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January 25,
2005: The
Federal government released the first
national examination of the reasons for so many wrongful convictions
in Canada.
This should be required reading for every prosecutor, cop and
criminal defence lawyer in the country. News reports
Rough justice in the
Gaspé
One of the most infamous
cases of the '50s led to the hanging of a possibly innocent man
Critics point to an incompetent defence and a Quebec regime with
darker motives, writes Tracey Tyler
Feb. 7, 2006. 08:05 AM,
TRACEY TYLER, LEGAL AFFAIRS REPORTER
Record crowds lined the riverbanks
outside a Montreal prison. As midnight drew near, many fell to
their knees and prayed for the man facing execution.
Fifty years later, prayers
will be said across Quebec this week to mark the anniversary
of the death of Wilbert Coffin.
Coffin, 42, a mining prospector
from the Gaspé, was hanged on Feb. 10, 1956, for the murders
of three Pennsylvanians apparently shot and robbed during a bear
hunting expedition to the area in 1953. Coffin maintained his
innocence to the bitter end.
A half-century later, doubts
persist about the verdict in the case, which attracted immense
international attention, inspired four books and led to an unprecedented
Supreme Court review.
Over the course of the appeals
and later, many came to believe the Quebec woodsman was the innocent
victim of a gross miscarriage of justice, caused by an incompetent
defence and a corrupt Duplessis government anxious to allay fears
that the murders would destroy the lucrative American tourist
trade.
"Out here in the Gaspé,
the issue is still a very raw one for people. There are people
who cry when you talk about it and people who won't talk about
it," said Cynthia Patterson, a community activist who helped
organize this week's events and one of many who want the federal
government to reopen the case.
In Quebec, the case is also
seen as "a shameful part" of the legacy of former Quebec
premier Maurice Duplessis, Patterson said from her home in the
village of Barachois.
"It's considered a stain
on the Gaspé, but for me it's a much bigger stain on the
entire Canadian justice system," said Toronto criminal lawyer
Eddie Greenspan, who has studied the case perhaps more closely
than any other Canadian legal expert.
The Coffin case became a symbol
of doubt and helped spur moves to abolish the death penalty in
Canada, he said.
The importance the Quebec government
placed on placating the Americans and securing a conviction shouldn't
be underestimated, Greenspan added. The Pennsylvania Federation
of Sportsmen's Clubs had more than 200,000 members, many of whom
frequented Quebec on hunting and fishing trips.
When the hunters' bodies were
discovered, John Foster Dulles, then U.S. Secretary of State,
personally contacted Quebec authorities. Duplessis dispatched
to Gaspé the province's toughest cop, Alphonse Matte,
Quebec's chief of detectives, and two top prosecutors.
In his closing address, prosecutor
Noel Dorion told the jury: "I have faith that you will set
an example for your district, for your province and for the whole
of your country before the eyes of America, which counts on you,
and which has followed all of the details of this trial."
"It's language that was
saying: `There will be no money coming to the Gaspé from
the United States if you acquit this guy.' They were dependent
on these American hunters," Greenspan said. "They needed
a fall guy and they needed a quick conviction."
The jury took just 30 minutes
to convict. Coffin was sentenced to death on Aug. 5, 1954, but
had seven stays of execution over the next 18 months while courts
rejected his appeals.
After he was hanged, a crowd
of 500 waited at the train station for his body to return home.
He was buried in the churchyard of St. Andrew's Anglican Church
in the tiny town of York Centre.
"There was a huge funeral
for him," said Archbishop Bruce Stavert of the Anglican
Diocese of Quebec. "Even today, people still remember it."
Churches throughout the diocese
will be asked to say special prayers during services this coming
Sunday, on behalf of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly
Convicted and victims of miscarriages of justice, Stavert said.
On Friday, on the 50th anniversary, a special afternoon service
will take place in St. Andrew's and at Coffin's grave.
Debbie Stewart, Coffin's niece,
said the family wants to clear his name. "Growing up in
Gaspé, it was very painful, not just for Uncle Bill's
siblings, but for his nieces and nephews as well."
The family has lost touch with
Coffin's son, James, who was 8 when his father was hanged, and
hopes for a reunion. They believe James' mother has died; Marion
Petrie, Coffin's common-law wife, had begged permission to marry
him before the execution but was thwarted by Duplessis, who said
it wouldn't be "decent."
Stewart, 51, is too young to
remember the case that began June 5, 1953, when Eugene Lindsey,
his son Richard, 17, and his friend Frederick Claar, 19, left
on a hunting trip to Quebec.
Their abandoned truck was found
July 10. Searchers eventually would come upon the remains of
all three, by then little more than bones. Their bodies had been
eaten by animals, and a prosecution expert concluded they had
died by June 17.
Eugene Lindsey's remains were
found July 15 near a small stream. His wallet was found in the
water, the money gone. When he left Pennsylvania, Lindsey had
been carrying at least $650. His rifle was found nearby with
a mark that could have been a bullet grazing.
His son's remains were found
July 23. Beside them were a sweater and two shirts perforated
by bullet holes. A trouser pocket had been turned inside-out
and his brown leather wallet was missing. Claar's remains were
found about 200 feet away. His wallet had been rifled.
Coffin would later tell police
he met up with the trio on June 10 while driving a friend's truck
into the bush to prospect for minerals. Their truck had broken
down, and he drove Richard Lindsey to the town of Gaspé
to buy a new fuel pump. Coffin said he drove Lindsey back to
the camp, and two other Americans were there in a yellow jeep
with a plywood box.
They all had dinner together
and Coffin continued into the bush, promising to look in on the
Lindsey party in a few days. According to Coffin, Eugene Lindsey
paid him $40 U.S. - a twenty and two ten-dollar bills - and the
younger Lindsey gave him a pocket knife for his son.
On June 12, Coffin said, he
returned to find the camp deserted but for Lindsey's truck. He
waited several hours and, when no one returned, took the fuel
pump and Claar's valise, which contained a shirt, two pairs of
shorts, two pairs of socks, blue jeans and two towels. He said
he was impaired at the time.
After emerging from the bush,
Coffin visited several friends to repay debts, went to a hotel
and paid for beer with a $20 U.S. bill. At midnight, he set out
for Petrie's Montreal home. He drove into the ditch twice and
paid people who helped pull him out. One said he took a $20 U.S.
bill out of a brown wallet, filled with bills to a depth of a
half-inch.
He also had a $65 pair of binoculars
- a gift, Coffin told Petrie, from the Americans.
An expert witness testified
the bullet holes in the clothing did not contain potassium nitrate
deposits. The only cartridges that didn't leave such deposits
were used in .32-40 calibre rifles. Coffin, the trial was told,
borrowed such a gun in May 1953 and hadn't returned it.
Another witness told the jury
he saw a muzzle of a gun in the back of Coffin's truck when he
came out of the bush June 12.
Coffin's lawyer, Raymond Maher,
however, did not cross-examine that witness. What emerged after
Coffin was convicted was that the man said he "thought"
he saw a muzzle, but it could have been an iron rod.
Many saw Maher himself as Coffin's
biggest problem. At the outset, he told the jury he travelled
1,500 miles interviewing witnesses and planned to call more than
100 as part of the defence case. But when his moment arrived,
Maher called not a single one, telling the court: "The defence
rests."
It amounted to "extreme
recklessness, stupidity and serious gross negligence," Greenspan
said. "Given the lawyer he ended up with, he did not stand
a chance."
Yet, there was much evidence
that raised doubt.
Coffin made his statement to
police after 16 days of interrogation in the filthy, rat-infested
basement of a firehall, but maintained his innocence.
During a preliminary hearing,
while police were trying to get him to incriminate himself, Coffin
was allowed to meet with his father. As officers listened, Coffin
asked him to "tell Mother I'm fine" and not to worry
because the police were not "man enough to break me."
Prosecutors pointed to this
as an extraordinary admission of guilt, but its meaning was far
from clear, said Greenspan.
After his conviction, Coffin
swore an affidavit that named 13 people for whom he had staked
prospecting claims in May 1953, claims worth some $580.
A local garage owner later
confirmed that two Americans with a yellow jeep were still in
the woods when Coffin had left for Montreal.
Police had a note written by
one of the hunters on June 13, when Coffin was in Montreal.
Gross incompetence on the part
of a defence lawyer is a relatively new concept under the Charter,
Greenspan said, and it didn't figure in Coffin's appeals. Back
then, the system was seen as largely infallible.
Even today, Canada's justice
system has trouble admitting mistakes; even when people like
Guy Paul Morin have been proven innocent beyond doubt through
DNA testing, some police and prosecutors do not accept it, Greenspan
said.
Coffin escaped from prison
Sept. 6, 1955, using a fake gun carved from soap. Maher talked
him into giving himself up. Under pressure from a book by Jacques
Hebert that denounced the case as the worst judicial miscarriage
in Quebec history, Ottawa asked the Supreme Court to conduct
a review.
In a 5-2 decision on Feb. 8,
1956, it upheld the conviction. The next day, Coffin was hanged.
A Quebec government inquiry
in 1964 found no wrongdoing by police or prosecutors.
Over the decades, at least
two people have claimed to have committed the murders. One later
recanted, while the other was treated as a hoax.
The federal cabinet has the
power to grant Coffin a free pardon. But priority usually goes
to those who are still in prison or on parole. "At the back
of the line are the people who are dead," Greenspan said.
The Coffin case left a powerful
legacy. Pierre Trudeau cited it when the death penalty was abolished
in 1976. A decade later, it was cited again during a debate on
restoring capital punishment. Six years ago, the Supreme Court
effectively declared the death penalty unconstitutional, making
it almost certain never to return.
For many, what's far less certain
is whether a guilty man was led to the gallows 50 years ago this
week, when a black flag flew in the chilly night air outside
the prison and seven bells announced Coffin was about to die.
The Coffin Affair
June 1953, Gaspésie,
Québec. Three Pennsylvania men on a bear-hunting trip
in the Gaspé region are reported missing. They are found
dead at the end of July, deep in the woods, about sixty kilometres
from the closest town. One of the primary suspects is Wilbert
Coffin, a lumberjack, prospector and occasional hunting guide.
Arousing suspicions is the fact that he is found in possession
of several objects belonging to the American hunters, and that
even if he is supposedly in debt, he has been paying for numerous
purchases in cash lately. Coffin is arrested.
The Coffin Affair immediately
attracts attention. A number of pieces of evidence against Coffin
are circumstantial, and there is neither conclusive proof nor
a confession from the accused. Regardless, the trial begins in
July 1954. Coffin is accused of the murder of one of the hunters,
Richard Lindsay, because the penal code prohibits an accused
from being tried for more than one murder in the same trial.
On August 5, Coffin is found guilty and sentenced to death by
hanging. Both the Quebec Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court
of Canada reject his appeals and Coffin is hanged at Montreal's
Bordeaux prison on February 10, 1956. (See the summary by Réginald
Day , and dossier by Radio-Canada , both in French)
Was the trial fast-tracked
to protect tourism in the region? Did a body of compromising
evidence replace direct proof? Did Coffin receive a suitable
and proper defence?
Senator Jacques Hébert,
who was a reporter during the Coffin trial, always believed in
Coffin's innocence. In 1958, he published an essay, "Coffin
was innocent", followed in 1963 by "I accuse Coffins'
murderers". This last essay created such controversy that
in 1964, Judge Jules Deschêne was appointed chief prosecutor
of an inquiry commission to rule out any wrongdoing and injustice
in the Coffin Affair. After hearing 200 witnesses, the commission
ruled Coffin had received due process and a fair verdict.
In a telephone interview with
reporter Guy Marcotte on February 10, 1986, Jacques Hébert
said he was still convinced of Coffin's innocence. "When
I began writing articles about the trial, I thought it was a
complicated case, with plenty of uncertainties, new witnesses
and new facts surfacing. I thought it would be better not to
hang Coffin too quickly." And once Coffin had been sentenced
and hanged, even more new facts were uncovered. According to
Jacques Hébert: «Given all these new facts, I am
convinced this was a judicial error."
Several observers credit the
Coffin Affair with helping change public opinion toward capital
punishment, which ultimately led to the abolition of the death
penalty in Canada.
Anyone with more information
on this case (available in electronic form) please contact
me
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Truth can never be told so as to be understood,
and not be believ'd.