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Last
fall's sessions of the Lamer Inquiry | see also Milgaard
inquiry | Judge
Baynton's decision in Klassen/Kvello case
Greg
Parsons starved into settlement
| Ronald Dalton | Randy
Druken | Jerome Kennedy
Lamer Inquiry:
Nfld
Beginning
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Top Prosecutor Testifies
at Lamer Inquiry
June 7, 2005, Newfoundland
Broadcasting Company
Tom Mills is the Director of
Public Prosecutions for the province today he was on the stand
at the Lamer Inquiry where he was questioned about how Crown
Attorney's handle cases.
Mr. Mills was not head of the
department but worked in the department at the time of the Gregory
Parsons and Randy Druken cases. Under questioning by Mr. Parson's
lawyer Jerome Kennedy Mr. Mills was asked if he thought enough
changes had been made in the prosecutions office to prevent wrongful
convictions he told the inquiry he couldn't guarantee it, but
says heightened awareness about wrongful convictions helps prevent
them. Mr. Mills told the inquiry that prosecutors have been educated
with regards to hearsay evidence and inflammatory remarks to
jury's since the Parsons case he admits mistakes were made, but
says there's no evidence of tunnel vision on the part of prosecutors.
In response, Jerome Kennedy
said he believed there was tunnel vision, but also said he's
encouraged by some of the progress made in the way prosecutors
handle cases. On Wednesday the Inquiry will deal with systemic
issues that pertain to the delay in the Dalton case where Ronald
Dalton spent eight years in prison awaiting his appeal.
Tom Mills
Mistakes made, prosecutions
director says
CBC, Jun 8, 2005
ST. JOHN'S The province's director of public
prosecutions says his office made mistakes in the early 1990s
when it handled two controversial murder cases.
Tom Mills told the Lamer inquiry,
though, that prosecutors did the best job they could when they
prosecuted Randy Druken and Greg Parsons.
Mistakes were made in the prosecutions
of Greg Parsons (above) and Randy Druken, says the current director
of public prosecutions.
Mills, who was appointed director after the cases were prosecuted,
said these mistakes included an overuse of hearsay evidence,
although he insisted these mistakes were neither intentional
nor malicious.
Druken who was convicted of
murdering girlfriend Brenda Marie Young, served more than six
years in prison before he was released on appeal.
Later, DNA evidence proved
he was not the murderer.
Parsons was convicted of the
murder of his mother, Catherine Carroll, before being exonerated.
Brian Doyle, a childhood friend
of Parsons, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2002. He
is currently serving a life sentence for the crime.
Mills told the Lamer inquiry
there is no evidence to suggest staff in the prosecutors' office
had tunnel vision when they handled the Parsons and Druken cases.
"There's a heightened
awareness of miscarriages of justice," Mills said.
"I think that I have tried
to emphasize that."
The inquiry, which is examining
the cases of Druken, Parsons and a third man, Ronald Dalton,
has now moved into its final phase.
Dalton was found not guilty
in a second trial for the murder of his wife. He waited years
for his appeal to be heard.
Mills says that while lessons
have been learned, there are no guarantees that mistakes will
not happen again.
"You know, I would like
to be able to say yes," Mills said.
"But the reality is that
we're fighting against something that's a human system."
Videoconferencing to keep Lamer Inquiry on
track
CBC, Jan 6 2005
ST. JOHN'S - The Lamer Inquiry will resume Jan.
17, even though the man heading it had a mild heart attack last
month.
"I think this new technology
is something we're going to have to start getting used to."
- Lawyer Nick Avis
Commissioner Antonio Lamer is reportedly now in good health.
However, commission counsel
Nick Avis says doctors have ordered Lamer to avoid air travel.
Avis says Lamer will preside
over the inquiry using video conference technology. Lamer lives
in the Ottawa region.
"It's a new technology in some ways, and I guess that some
of the lawyers are concerned that by not being present, he may
not be able to assess credibility and so forth," Avis says.
"I don't feel that's the
case. I think this new technology is something we're going to
have to start getting used to."
Avis says Lamer is planning
to be in St. John's late this spring, as the inquiry continues.
Lamer is examining how the
justice system handled the cases of Randy Druken, Ronald Dalton
and Gregory Parsons.
Each man was convicted of murder.
Druken was released from prison while his case was being appealed,
and the Crown later stayed charges. Parsons was exonerated for
the murder of his mother, while Dalton was found not guilty of
his wife's murder during a second trial
Lamer warns against
outbursts at inquiry
STJOHNS.CBC.CA Jan 27 2004
ST. JOHN'S -There was an angry
outburst at the Lamer inquiry in St. John's on Tuesday. Gregory
Parsons' wife confronted acting Supt. Ab Singleton, the lead
investigator in the 1991 Catherine Carroll murder case.
The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officer was convinced Parsons
had killed his mother. Singleton continued to question the 19-year-old
even after he told police that he wished to remain silent.
Parsons has said the police used abusive interrogation techniques.
He claims they threatened him with violence and left him in his
underwear and socks for hours
Singleton testified Tuesday
nothing like that happened. After hearing that, Parsons' wife
Tina Doyle walked out of the inquiry room.
