Province shifting blame for wrongful convictions no surprise

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/01/2025 (259 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are two things you can count on when the justice system admits it was responsible for a wrongful conviction.

The first is that all levels of government will express deep regret about what happened.

The second is when it comes time to pay compensation to the victim of that wrongful conviction, those same levels of government will immediately start pointing fingers at each other.

Such is the scenario facing Brian Anderson and Allan (A.J.) Woodhouse, two Indigenous men wrongfully convicted of murder in 1973.

Lawyers for Anderson and Woodhouse, as is the tradition in cases of confirmed miscarriages of justice, filed civil suits against the provincial, federal and municipal governments. In the statements of defence filed with the court in Winnipeg, all three levels of government made heroic efforts to diminish or deny their liability.

Ottawa and the City of Winnipeg filed statements of defence in May arguing they hold no liability for the pain and suffering of Anderson and Woodhouse.

The most recent statement of defence, filed on behalf of the provincial government, is a triumph of buck passing.

In the document, obtained by the Free Press, the province acknowledged Anderson and Woodhouse were innocent but argued the prosecutor on the case, George Dangerfield, was not responsible for the miscarriage of justice. The statement of defence argued the investigating police officers “unlawfully” coerced false confessions from the men. As a result, liability should rest solely with the city.

“The government of Manitoba and the attorney general for Manitoba had no knowledge of the falsity of the confession and bear no responsibility for the miscarriage of justice that it occasioned,” the statement read. “The prosecuting Crown attorneys relied upon the information, records, evidence and other disclosure given to them by the members of the WPS in making the decision to charge the plaintiff.

“Any loss or damage sustained by the plaintiff, as alleged, was caused or significantly contributed to by third parties for whom Manitoba is not responsible.”

Manitoba Justice is not wrong in pointing a finger at police.

In this case, the “confessions” entered as evidence at the original trial were highly suspect given Anderson and Woodhouse, whose first language was Ojibwa/Saulteaux, had only a rudimentary grasp of English, and police refused to bring in translators.

Anderson and Woodhouse testified they were denied legal representation and subjected to threats, coercion and racial slurs as police pursued confessions. At a July 2023 hearing in the Court of King’s Bench in which Chief Justice Glenn Joyal declared the men to be factually innocent, Manitoba Prosecution Service executive director Michele Jules agreed the confessions were “entirely manufactured by police detectives.”

The city strenuously denied this allegation and argued in its own statement of defence the “arrest(s) and questioning (of Anderson and Woodhouse) was a reasonable and prudent step in the context of the inquiry the police were then undertaking.”

There is no doubt the confessions were fabricated and that they were fabricated at the hands of investigating officers. However, does that on its own absolve the province, and in particular Dangerfield (who died in 2023), from any liability?

Absolutely not.

It’s important to note Dangerfield has been involved in five wrongful convictions involving seven men who collectively spent more than 100 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. An eighth man who died in 2011, Russell Woodhouse, has yet to have his manslaughter conviction quashed. Dangerfield’s prosecutions have prompted two costly judicial inquiries and led to millions of dollars in compensation.

Before his death, Dangerfield and his superiors at Manitoba Justice consistently argued they were not ultimately responsible because they were working with raw material provided by police. If police withheld exculpatory evidence, coerced a witness or manipulated physical evidence using junk science, then the fault lies with them and not the prosecutor.

Manitoba Justice has denied there is any pattern to Dangerfield’s cases or that the prosecutor was guilty of deliberate efforts to convict the wrong people.

After five cases — two of which were examined by inquiries — it would be completely dishonest to argue Dangerfield was merely a passive shepherd of evidence provided by police.

At the inquiries into the wrongful murder convictions of Thomas Sophonow and James Driskell, Dangerfield admitted he had failed to disclose key evidence.

Moreover, the attempts to shift liability to police ignores the fact the same willful blindness, overreliance on junk science, non-disclosure of exculpatory evidence and secret witness deals occurred in more than one of his wrongful convictions.

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This statement of defence is, when all is said and done, a continued effort by Manitoba Justice to defend Dangerfield and to shield him from criticism.

In the acquittal hearings for Anderson and Allan Woodhouse, and in the statement of defence in the civil suits, there is a clear acknowledgement by the province that it shares some liability for these wrongful convictions.

But nowhere is there an admission that Manitoba, and not the city, employed a prosecutor who wrongly imprisoned these men.

No degree of finger pointing will erase that fact.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca

Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.