ontario, the second later to be a member of the Supreme Court of Canada, the third to later to become the first Ombudsman in Canada. The fourth was the first Director of Ontario Legal Aid and the fifth, was the senior prosecutor for Toronto. Another man who joined the task force was the chairman of the Law Reform Commission of Ontario.  It was with these bright minds that I was able to prepare my report which took at least a year after consulting with these men.

Before I presented it to  the new Attorney General of Ontario, I was the main speaker at a national conference on criminal justice held in Ottawa (Canada’s capital) and my speech was about compensating innocent persons who were wrongfully imprisoned. Judging from the applause I was given, it appeared to me that my paper was well received.

I presented my report to the new Attorney General (Kerr) who showed about as much interest in awarding compensation to innocent persons previously imprisoned as a prostitute who is asked by her potential customer to offer her services for free.  

There was one person who was really interested in my report. He was the Chairman of the Law Reform Commission of Canada. He later told me that the issue of compensating innocent persons  who were imprisoned, would be the first subject that his Commission would deal with. His later input moved provincial governments in Canada to think about compensating innocent persons who were imprisoned. 

Now we all know that governments generally move at the speed of a snail. My apologizes to the snails of this world. They move faster than governments do.

Two years later, the new attorney general of Ontario (who was one of the lawyers who was a member of my task force) had his government award a nurse damages who was found innocent of murdering  six babies in the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. 

Previously, a really stupid Toronto homicide cop (named Warr) arrested her because she told him that before she spoke to him, she wanted to have her lawyer present. The judge (who was one of the judges who sat on my task force) concluded that she was innocent of the charges of murdering the babies. She sued the government for damages and was awarded a large sum of money.

A man was charged with murdering a small child and spent a great deal of time in jail waiting for his trial. The police suddenly become smart and discovered that his blood didn’t match the sperm  found on the victim.  He was released and given a lage sum in compensation.

Soon after, other provinces were awarding damages for persons who were imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. One man in the province of Saskatchewan was imprisoned for 24 years for a murder he didn’t commit. During his last year in prison, it was learned that he was innocent when the police actually found the real murderer.  The previously imprisoned man was awarded $10 million dollars tax free.

Later I will give you examples of innocent men who were  sentenced to death. Before I do this, I will tell you about an innocent man who would have been sentenced to death and hanged if I hadn’t found the unknown witness that could prove that he didn’t murder the dead prostitute found in his apartment in 1964.

Before the prostitute was killed, she and the man who was an acquaintance, made arrangements for her to come up the fire escape at the rear of the two story building  and knock on the kitchen window. He would then open the window and help her get into his apartment. Alas, it was one in the morning before she arrived at the window. Meanwhile, he had been drinking all night. When he heard the noise at the kitchen window, he thought it was a burglar trying to get in, H opened the window and strangled to death the so-called burglar.  Then he discovered that it was the prostitute. He dragged her into his living room and placed her on the sofa and tried to revive her but she was already dead. He called the police and they accused him of murdering the woman despite his denials. 

His lawyer called me and told me that his client said to him that there was a man in the dead-end lane beside the building who hollered out,  “Hey. What’s going on up there?”  The lawyer asked me to find that man as he could testify that the woman was killed at the window and not in the living room of his apartment as the police believed.

At that year, there were as many as a million people living in Toronto. Which of the men in Toronto was the unknown man who was in that lane that night? 

I found the man a day later. There was a tavern around the corner and it closed at one in the morning. I figure that anyone that went down that dead-end lane went there for one purpose only. He wanted to pee. All I had to do was to find the man who left that tavern at one in the morning and wanted to take a pee in the lane. 

 I went to the tavern the next the evening and made enquiries and spoke to a man who was a friend of the man who peed in the lane. He gave me his name. His street name was Moose. I knew that man and he was in jail. I interviewed him in jail and he gave me a written statement that it was him who was in the lane and he saw the prostitute climb the fire escape and struggle at the window and hollered, “Hey. What’s going on up there?                                           

Further, the lazy police officers didn’t consider that the woman’s fingerprints and palm print would still be on the  railing which would be undisputable proof that she was at the window when she was killed and not on the sofa in his living room 

When those two pieces of evidence were shown to the prosecutor handling the case, the charge of capital murder filed against the  man was dropped and changed to manslaughter because he killed the woman while he was drunk. He was sentenced to five years in prison and released after serving four years in prison

If I hadn’t found the missing witness and provided the fingerprints to the man’s lawyer, his client would have been hanged for a murder he didn’t commit.

The next article I am going to present to you is about the innocent men who were sentenced to death. I will also tell you about a case I investigated in which one such man actually was hanged for a murder he didn’t commit.