‘Relieved’: charges stayed before new trial for wrongfully convicted man

Robert Stewart Sanderson spent 25 years in prison for a triple murder and has always maintained his innocence.

Now, just days after the province’s highest court ordered a new trial in his case, Crown prosecutors have formally stayed all charges against Sanderson, lifting the weight of criminal guilt and adding another stain to the legacy of late Crown attorney George Dangerfield, whose name has become synonymous with wrongful convictions in Manitoba.

“I’m relieved it’s finally done,” Sanderson said when reached by phone at his Victoria, B.C. home Monday. “It’s hard having it hang over your head all the time.”

But while Sanderson is grateful the charges have been stayed, absent a full exoneration by the court he knows there will always be those who think he is guilty.

“All it does is clear my record, this is not clearing my name,” he said.

Sanderson, who is Métis and supports himself making jewelry and art carvings, said he has lost job opportunities because of his murder convictions and expects that will continue to be the case.

“It’s a stigma, it’s always going to be there,” he said. “It’s not something I will get rid of.”

Sanderson was one of three men convicted of first-degree murder in the August 1996 killings of Russell Krowetz, Stefan Zurstegge and James Gross. All three men were found dead inside Krowetz’s Semple Avenue home, the victims of what police at the time believed was an eruption of gang violence over control of street prostitution in Winnipeg.

At Sanderson’s trial, a Crown expert testified that hair seized from a leg of one of the deceased was “more likely” to belong to Sanderson, evidence that Dangerfield argued showed Sanderson “left a piece of himself at the crime scene.” Advanced DNA testing in 2004 showed the hair couldn’t have come from Sanderson.

While one of Sanderson’s co-accused, Roger Sanderson (no relation), was ultimately acquitted after three trials, Robert Sanderson’s appeal was dismissed by the Manitoba Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his case.

Sanderson was released on parole in 2021.

Later it came to light that a key Crown witness, Brent Stevenson, was paid after his testimony and had all but one of his criminal charges stayed. Stevenson testified that Roger Sanderson confessed to the killings and identified Robert Sanderson as one of his co-conspirators. In a deal that wasn’t disclosed until Roger Sanderson’s appeal in 1999, the Winnipeg Police Service paid Stevenson $15,000 and relocated him outside of Manitoba.

Innocence Canada applied to the federal justice minister to review Sanderson’s case in 2017. In 2023, then-federal justice minister David Lametti found there were grounds to believe a miscarriage of justice had occurred and referred his case to the Manitoba Court of Appeal.

In a written decision issued May 30, the appeal court quashed Sanderson’s murder convictions and ordered a new trial.

On Monday, the Crown formally stayed all charges against Sanderson.

“The Crown has determined that since the accused has served the entire custodial portion of his sentence and poses little risk to reoffend, the public interest is not served by a new trial, notwithstanding the seriousness of the offences charged,” prosecutors said in documents filed in Manitoba Court of King’s Bench.

Dangerfield, who died in 2023, was the lead prosecutor in the wrongful murder convictions of at least eight men, including Kyle Unger, James Driskell, Thomas Sophonow and Frank Ostrowski.

Most recently, Clarence Clifford Woodhouse, Allan Woodhouse and Brian Anderson were acquitted in the 1974 murder of Winnipeg restaurant worker Ting Fong Chan.

A fourth man convicted in the killing, Russell Woodhouse, died in 2011. Innocence Canada is seeking to quash his conviction as well.

Sanderson said he wanted to take his case back to court.

“The biggest reason I wanted to go to court was to get (Dangerfield) on the stand,” he said. “Then I found out he died.”

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca