DONALD MARSHALL
Donald Marshall’s ordeal began late one night in 1971 when he and Sandy Seale, a female acquaintance, took a walk through a park in Sydney, N.S. The teenagers attempted to rob an older man named Roy Ebsary. A scuffle ensued and Seale was fatally stabbed.
Police launched an investigation that focused on Marshall. Police charged him with murder, and the 17-year-old aboriginal was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
He languished there until 1982, when the RCMP reviewed his case. Marshall was acquitted the following year. Ebsary was charged and convicted of manslaughter. He spent a year in jail.
In 1987, a royal commission began to investigate the case. Two years later, it concluded that “the criminal justice system failed Donald Marshall Jr. at virtually every turn.”
The commission also determined that the police and judiciary had acted unprofessionally and incompetently, and that racism was a factor in the wrongful conviction. It recommended an independent review mechanism be instituted to look into allegations of wrongful conviction.
Marshall was awarded a lifetime pension of $1.5 million in compensation.
Marshall had another brush with the law in 1996, when he was convicted for illegally catching and selling eels out of season and without a license.
Three years later, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that his activities were valid under treaties between aboriginals and the colonial government in the 1760s.
Three years ago, Marshall was arrested and charged with attempted murder for allegedly attempting to run over a man with his car after a New Year’s Eve party. The charges were dropped after both men agreed to participate in a healing circle.
Marshall, who suffered from pulmonary disease, died in August 2009. He was 55.
STEPHEN TRUSCOTT
One of the most controversial cases in Canadian legal history is rooted in the 1959 murder of 12-year-old Lynne Harper.
Get daily National news
Harper was seen with 14-year-old Vancouver student Stephen Truscott before she disappeared near Clinton, Ont. Her naked body was found two days later; she had been raped and strangled.
Truscott was sentenced to hang, and spent four months in the shadow of the gallows – Canada’s youngest ever death row inmate — until his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Paroled in 1969, Truscott disappeared into an anonymous existence in a southern Ontario city.
On Aug. 28, 2007 – 48 years later – the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously overturned Truscott’s conviction and acquitted him, declaring the case "a miscarriage of justice" that "must be quashed."
The judges went on to say, however, that "the court is not satisfied that the appellant has been able to demonstrate his factual innocence."
In July 2008, the Ontario government announced it would pay Truscott $6.5 million in compensation for his ordeal.
DAVID MILGAARD
David Milgaard was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison for the 1969 murder of Saskatoon nursing aide Gail Miller.
Milgaard appealed to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal but his case was dismissed.
A man who lived in Miller’s neighbourhood, Larry Fisher, was arrested for the rape of a woman in North Battleford in 1980. Several months later, Fisher’s ex-wife called the Saskatoon police, saying she believed Fisher killed Miller.
But the police did not investigate the lead, and Milgaard languished in prison for almost two decades while his mother, Joyce, tried to garner support for her son’s case.
Justice Minister Kim Campbell asked the Supreme Court of Canada to review of the case in 1991, but it was again set aside. It took another five years for DNA evidence to clear Milgaard of the crime.
He was awarded $10 million by the Saskatchewan government in 1999, the same year Fisher was found guilty of raping and murdering Miller.
A provincial judicial inquiry was released in 2008. It concluded that “the criminal justice system failed David Milgaard.”
ERIN WALSH
It took a jury just one hour to find Erin Walsh guilty of the 1975 second-degree murder of Melvin (Chi Chi) Peters in Saint John, N.B. The prosecution saw it as an open-and-shut case, and Walsh received a life sentence with no parole before 10 years.
Walsh’s appeals to the New Brunswick Court of Appeal were dismissed in July and November 1982.
In December 2006, however, his lawyers sought a review of the murder conviction from the federal government after new evidence came to light.
In February 2008, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson ordered a review of the murder conviction because of the new evidence, suggesting a miscarriage of justice likely occurred.
A month later, the New Brunswick Court of Appeal acquitted Walsh of the crime and overturned his conviction.
Walsh, a native of Ontario who had maintained his innocence for more than 32 years, was dying of colon cancer and wanted his name cleared.
GUY PAUL MORIN
In 1985, Guy Paul Morin was arrested for the abduction and murder of a Christine Jessop, the nine-year-old girl who lived next door to him in Queensville, Ont.
The little girl’s decomposing body was discovered 50 km east of Queensville in December 1984, almost three months after her abduction. An autopsy revealed she had died of stab wounds and was likely raped.
Morin was charged in the murder. He proclaimed his innocence, and was acquitted in the first trial due to lack of anything but circumstantial evidence.
But the Crown appealed the verdict and he was tried again. The nine-month trial in 1992 ended with a conviction – despite evidence pointing to police wrongdoing and controversy about Crown tactics.
He was sentenced to life in prison. The following year, however, he was granted bail amid a groundswell of support for his case.
In 1995, DNA evidence finally ruled out Morin as the killer, and he was exonerated. An inquiry into the case uncovered evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct as well as misrepresentation of forensic evidence by the Ontario Centre of Forensic Sciences.
Comments
Want to discuss? Please read our Commenting Policy first.