Justice delayed
Ron Dalton knows what it’s like to be wrongfully convicted of murder. He doesn’t know why Ottawa isn’t moving faster to help people like him
Ron Dalton knows all too well the impact of going to prison for a crime you didn’t commit.
He was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and would spend about eight years behind bars before finally being cleared after a second trial.
Dalton, who is co-chair of the non-profit organization Innocence Canada, says he’s angry at the federal government’s slow pace in creating an independent commission to review wrongful conviction cases.
It was the first item mentioned in Justice Minister David Lametti’s mandate letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau following last year’s election.
But Dalton says he feels the commission is no longer a top priority for the government, having heard little in terms of progress since earlier this year.
“It leaves me angry more than frustrated because I know there are men and women sitting around in prison who don’t belong there,” said Dalton.
“There are killers who have gotten away with crimes that somebody else is serving the time for. “I know what the real human cost is.” In 1989, Dalton was convicted of murdering his wife, Brenda, in the kitchen of their Gander, N.L., home. At his trial, the Crown alleged he had strangled or suffocated her, while he maintained that she had choked on cereal. He successfully appealed the conviction and was acquitted at a second trial — which included evidence from top forensic experts — but only after spending more than eight years in prison.
“I had my biggest loss up front when my wife died, and the next day I’m arrested, and a year and a half later I’m convicted and sent to a maximum-security prison, and leaving my three young children behind,” Dalton said.
His children were sent to live with his sister and brother-in-law in Prince Edward Island.
“That gave me a connection to the outside world,” he said. “It gave me a focus outside the prison walls, and I also had that hope that at some point, I would be proven innocent.”
Lametti said in a written statement to the Star that he remains committed to creating an independent commission to review criminal cases, and that the next step will be public consultations, details of which will be announced soon.
Dalton said it’s difficult to estimate just how many cases might end up before such a commission, but pointed out that his organization alone is juggling several dozen files and those are just homicide cases.
“Initially, I think there would be quite an onslaught” of cases before an independent board, Dalton said, estimating the number could total several hundred.
Wrongful convictions have again been in the spotlight after Toronto police said last month they believe Calvin Hoover, who died in 2015, was responsible for killing 9-year-old Christine Jessop in 1984. In one of Canada’s most infamous cases of a wrongfully accused person, Guy Paul Morin was convicted of her
murder and later exonerated.
Jessop was abducted from her house in Queensville, north of Toronto, on Oct. 3, 1984. Her partially clothed body was found three months later on New Year’s Eve in a wooded area 50 kilometres away. She had been raped and tortured.
Hoover, who was 28 at the time of Jessop’s death, was never interviewed by police.
Durham Regional Police instead narrowed in on Morin, who lived next door to the Jessops. Found not guilty at a first trial, convicted at a second and sent to prison, Morin was finally cleared in 1995 when DNA testing concluded he was not a match for a semen stain found on Jessop’s underwear.
Dalton said there were positive meetings after last year’s election with Lametti, but he’s been disappointed with what he feels has been a lack of progress this year on the creation of a commission.
“I know they’re in a minority situation, but with the support of two other parties, I don’t think it would be controversial legislation, it shouldn’t be difficult to pass. But they’re not even near the legislation stage yet,” Dalton said of the Liberal government.
Innocence Canada, a national nonprofit organization, is largely run by volunteers, including lawyers and students who probe wrongful conviction cases. The organization was able to secure the support of three federal parties — Liberal, NDP and Green — for the creation of a commission during last year’s election campaign.
Lametti’s mandate letter includes a directive from Trudeau to “establish an independent criminal case review commission to make it easier and faster for potentially wrongfully convicted people to have their applications reviewed.”
Currently, the justice minister has the power to review a case that has exhausted all other appeals and send it back to the courts.
Innocence Canada and other advocates have pointed out the process can be lengthy, and say what’s really needed is a commission that is independent of the Justice Department and made up of people such as former judges and civilians, similar to bodies that exist in other countries, including the United Kingdom.
Lametti reiterated in his statement to the Star that wrongful convictions “are a matter of deep concern to me.” He pointed out that in his first weeks as minister, he reviewed the case of Glen Assoun and sent it back to the courts, where the Nova Scotia man was exonerated after spending 17 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.
“I continue to review all cases that arrive on my desk in a thorough and expeditious manner,” Lametti said.
Dalton said Innocence Canada is among the only organizations nationwide that takes on claims of wrongful convictions and builds cases to present to the Justice Department for review. But because of limited resources, his organization can typically only take on homicide cases.
The organization’s most notable cases include David Milgaard, who spent 23 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of murdering nurse Gail Miller, and Robert Baltovich, who was wrongfully convicted of murdering his girlfriend Elizabeth Bain.
As the government has no set timeline for the creation of an independent commission, it should provide regular funding to Innocence Canada, Dalton said.
“They appear to be sitting on their hands,” Dalton said. “If they aren’t going to get a commission up and running, they should at the very least probably think about throwing us a few dollars to keep doing the work for them.”
The Justice Department said Innocence Canada is currently receiving federal funding — $360,000 over three years — under a program to “establish a national coalition of organizations and individuals active in addressing the issue of wrongful convictions. Innocence Canada will act as a secretariat for the project.”
Dalton said the government should also be providing regular, stable funding to support Innocence Canada’s core work of uncovering wrongful conviction cases.
In his view, an independent commission could have investigative powers to do the kind of work his organization does, and could have the resources to review a wider variety of wrongful conviction claims, potentially catching wrongful convictions a lot sooner.
The Morin case “isn’t an isolated event,” and more than two dozen wrongful convictions have been identified in Canada over the past 25 years, said Daniel Brown, vice-president of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association.
“What we know from our history is that wrongful convictions are alive and well in the justice system,” he said. “They’re happening frequently enough that we need to create an organization that ensures that they’re being identified and corrected as soon as possible.”