Juno News - Wrongful Conviction： The shocking state of Canada’s justice system

00:00:00.000 as violent crime continues to rise in canada's major cities the many failures of canada's justice

00:00:10.960 system have come into sharper focus for canadians over the past few years what is described as

00:00:16.080 canada's revolving door bail policy where repeat violent defenders are released back out onto the

00:00:21.840 streets after committing crimes only to continue committing more violent crimes has rightfully

00:00:26.880 occupied the attention of a large number of canadians who just want to live in a normal and

00:00:31.200 safe country but what about the other side of canada's justice system the canadian justice system

00:00:37.040 has a bad history with wrongfully convicting innocent people for crimes they haven't actually

00:00:42.240 committed not only does this strip innocent canadians of their rights and freedoms but it

00:00:47.120 allows the actual perpetrators of these crimes to get away and walk free if you've been paying close

00:00:52.640 attention to the news over the past few weeks you may have come across the story of robert

00:00:56.800 mailman and walter gillespie two innocent men who had their lives taken away from them by the

00:01:02.400 canadian justice system and convicted of a murder which it turns out they never actually committed

00:01:08.320 well joining us now is ron dalton the co-president of innocence canada a non-profit legal organization

00:01:15.360 working to help identify and exonerate individuals who have been convicted of crimes that they did not

00:01:21.440 commit ron himself spent close to eight years in prison for a crime that he didn't commit and we're

00:01:27.440 going to get into his story later on in the interview but i want to begin ron with the story of robert

00:01:32.720 mailman and walter gillespie these men were given life sentences for the 1983 murder of george lehman in

00:01:39.680 new brunswick they spent 18 and 21 years of their lives respectively in jail and just a few weeks ago

00:01:47.120 these men were finally exonerated after 40 years with the help of your group innocence canada ron

00:01:53.280 can you take us through the story of this case and how something like this is even possible well harrison

00:01:58.560 i wish it wasn't possible but it's all too possible we had mr mailman and mr gillespie acquitted of crimes

00:02:05.600 40-year-old homicides in early january in july past we had brian anderson and aj woodhouse in winnipeg

00:02:15.840 exonerated and declared innocent after 50 years plus a day those those four gentlemen is 180 years

00:02:23.600 between them and that's almost all you need to know is that we get it wrong we get it wrong a lot more

00:02:29.360 often than we thought we ever would and it's almost impossible and i say almost because thanks to the

00:02:36.000 good work of innocence canada and some other volunteer organizations we managed to get some of them

00:02:42.160 straightened away although it's very very long period of time and literally in mr mailman and

00:02:48.400 mr gillespie's case it's taken half of their lives in this retrial that happened in the beginning of

00:02:55.280 january there wasn't any actual evidence presented uh from the prosecution so it appears that the all

00:03:01.680 the evidence brought forward against them originally uh wasn't sound it wasn't strong but yet it was taken

00:03:06.880 their lives were taken away from them uh is there any accountability that's going to be faced by the

00:03:12.640 uh the new brunswick the saint john police and the crown prosecution or is this just going to keep

00:03:17.680 happening to canadians and nothing's nothing's going to be no one's going to be held accountable

00:03:22.560 i'm afraid it would be a very exceptional case if there was any real accountability uh this case

00:03:28.720 against mr mailman and mr gillespie was weak to start with their first trials back in 1985

00:03:35.600 ended in hung juries they were retried a couple months later and then convicted and for 40 years

00:03:42.720 they've maintained their innocence when it would have been much easier to go along and say yes we

00:03:47.840 did this they would have been at a prison much earlier in mr gillespie's case the day after he was

00:03:55.200 arrested they offered him the opportunity to plead guilty to being an accessory they were recommending a

00:04:01.760 two to three year sentence he didn't have to spend 40 years in prison the man looked at them and said

00:04:07.360 i can't say i saw something i didn't see and i can't say i heard something i didn't hear and for 40

00:04:14.000 years he's maintained his his innocence and that's one of the themes that we do see in the work that

00:04:19.520 innocence canada does when people will stand by their innocence for that long when it would have been

00:04:26.960 easier and more to their advantage sometimes to admit to something that they hadn't done it's very

00:04:31.840 much a red flag for us it makes us dig in a lot deeper but as you said by the time we got to in

00:04:38.000 front of the chief justice on the 4th of january earlier this month there was no evidence left there

00:04:43.760 was never much to start with and in order to get the federal justice minister to overturn their

00:04:49.120 convictions we had to convince the minister that the convictions were unsound that there was a

00:04:55.040 likelihood of a miscarriage of justice and that meant knocking the underpinnings out from what

00:04:59.440 little evidence there was so that by the time we called the case and into court on the fourth of

00:05:05.600 of january we had two murder trials in a half hour period case was called the the gentleman entered

00:05:12.240 not guilty please the crown admitted they had no evidence and the chief justice acquitted them

00:05:19.360 it's it's astonishing i just want to i just want to kind of get as as clear an answer as possible

00:05:24.080 here because i i can't believe this so there's really no accountability there's no punishment for

00:05:30.160 putting people behind bars wrongfully you can you know the prosecution the police service can charge

00:05:35.600 people prosecutions can can help assist people who have been wrongfully convicted getting them into

00:05:39.920 jail and they're not going to face any punishment for taking these people's lives away the closest thing

00:05:46.320 to accountability that i've seen in the work that i've been doing with innocence canada and i've been

00:05:50.640 at a prison for almost 26 years now and volunteering with them and i've been on their board for 15 or

00:05:56.560 16 years i've been on the executive of the co-president the last five or six i know most of the wrongly

00:06:01.600 convicted people in this country we had a case of charles smith who was practicing as a pediatric

00:06:08.080 forensic pathologist in ontario he specialized in doing baby autopsies when nobody else wanted to do them

00:06:15.200 and he became a bit of a superstar testifying in court he was almost unassailable nobody wanted to

00:06:22.400 challenge his opinions he was responsible for 13 cases that were aware of of wrongful convictions a couple

00:06:29.360 of those people served 13 12 years in in difficult circumstances in prison ultimately there was a public

00:06:36.000 inquiry held looking into how that could happen at the end of which uh charles smith lost his license to

00:06:43.920 practice medicine he was fined a total of i think it was 2650 dollars and he lost his license to

00:06:54.000 practice uh he was never charged criminally of course and and he moved to another area he attempted to get

00:07:02.240 back into the medical field and the press actually caught up to him in saskatchewan and he went on then to

00:07:08.400 move to the west coast and he's still living free so there was a tiny fine tiny in relation to the

00:07:14.880 13 ruined lives uh and he lost his license to practice medicine you might say he there was some

00:07:21.360 accountability in that case but really it was just professional uh the profession closing ranks and

00:07:27.600 saying this guy was never qualified in the first place but literally there there has been no no

00:07:32.720 accountability in mr mailman and mr gillespie's case uh over half of the players the original police

00:07:39.520 officers prosecutors people that were involved are no longer alive so you just can't go back the the

00:07:46.480 other person that will never see justice in their case is the victim george lehman was brutally beaten

00:07:53.600 and set on fire it wasn't by mr mailman and mr gillespie but the saint john police force is not going to go

00:08:00.080 back after 40 years and try and reinvestigate that case witnesses are no longer around there were

00:08:06.240 other viable suspects had they been properly investigated at the time but they're not around

00:08:12.080 anymore either so do these these are victims as well you know the people who end up having to you know

00:08:19.360 lose their lives in prison for crimes they didn't commit uh what what kind of um you know financial

00:08:25.840 settlement will there be for both of these men what what can they expect to at least receive i mean

00:08:30.720 obviously we know that uh mailman has been diagnosed with terminal cancer he likely won't

00:08:36.480 live much longer now that he's actually free um but is are these men going to have any financial

00:08:42.240 compensation for having their lives just tripped away from them by the state one one would like to

00:08:46.880 think so but i can tell you uh that over half of the wrongly convicted individuals in this country

00:08:52.000 have never been compensated for what happened to them in this particular case the premier on thursday

00:08:59.360 passed held a state of the province address spoke for an hour never mentioned this case

00:09:05.520 a reporter put it to him in a scrum on the way out of that address asked him what about these two

00:09:10.560 wrongly convicted individuals his response was i'm going to get some advice on that uh i'll do the

00:09:17.120 right thing at the end of the day yesterday canadian press reporter uh put it in writing to the press

00:09:24.560 secretary for the new brunswick attorney general justice minister and said well when will the end

00:09:30.960 of the day be and what day will that be because mr mailman literally doesn't have very many days left

00:09:36.560 the reporter said that they were going to do a story on the premier's response and they got a written

00:09:43.760 response from the press secretary for the justice minister in new brunswick late in the day yesterday

00:09:49.360 afternoon and it was a one-liner saying uh the government has no comments on this case at this time

00:09:58.400 so the the federal justice minister overturned their convictions after we worked on their case for 20 years

00:10:07.200 we undermined all of the evidence that was there the chief justice in new brunswick

00:10:14.080 acquitted them and apologized in writing to them the following day on behalf of the courts the justice

00:10:21.600 minister attorney general in new brunswick and the premier have been silent and their silence says a lot

00:10:30.720 the people the people of new brunswick we are the justice system whether we like it or not we we

00:10:35.520 elect and appoint these people to represent us and we like to have a little bit of faith that they

00:10:40.800 they're not perfect they're human like the rest of us but we like to think that when they do make mistakes

00:10:46.080 especially serious ones like this but they'll at least man up and say it looks like we got this one wrong

00:10:51.760 we're going to do what little we can after 40 years to try and and compensate these gentlemen

00:10:58.320 but i couldn't i couldn't venture a guess as to whether they'll actually see anything

00:11:02.080 that's just unbelievable hard we're literally at we're literally in the position of doing interviews

00:11:08.640 with people like you to try and shame them into doing the right thing absolutely i think people

00:11:12.880 the people of new brunswick there's been several editorial letters and stuff written they want to

00:11:18.000 see these men compensated for what they've been through people of new brunswick are not mean-spirited

00:11:22.880 they're not called politicians but the reality is there may not be much political mileage in it

00:11:29.360 for the premier or the the justice minister to do the right thing at this point we have seen cases

00:11:35.360 sadly uh in other provinces and dangerously close in new brunswick 10 or 12 years ago there was an

00:11:41.920 aaron walsh case where mr walsh was also terminally ill and at the very last moment they gave him a small

00:11:49.040 settlement so he had a little something to leave his family but we have seen cases where

00:11:52.720 they have literally outweighed the victims and allowed them to die if mr mailman and mr gillespie

00:11:59.520 were still in prison and uh dying uh privately behind a stone wall someplace there probably would

00:12:06.960 be no attention given to it the fact that this is happening uh in public for us all to see is is

00:12:13.440 creating a bit of shame and you know we're still talking about this almost a month after they were

00:12:19.280 formally acquitted no i can't think of a better reason to shame uh politicians if they're not going

00:12:25.360 to actually admit their clear mistakes which they've done but do something to remedy that and at least

00:12:30.400 compensate people for ruining their lives now you're all too familiar with what happened to uh mailman and

00:12:36.560 gillespie having gone through this process yourself uh can you tell our audience what happened to you and

00:12:42.160 and why you're why you're so committed to battling on behalf of of people who have who are not guilty

00:12:48.320 of the crimes that they've been convicted of well as it happens 34 years ago i was serving a life sentence

00:12:55.200 alongside mr mailman and mr gillespie in the same federal maximum security prison in northern northern

00:13:01.200 new brunswick i had been convicted of a homicide back in the late 80s on the strength of a doctor's opinion

00:13:11.120 that my wife had been strangled and it turns out of course that she had died accidentally from choking

00:13:17.120 on some cereal and the medical misadventure was the kind term they put on it when she went to the emergency

00:13:23.280 room that evening it was in the charge of a student doctor who had never intubated or put a breathing tube

00:13:28.720 in a live patient before he attempted it he got it wrong he put it into her into her esophagus leading

00:13:36.000 to her stomach rather than into her airway and he sealed her fate but he also sealed my fate so it took

00:13:42.400 12 years from the time i was arrested until i was had my conviction overturned and a retrial happened

00:13:50.400 but that's that's where i first met mr mailman and mr gillespie and that was two or three years before

00:13:55.920 innocence canada was even formed so i was i was doing jailhouse lawyer work for them

00:14:01.680 typing up some letters and trying to get some media attention we were writing lawyers we were writing

00:14:07.040 politicians we were writing private investigators and media people the media at that time did quite a

00:14:13.120 good job in identifying the problems with them they just couldn't get anybody to listen

00:14:18.400 right well one of the one of the things that i know innocence canada highlights is the fact that

00:14:23.840 if this can happen to innocent men like yourself and robert millman and walter gillespie it can happen

00:14:29.680 to anyone right this is the this is why this is such an important issue that innocent people are being

00:14:35.040 convicted of crimes they're not they haven't done and if we don't actually put an end to this it can

00:14:39.840 happen to it can happen to anyone well i i've only met you today harrison but there's there's only you and

00:14:46.400 i that are perfect and some days i got to confess i'm not i mean we're all humans we make mistakes our

00:14:52.960 justice system is run by human beings and they make mistakes the problem is in the cover-up and the

00:15:01.360 refusal to admit the possibility that they may have made a mistake that not only leaves people like mr

00:15:07.760 mailman mr gillespie and myself in prison for something that they haven't done it also allows in

00:15:13.520 mr mailman and mr gillespie's case it allows a murderer to get away with it the the saint john

00:15:20.640 police force and the people who prosecuted mr mailman and mr gillespie were probably unknowingly but they

00:15:27.120 were complicit in allowing someone to get away with the murder of george lehman and that's not what we

00:15:33.680 expect from our justice system we expect better we deserve better we can't expect perfection but we

00:15:40.320 should expect people to acknowledge that they make mistakes and when they make mistakes and what's

00:15:45.200 the what do you tell your kids you know you you make a mistake you fess up to it and you take it on

00:15:50.880 the chin whatever your punishment is and you try and do better next time you learn from your mistakes

00:15:56.000 we're seeing the premier and the attorney general in new brunswick at the moment repeating mistakes that

00:16:03.120 have been made in other jurisdictions and in new brunswick 40 and 50 years ago and still burying their head

00:16:09.440 in the sand and ignoring it i want to go back to i want to go back to the politician angle here as you

00:16:17.840 just said the premier of new brunswick the attorney general they're not trying to address this they

00:16:21.600 want to try and perhaps wait it out as it appears they're doing but it this issue doesn't seem to be

00:16:26.960 an issue that politicians at any level want to really tackle or even address you but you've been in

00:16:32.880 this fight advocating um advocating for this have you noticed the same thing that politicians just

00:16:38.880 don't really care about this this fault this obvious fault in the justice system we we always

00:16:43.520 say there's not a lot of votes in justice we're a non-profit organization and we struggle with raising

00:16:49.760 money to exist so we're running around trying to fix the problems of the canadian justice system

00:16:55.600 and paying for the privilege of doing it and it's tough to raise money when you say you're getting

00:16:59.840 people out of prison not everyone understands that you're getting innocent people out of prison so

00:17:05.680 the same applies to the politicians they don't see the political mileage in addressing these mistakes i

00:17:13.840 think they're wrong to do that i think they would be well served politically to fess up to mistakes that

00:17:20.080 if they didn't personally make them then they're the head of a system that did somebody 40 years ago got

00:17:26.080 this one very wrong and for the last 40 years they've stuck to their guns now that it's been

00:17:31.600 demonstrated to the federal minister's satisfaction to the chief justice's satisfaction these men have

00:17:37.760 been acquitted they'll never go to trial again it's time to step up to the plate and say yes we're not

00:17:44.320 perfect we get things wrong let's do what we can for this in mr mailman's case this gentleman with a terminal

00:17:51.360 cancer diagnosis and in mr gillespie's case this 80 year old who's living in a bed sitting room the

00:17:58.480 the sad reality is mr gillespie the day before he was acquitted was living in a halfway house he had

00:18:05.600 a better room than what he has now he had better food it didn't cost him as much and he had a part-time

00:18:11.680 job there he was going around disinfecting surfaces and doorknobs and things for covid and they gave him a

00:18:17.280 couple hundred bucks a week for doing that he had some walking around money he got acquitted of a 40 year old

00:18:22.400 homicide and the next day had to move out he no longer has a half decent place to live he's in a hovel

00:18:28.800 and he lost his his part-time gig that he had you know at 80 years of age after 40 years of mistreatment by

00:18:36.640 the country you know we're all responsible for that uh that's that's no way to be treating him either

00:18:42.320 well it's uh it's almost it's almost sickening to hear that to be quite honest with you it's just

00:18:49.440 just horrible um ron before i let you go uh can you tell us a little bit about how canadians can

00:18:56.000 learn more about innocence canada where they can go and where they can go to support this group doing

00:19:01.200 this important work just about every canadian these days has one of these magic devices they

00:19:06.400 don't all have my grandson's picture on them but uh you only have to google innocence canada our

00:19:12.640 website is innocencecanada.com you'll find us there and there's there's histories there about cases that

00:19:19.360 we're working on we currently have over 100 cases that we're working on 75 of those are on a two to

00:19:25.120 three year wait list because we have very limited resources and we only look at homicide cases we only

00:19:31.760 look at them after all their legal remedies have been exhausted all their appeals they're if they've

00:19:37.760 gone to the provincial appeal level they've tried to get to the supreme court of canada when all else

00:19:42.160 has failed then we start working on case and sometimes as in mr mailman and mr gillespie's case

00:19:48.320 it's taken 20 years or more to unravel get to the truth and now that we've arrived at the truth

00:19:54.240 there's people still burying their heads and don't want to face the truth absolutely but look us look us

00:20:00.560 up we do good work we can we can use all the help anyone can get and and even just talk us up

00:20:05.520 making making people aware that there's somebody out there to help people in desperate straits like

00:20:10.240 mr melman and mr gillespie is helpful but so is so is talking to somebody like you who has an audience

00:20:16.960 you know you've got a pulpit so use it yep well absolutely and we appreciate you coming on and talking

00:20:24.400 to us about this and uh i will have links to innocence canada in the description of this video

00:20:29.680 wherever you're watching it so you can you can scroll down and you can access uh ways to ways to

00:20:35.680 interact with innocence canada ron thank you so much for coming on thank you

Juno News - January 31, 2024

Wrongful Conviction： The shocking state of Canada’s justice system

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