Among horrors, there were heroes in exoneration fight

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This article was published 19/07/2023 (825 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 1974, during a sham trial for four Indigenous men accused of murder — where no evidence beyond falsified confessions written by Winnipeg police were presented — the judge admonished the accused, saying: “This is not a jungle. This is not wild land. We are no longer taking land from wild people. This is our country.”

If this was what the judge — the one person expected to be impartial and fair — believed about Indigenous people, imagine what those who put him on that bench thought.

On Tuesday, two of those men, Brian Anderson and Allan Woodhouse, were exonerated by Court of King’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal, almost 50 years to the day after being charged with the 1973 killing of Ting Fong Chan, 40.

Anderson and Woodhouse, of course, weren’t savage Indians trying to take people’s land, but quiet teenagers who moved to Winnipeg for work from their homes at Pinaymootang (formerly Fairford) First Nation.

Both spoke Ojibway and almost no English — later proving their “confessions” to Winnipeg police, written in perfect English, were forgeries.

Joyal and Crown prosecutor Michelle Jules both recognized systemic and individual racism played primary roles in the convictions of the two men.

“Our justice system failed,” Jules announced to the court. “We owe them and their families an apology.”

“You are innocent. You deserve acquittals,” Joyal said. “Your stories are stories of courage and resilience… You are heroes in every sense of the word.”

For Anderson and Woodhouse, their half-century fight wasn’t just to clear their names; it was a battle against the entire Manitoba justice system.

At nearly every step along the way, it worked to ensure the two men (along with Russell Woodhouse and Clarence Woodhouse) would be found guilty, sent to jail, and kept there. (Russell Woodhouse, convicted of manslaughter, has since died. The whereabouts of Clarence Woodhouse, convicted of murder, wasn’t immediately clear.)

This isn’t hyperbole and points fingers at the Winnipeg police, Manitoba Crown, defence lawyers, parole boards, prison psychologists, parole officers, and on and on.

In particular, Crown prosecutor George Dangerfield — whose 30-year legacy is now known for being responsible for the most wrongful convictions in Canada — not only ignored the issues with the “confessions,” but allegations they were obtained with violence.

Defence lawyers shared the blame, too, ignoring evidence during the trial that could have helped exonerate the men. Anderson, for example, had an alibi: his grandfather, who wasn’t asked to testify.

While in jail, psychologists and parole boards called Anderson “racist against white people” and “at risk for flight, due to trying to prove his innocence,” because he refused to accept responsibility for a murder he did not commit.

After leaving jail, Anderson and Woodhouse faced decades of parole officers who put limits on their movement and denied their claims of innocence.

During the struggle, though, some brave lights were found.

For Anderson, it was Dick Skelding, a teacher he met in the Saskatchewan Penitentiary. Skelding eventually paid for a polygraph test (which Anderson passed) and wrote 20 letters to authorities advocating for him.

Word eventually reached CTV investigative news show W5 and journalist Lloyd Robertson, who covered Anderson’s story in 1978 — accusing the Winnipeg police and Manitoba justice system of collusion.

While Skelding died in 1983, his gestures weren’t forgotten. On Tuesday, he was recognized as a hero, too.

Anderson and Woodhouse’s families — who packed the Winnipeg courtroom and applauded when Joyal finally exonerated the two men — had their own fights, too.

In 2017, lawyers and volunteers at Innocence Canada, a non-profit national organization dedicated to righting the wrongfully convicted, picked up the Anderson and Woodhouse cases.

Jerome Kennedy, Bhavan Sodhi and James Lockyer prepared thousands of documents and spent hundreds of hours lobbying courts and the federal government to finally triumph last month, when Justice Minister David Lametti ordered a new trial for Anderson and Woodhouse.

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Outside the Winnipeg courthouse, Woodhouse recognized another of his heroes: my father, Murray Sinclair, who taught Woodhouse law at the University of Manitoba after he received parole in 1990.

“He gave me hope that justice could take place,” Woodhouse recalled, adding with a laugh: “He was an easy grader, though.”

On Tuesday, a group of heroes — Indigenous and Canadian: two men, their families, a teacher, and a group of lawyers and volunteers — won.

They proved justice can eventually prevail, but justice may need to be defeated first.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Niigaan Sinclair
Columnist

Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe and is a columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.

   Read full biography