When Singleton and two other
officers involved in the investigation left the room, she screamed
at them, "I hope this haunts you for the rest of your life."
The police didn't react to
Doyle.
When the proceedings resumed,
Commissioner Antonio Lamer said witnesses were at the inquiry
to testify about what happened during the investigation in 1991,
and he would take any action necessary to protect them from abuse.
Inquiry lawyer questions
police interrogation
STJOHNS.CBC.CA, Jan
23 2004
ST. JOHN'S -The police interrogation
of Gregory Parsons in the hours after he was charged with murdering
his mother came under fire at the Lamer Inquiry on Friday.
Nick Avis, the commission's counsel, questioned earlier testimony
by acting Supt. Ab Singleton that officers initially didn't consider
the possibility that Catherine Carroll was sexually assaulted
before she was killed.
Avis asked Singleton why interrogators
raised the possibility of a sexual attack with Parsons.
"That was a question that
was asked, 'was she raped before she was killed?' And that was
just a question that was put to him to see if there was any response,
and there was no response," Singleton told the inquiry.
Questioned
without lawyer
Singleton was also under fire
for other parts of the interrogation.
The police were told that Parsons
wished to remain silent, under the advice of his lawyer. Despite
that, Singleton admitted to the inquiry that he went to Crown
Prosecutor Bernard Coffey to see whether officers could keep
questioning Parsons anyway.
Nick Avis
"He didn't see any reason why we couldn't," Singleton
said.
The police continued to question
Parsons. Singleton's notes from the investigation indicate the
police thought the teenager was guilty because of the way he
acted during the interrogation.
Avis challenged that assumption.
"Have you ever interviewed a 19-year-old boy who finds his
mother in that kind of condition?"
"No," Singleton replied.
Parsons discovered his mother's
body in her home in early January 1991. She'd been stabbed more
than 50 times.
The inquiry will continue to
hear from Singleton on Monday. Former chief justice Antonio Lamer
was appointed by the provincial government to review three cases
in which murder convictions were later discredited.
Inquiry rakes Newfoundland
police force
Canadian Press, Jan. 21,
2004
St. John's - The police force
that arrested and charged Greg Parsons for his mother's murder
is in worse shape now than when it botched the case, a senior
investigator testified Wednesday at a public inquiry into the
wrongful conviction.
Paul Hierlihy was the second-in-command
of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary's investigation into Catherine
Carroll's death in January, 1991.
At that time, Mr. Hierlihy
testified, only one of the officers had any experience investigating
a homicide and just two had received training to handle major
cases.
Nothing has improved since
then, he said.
"(1991) was just the start
of it. We've gone downhill since then."
Mr. Parsons found his mother
stabbed to death in her St. John's home. In 1994, a jury convicted
him of second-degree murder. He served six weeks before he was
granted bail pending an appeal.
Mr. Parsons was later exonerated
by DNA evidence and was formally acquitted in 1998. A former
friend has since pleaded guilty to the crime.
"Is it fair to say that
at the time you felt you had the right person?" inquiry
lawyer Nick Avis asked Mr. Hierlihy during nearly five hours
in the witness box.
"Yes," he replied.
"You felt good about the
investigation?"
"Yes."
"You felt good about your
work?"
"Yes."
"Do you feel differently
about it now?" Avis asked.
"Obviously, yes,"
Mr. Hierlihy replied.
The Parsons case is one of
three under scrutiny at the inquiry.
The commission has already
heard from Ronald Dalton, who spent nearly nine years in prison
for his wife's murder before the province's Appeal Court overturned
the conviction and ordered a new trial.
Mr. Dalton was acquitted after
experts testified that his wife choked to death on cereal and
was not strangled.
Next, the inquiry will look
at the case of Randy Druken, who was convicted of the 1993 murder
of his girlfriend, Brenda Marie Young, largely on the testimony
of a jailhouse informant.
The Crown consented to a new
trial after the informant said police had put pressure on him
to make a false statement. The Crown eventually stayed the charges.
Inquiry commissioner Antonio
Lamer has heard from several officers about the lack of training
they had going into the Carroll investigation and a litany of
missed evidence, improper gathering of evidence and unorthodox
techniques used by the investigation team.
Officers missed a bloody footprint
in the home and ruled out a broken basement window as a possible
entry point for an intruder. Interviews with Mr. Parsons were
not recorded, and incriminating evidence from witnesses was not
corroborated.
Investigators made many assumptions
and relied heavily on the results of a polygraph test, although
such results are not admissible in court.
The troubled relationship between
Mr. Parsons and his mother seemed further proof that he was involved.
Mr. Hierlihy, now a sergeant
with the police force and who has training in major case work,
seemed surprised at times by details of the investigation.
And still today, he testified,
only two of the officers working major crimes in the city have
received training for such cases.
But police found little sympathy
from Mr. Parsons's lawyer, Jerome Kennedy.
"What I'm hearing here,
sir, are excuses as opposed to an acceptance of responsibility,"
Mr. Kennedy told the commission. "It's become somewhat of
a platform for the police to indicate, or to try to resolve,
whatever union and morale problems they have."
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
