Court rules man convicted, later acquitted in Candace Derksen’s slaying can sue province, city

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This article was published 26/09/2023 (757 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Court of King’s Bench has ruled a man who was acquitted after spending 10 years in prison for the 1984 slaying of 13-year-old Candace Derksen can continue to sue the province and the City of Winnipeg for wrongful conviction and imprisonment.

In a lawsuit initially filed in October 2019, Mark Grant, who is in his late 50s, accused police of conducting a negligent investigation and Manitoba justice officials of malicious prosecution. His statement of claim was amended twice, most recently in January 2022.

The provincial government’s lawyers then filed a motion that sought to have Grant’s lawsuit dismissed, alleging it fails to disclose a reasonable cause of action or is an abuse of process.

In a decision issued last Friday, Court of King’s Bench Senior Master Karen Clearwater dismissed the province’s motion, except for one paragraph of the claim relating to an alleged systemic problem of wrongful convictions in Manitoba, which she said does not contain material facts related to his claim against the defendants.

She said that although the province has a strong defence against Grant’s allegations, the facts have been sufficiently pleaded in court to proceed.

“If (the material facts are) proved, a cause of action for malicious prosecution could be supported at law,” Clearwater wrote.

Derksen went missing Nov. 30, 1984, on her way home from school in Winnipeg’s Elmwood neighbourhood. Six weeks later, she was found frozen to death and hog-tied in an industrial storage shed.

Grant was arrested in 2007, after police purportedly matched DNA found on twine used to bind Derksen’s limbs with Grant’s DNA.

He was found guilty of second-degree murder following a 2011 jury trial, but the Manitoba Court of Appeal later overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial.

The Appeal Court ruled the trial judge erred by not allowing the jury to hear evidence another young girl had reportedly been abducted in a similar way in September 1985, when Grant was in custody.

The appeal justices also took into account shortcomings of the DNA evidence.

Manitoba Justice appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada, which upheld the order for a new trial.

Grant stood trial again in 2017 and was acquitted after a judge ruled the DNA evidence against him was unreliable and had no value.

At trial, DNA experts called to testify for the defence told court analysis conducted by Molecular World, a Thunder Bay-based DNA lab was “fatally flawed” and “scientifically corrupt.”

Grant’s lawsuit alleged the lab “manipulated” test results to conform with Winnipeg police investigators’ theory of the case and that prosecutors relied on evidence that was flawed or unreliable.

Grant is suing for $8.5 million in damages.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca