Time to do right thing for wrongfully convicted

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/01/2020 (2085 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sitting in a classroom, inside the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Tragically Hip.

It was Friday afternoon, and the relentless afternoon snow was starting to gather in enormous drifts near the windows. Inside, more than 100 people had come to see a most remarkable sight: a panel of men who collectively spent decades in prison for crimes they did not commit.

The stories were harrowing: lost lives, lost opportunities, lost relationships. Although the cases were unique in their own ways, they all shared a common experience: a life profoundly interrupted and never properly resumed.

It got me thinking about one of the most famous lines uttered by frontman Gord Downie in the 1992 Hip song, Wheat Kings, a mournful account of David Milgaard’s 1970 wrongful conviction for murder: “Twenty years for nothing, well, that’s nothing new / Besides, no one’s interested in something you didn’t do.”

Over my career, I have reported extensively on five different cases of wrongful conviction, including the Milgaard case in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before it came to national attention. Those stories taught me a lot about society and human nature, including this harsh reality: as Downie so eloquently noted, far too few of us care about something someone didn’t do.

When someone claims innocence in the court of public opinion, most citizens tend to wrap themselves in a cocoon of comforting disbelief. We do so because it’s easier to disbelieve someone’s incredible claims of innocence than to accept the justice system, the thing supposed to be our buffer between order and anarchy, could make such a horrible mistake.

Journalists who have worked on wrongful conviction stories do not fall prey to the same sense of disbelief. We are able to avoid it largely because we have one advantage the average person does not: we have looked deep into the eyes of the people claiming innocence.

Listen carefully, and victims of wrongful conviction will tell you about years lost to incarceration, ravages of prison life, stigma that stains them for years after they were exonerated. Listen closely to the tales of damaged relationships, estranged children and spouses, psychological trauma, and generally compromised health.

Then, and only then, can you grasp the magnitude of the inhumanity of wrongful convictions. Only then can you start caring about something someone didn’t do.

This was no doubt one of the lessons learned by the 100 or so people who shared the CMHR classroom Friday for a special one-day conference to inform and encourage the federal government to create a better system for reviewing claims of wrongful conviction.

The cases highlighted at this conference spanned a period of nearly 50 years: Brian Anderson, convicted of murder in 1974; Milgaard; Thomas Sophonow, convicted of murder in 1982; Frank Ostrowski, convicted of murder in 1987; and James Driskell, convicted of murder in 1991.

It was a pleasant coincidence the conference took place just 48 hours before the federal Liberal cabinet gathers in Winnipeg for its annual policy retreat. A coincidence that could not have come at a better time for the victims of wrongful conviction.

In last fall’s federal election, the Liberals pledged to create an independent commission to review wrongful convictions, similar to one in the United Kingdom. This pledge is no simple matter.

An independent commission must come with adequate resources to investigate claims of innocence, and provide applicants with adequate legal representation, two things that do not exist now.

Currently, Ottawa can use a section of the Criminal Code to quash a conviction, order a new trial, or free an applicant and order that no further trial take place. However, applications can drag on for decades and, given no formal financial support is provided, applicants are often forced to seek a lawyer willing to work for free. That prevents many worthy applicants from getting their cases reviewed.

As the Liberal government moves towards an independent commission, it should remember two important realities.

First, in making this pledge, the Liberals are wading into an area of public policy where they will find little support. Except for the actual victims and their supporters, almost no one will laud you for creating a new agency that, if successful, will lead to a new raft of overturned criminal convictions.

Every confirmed case of wrongful conviction is a bruise on the integrity of the justice system. Even when it is the right thing to do, it makes people uncomfortable.

The second thing the Liberals should remember is expectations among the confirmed and likely victims of wrongful conviction are now running high.

At the CMHR conference, the men who served time for crimes they didn’t commit expressed unmitigated confidence the Liberals would deliver on their pledge.

Some, such as Anderson, have interpreted the promise as proof their plight has finally been acknowledged and accepted as a live issue of public policy.

“People didn’t hear us back then,” said Anderson, who has an application for review under the current Criminal Code process to have his conviction overturned. “People hear us now.”

In making its pledge, the federal government has demonstrated it has heard the victims of wrongful conviction and their supporters.

But it should go further, meet with them, look deep into their eyes, learn to care about something someone didn’t do.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca