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Erin Walsh was convicted of the second degree murder of Melvin Eugene "Chi Chi" Peters, an African Canadian.  The crown alleged that Walsh's motive in the killing was racial animosity.  They did not consider that he grew up in a housing project surrounded by African Canadians.  Walsh claimed that Donald McMillan, David Walton, and Peters twice attempted to rob him of his money and drugs. He testified that after their first attempt, he managed to escape, and ran to some nearby CNR workers, begging them to call the police, which they did. When he then tried to make his way to his car to escape, the would-be robbers found him again.  This time they forced him into the front, middle seat of his car at gunpoint. Walsh struggled for possession of the gun, but ultimately it ended up in the hands of McMillan, where it discharged and killed Peters.  There was no evidence to corroborate Walsh's testimony.  The crown had McMillan and Walton testify to a different story.  Following Walsh's conviction, he spent the next twenty years in prison.

In 2003, Walsh wrote to the New Brunswick Provincial Archives and received the complete crown file of his case. In it were reports that were completely exculpatory of him and which supported his version of events:  (1) Less than an hour after the fatal shooting, a St. John police officer heard one of the robbers, Walton, ask the other robber, McMillan, why he shot Peters.  (2) A local store owner stated that the shells used in the gun were purchased one day before McMillan said they were purchased, when Walsh was a thousand miles away from St. John.  (3) Seven witnesses signed statements attesting that Walsh ran away from McMillan, Walton, and Peters after they had attempted to rob him at gunpoint just prior to forcing him into the car. These witnesses supported Walsh's claim that he asked people to call the police just 10 minutes before Peters was shot.  In Mar. 2008, after a Federal Justice and the NB Attorney General agreed that a miscarriage of justice had occurred, the Court of Appeals quashed Walsh's conviction.  (CBC)  [6/08]

Steven Murray Truscott was sentenced to death for the murder of his 12-year-old schoolmate, Lynn Harper.  Harper disappeared near RCAF Clinton, an air force station, a few miles south of Clinton, Ontario.  Truscott and Harper were 7th grade classmates at the same school.  On the early evening of June 9, 1959, Truscott, then 14, gave Harper a ride on the crossbar of his bicycle from the vicinity of the school and the two traveled north along Country Road.  Truscott maintained that he dropped her off unharmed at the intersection of Country Road and Highway 8.  He said she told him she had squabbled with her parents and planned to hitch a ride somewhere.  He said that after dropping her off he looked back and saw that a vehicle had stopped and that Harper was in the process of entering it.  Harper's father reported her missing at 11:20 that evening.

Two days later Harper was found in a wooded lot off of Country Road.  She had been raped and murdered.  Within hours Truscott was arrested and charged with Harper's murder.  At trial, all evidence against him was circumstantial and centered on placing Harper's death within a narrow time frame which implicated him.  A pathologist testified that Harper died between 7:00 and 7:45 p.m. – an extremely precise determination even by today's forensic standards.  Years later, the pathologist would amend his testimony and place Harper's death within a 12-hour time frame.  Truscott was convicted and sentenced to hang, but four months later his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.  In 1966, Isabel LeBourdais rekindled interest in the case by publishing The Trial of Steven Truscott in which she argued that Truscott had been convicted of a crime he did not commit.  In 1969, Truscott was released on parole and in 1974 the National Parole Board released him from the terms and conditions of his parole.

In 2000 interest in the case was again revived after a documentary on Truscott appeared on CBC's "The Fifth Estate."  Subsequently, journalist Julian Scher published a book on him entitled Until You Are Dead.  Both of these sources suggested that significant evidence in favour of Truscott had been ignored at his trial.  In 2001, lawyers filed an appeal to have the case reopened.  In 2007, the Ontario Court of Appeal acquitted Truscott, and in 2008, Truscott was awarded $6.5 million for his wrongful conviction and imprisonment.  (CBC)  [7/08]

Robert Stewart, Richard Mallory, Richard Trudel, and James Sauvé were convicted of the murders of 24-year-old Michel Giroux and his 27-year-old pregnant common-law wife, Manon Bourdeau.  The victims were shot to death at their home on Queen Street in the Ottawa suburb of Cumberland.  Stewart and Trudel were distribution-level drug dealers, while Mallory and Sauvé were their enforcers.  Giroux was a retail-level drug dealer.  According to the Crown, Giroux owed money to Stewart and Stewart ordered his killing as an example to other drug dealers who owed him money.

All four defendants were arrested in Dec. 1990 and charged with the murders.  The case against the four was built around the testimony of Denis Gaudreault who allegedly drove the four to the murder scene.  The proceedings that followed were reportedly the longest and most expensive in Canadian history, costing the government $31 million.  The case was a "cash cow" for the legal profession.  The CBC unearthed evidence that a lawyer's wife was paid $250,000 to transcribe some court documents.  Trudel and Sauvé were convicted in May 1996.  Stewart and Mallory were convicted in Feb. 2000.

Police had given out false information about the murders to identify false informants.  This information was published in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper and Gaudreault identified himself as a false informant by repeating this information to police.  Gaudreault subsequently said he drove Trudel and Mallory to the murder scene in a red pick-up truck.  Police then located a white Cadillac that Trudel had been driving.  It actually belonged to Sauvé, but Trudel had given it to Stewart for repairs.  Since Stewart left it at a bar parking lot, and Sauvé was not in the bar, police impounded it as abandoned.  They then connected all four defendants to this car.  Sauvé had a previous conviction for manslaughter.  Thinking Sauvé might be involved, police falsely told Gaudreault that they had a witness who said that Sauvé committed the murders.  Gaudreault quickly accommodated this idea and changed his story to say he drove all four defendants to the murder scene in Sauvé's Cadillac.  Gaudreault's final version of his story was that he and Stewart remained in the car while Sauvé and the other two entered Giroux' house and committed the murders.  Police never found Gaudreault's fingerprints in or on the car.  Gaudreault did not possess a driver's license.

Ontario Provincial Police took Gaudreault on a drive to determine the route he took to the murder scene.  They videotaped the drive.  During the drive, Gaudreault could not find the victims' house, despite driving by it four times.  The newspaper had reported the wrong address.  Gaudreault then asked officers' if they were going the right way.  Besides Gaudreault, other informants testified that one or more of the defendants confessed to the crime.  Stewart and Mallory began calling themselves the “Monopoly Boys” because all any inmate had to do was testify that they heard a confession and they got a “Get Out of Jail Free” card and lots of cash.

In 2007, the convictions of all four defendants were dismissed and charges were stayed.  A judge ruled that the case had been “ravaged over time and the sixteen-year delays due to adjournments, improper disclosure, lost evidence and witnesses lying under oath, calls into question the integrity of the justice system.”  (www.kangaroojustice.com)  (National Post) (Toronto Star)  [4/08]

Baltovich was convicted in 1992 of murdering his 22-year-old girlfriend, Elizabeth Bain, even though her body was never found.  Bain was last seen Tuesday June 19, 1990 on the University of Toronto's Scarborough Campus.  Her car was found the following Friday, parked at an auto body shop near campus.  Blood was pooled on the floor in the back, suggesting she was murdered.

No physical evidence connects Baltovich to the alleged murder.  According to the crown, Baltovich killed Bain by 7 p.m. on the day of her disappearance.  However, Baltovich was seen waiting to meet her outside a 9 p.m. class that she took.  The crown also argued that Baltovich drove Bain's car after 1 a.m. Friday morning to Lake Scugog, an hour's drive north of Toronto.  He then allegedly buried her body in the mud of the lake before returning to Toronto by 6 a.m.  However, Baltovich reportedly could not drive Bain's car because it had a manual transmission.

Since Baltovich's conviction, his lawyers have argued that serial killer Paul Bernardo is a stronger suspect than Baltovich in Bain's murder.  At the time of Bain's disappearance, Bernardo was known as the Scarborough rapist.  An award winning book called No Claim to Mercy by Derek Finkle was written about Baltovich's case in 1998.  Following a hearing in September 2004, the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered a new trial, citing an unfair and unbalanced charge to jury during the first trial.  At retrial in 2008, the crown presented no evidence and urged the jury to acquit Baltovich, which the jury promptly did.

The crown's sudden decision not to retry Baltovich was apparently prompted by one of its witnesses.  Four days before the retrial, the victim's father, Rick Bain, told the crown that his daughter told him of an imminent rendezvous with Baltovich on the day of her murder.  Since the witness had never mentioned this conversation before, he presumably was planning to perjure himself in an effort to convict Baltovich.  Disclosure rules forced the crown had to inform the defence of the conversation.  Even if the witness stuck to his previous testimony, the defence could use his reported conversation to undermine his credibility.  (InjusticeBusters) (AIDWYC)  [4/08]

Ontario

Dimitre Dimitrov

Feb 21, 1996 (Vanier)

Dimitre Dimitrov was convicted in 1999 of murdering his friend and landlord, Hristo Veltchev, 37.  Veltchev's body was found in a public parking lot, stuffed in the trunk of his car.  Evidence indicated that he had been bludgeoned to death in the garage of his house.  Dimitrov's conviction was based on expert testimony that his feet matched impressions found inside a pair of bloody boots at the victim's house.  The boots were found in a front hall closet in the house.  The closet was used by all the boarders of the house including Dimitrov.  Apart from the expert's testimony, there was no evidence Dimitrov owned or had worn the boots.  A retrial was ordered in 2003 after a court ruled that the impression evidence was inadmissible to establish positive identification unless it was accompanied by corroborating evidence.  At retrial in 2004, DNA test results were presented, which showed that the blood on the boots belonged neither to the victim, nor to Dimitrov, nor to anyone else known to have entered the house.  Dimitrov was acquitted.  He had spent 4 1/2 years imprisoned.  (JD30 p8)  [5/08]

Proulx was convicted in 1991 of murdering his ex-girlfriend, 19-year-old France Alain.  Alain, a University of Laval student, was shot in the hip near the CHRC radio station in Sainte-Foy.  She died a short time later.  Proulx was a reporter at the station and had been working the night of the murder.  In 1986 the case file was closed as the coroner was unable to establish any contact between Proulx and Alain on the night of the murder.

Subsequently, Proulx launched a defamation suit against a radio station and a retired police investigator for comments they made concerning his guilt.  In 1991, in the midst of this suit, the suit defendants advised the prosecution of a potential new witness.  The witness claimed that after seeing Proulx's photo in the newspaper, he recognized Proulx's eyes as being the eyes of a bearded man he saw near the crime scene on the night of the murder.  The witness could not at first formally identify Proulx.  Nevertheless he identified Proulx at trial and Proulx was convicted.  In 1992, the Quebec Court of Appeal quashed the conviction due to serious trial irregularities.  It also noted that the presented evidence was insufficient to support the conviction.  The court entered a verdict of acquittal.

Following his acquittal, Proulx sued the Attorney General of Quebec for malicious prosecution and won a judgment of $1.15 million.  However, the judgment was reversed on appeal.  Proulx was awarded $1.6 million for his wrongful imprisonment.  (InjusticeBusters) (Canadian S.C. Opinions)  [4/08]