|
 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
2004: Elvis
impersonator in jail after bogus charge | Michael
Cardamone: Witch hunt in the gym |
Jamie Nelson
"Canada's prisoner of
conscience"
By MARGARET WENTE, THE GLOBE
AND MAIL, August 30, 2001
Jamie Nelson chooses words
with care, and speaks more reflectively than most people. But
he's had more time than most people to reflect.
He spent 1,047 days in jail
for a crime he didn't commit.
"I didn't really have
a very good look at Millhaven until I took the first step out
of the van,"he remembers."There were gun towers, patrol
vehicles, dogs. And then, to see the inmates, to see how I was
going to live . . . it was terrifying."
Five years ago, at age 28,
Mr. Nelson was sent to a federal penitentiary because a woman
accused him of a brutal rape. There was no independent evidence;
it was her word against his, and the judge believed her. What
helped to tip the scale against him was his criminal record.
He had just got out of jail for a lesser assault against the
same woman.
That one was fictitious too.
Last Friday, the Ontario Court
of Appeal reversed the verdict against Jamie Nelson after a mass
of new evidence came to light. It turns out that his tormenter
is a serial liar who has falsely accused many other men of various
offences and created public mischief for years.
"That evidence was the
best present I'd ever received," he says. "It meant
I wasn't crazy after all." His accuser was the best friend
of Mr. Nelson's common-law wife, and was on his wife's side during
a bitter custody dispute for Mr. Nelson's son. In 1992, she accused
him of sexually assaulting the boy, but changed her mind.
 In
1994, she accused him of physically assaulting her and made it
stick. He drew 60 days. In 1996, she accused him of another physical
assault, and he served 120 days.
Mr. Nelson has maintained through
the years that the only thing he ever did to her was hold her
wrists and slap her once, after she had pummelled him.
In 1996, when he was barely
out of jail, she accused him of the brutal rape. He was denied
bail because of the vicious details, and his record.
He tried to hang himself in
custody. "I had just served 120 days for nothing,"
he recalls."I was picturing the worst, and I thought my
solution would be easier."; He made a rope out of his bedsheet.
Then he waited for lights-out, and for the guard to pass, and
for his cell mate to start snoring, and for the courage to step
off the sink. His kicking woke his cell mate up.
Mr. Nelson is a chef by trade.
He grew up in Stratford, Ont., and went to work in Ottawa. By
the time he went to jail he had married someone else, and they
had a baby son. He was not a violent man.
In Millhaven, they told him
to take the sex-offender program. He refused. "They labelled
me a denier. 'Just deal with this, Mr. Nelson,' they said. 'It
will help the healing.'"
They hooked him up to a phallometer
so that they could diagnose just what kind of deviant he was.
They put a mercury-filled balloon around his penis, then made
him listen to audiotapes of sexual and violent acts. He had practically
no response.
Why didn't he just take the
sex-offender program? "In my view, there was nothing to
heal," he says. "I would have had to sit in a group
of inmates and program facilitators and tell my story. Well,
the story begins and ends with the same sentence. 'I never did
this.'"
They put him into solitary
for refusing to co-operate. He was let out for an hour a day,
weather permitting. "You can look out the window but you
can't see anything," he remembers. "You can put your
ear to the door, but all you hear are screams and confusion."
He spent 14 or 15 months in the hole.
Mr. Nelson never saw his kids
in jail. He told his family not to visit him. "There was
just no way I could let my family, my dad, my children see me
as a guilty man," he says. One Christmas, when they let
the inmates wear their own clothes and didn't make them wear
their &"Inmate" badges, he let his father visit
for three hours.
Because of his violent record,
the judge declared that he wasn't eligible for early parole.
He got out in March of 1999 and tried to pick up the pieces of
his life. He was not allowed to live in Ottawa. His new relationship
had not survived, and his second fell apart so badly that she
lost their son to children's aid. He doesn't blame her. He is
certain it would not have happened if he'd been there. "I
would have found it pretty difficult to judge her and condemn
her for not having the strength, when I had to convince myself
every day to put the next foot forward" he says.
Mr. Nelson believes that rape
victims deserve a measure of protection. But he also thinks the
justice system was stacked against him. "No aspect of
the victim's past can be divulged," he says. "But if
you're an accused man, every degree of your being is open to
discussion." It's time, he says, for the pendulum to swing
back a bit.
"There were moments I
was full of rage" says Mr. Nelson. "But I didn't have
the strength to do everything I did, and hate. Hate has no value."
mwente@globeandmail.ca
Wrongfully convicted: Jamie
Nelson spent years in prison for a sex assault he did not commit
Jake Rupert, The Ottawa
Citizen, August 24, 2001
TORONTO -- In the end, justice
came quickly for Jamie Nelson.
Five-and-a-half years after
being found guilty of a rape he did not commit and spending 3
1/2 years in prison, three Ontario Court of Appeal Justices took
less than five minutes to overturn his conviction yesterday.
After reading documents submitted
by his appeal lawyer and a lawyer for the Crown -- both of whom
asked for an acquittal -- Justices John Laskin, Stephen Goudge
and Janet Simmons said they didn't even need to hear submissions.
It was clear Mr. Nelson deserved an acquittal.
"We've read the material,
and discussed this," Judge Laskin said. "We're in agreement.
We propose to set aside the convictions and register acquittals."
He then endorsed the appeal
file. As the judge did so, Mr. Nelson sighed and silently shed
tears while sitting perfectly straight in the front row of courtroom
10 of Osgoode Hall.
With the stroke of a pen, Mr.
Nelson, 34, who is from Ottawa but now lives in Stratford, Ont.,
was given his life back.
He now joins the list of the
justice system's embarrassments -- falling in company with David
Milgaard, who was wrongfully convicted of a Saskatchewan murder
and served 23 years before a DNA test cleared him, as well as
Donald Marshall and Guy Paul Morin.
Mr. Nelson is an innocent man
wrongfully convicted, and he wants people to learn from his plight.
"What happened today is
what I've been waiting for since the day I was arrested,"
he said. "I can't put into words what I feel right now.
What do you say when nobody believes you, you go to prison, you
get treated like a rapist, then all of a sudden, people believe
you.
"I told the truth all
along. Sometimes I thought I was going crazy. I am innocent of
this, and I can't believe this happened, but I have to. I lived
it. Justice went right off the rails in my case, and it didn't
have to. Wrongful convictions happen for a reason. Maybe by looking
at my case, people in the justice system will learn, and it won't
happen to somebody else.
"This feels good, but
it doesn't give me back one of those days I spent in prison."
A civil action he is planning
against the Ottawa police, the attorney general's office, and
Corrections Canada may ease the pain, he said, but this is not
about money, this is about respect and clearing his name.
Mr. Nelson's case is a shining
example of how things can go wrong when people are prepared to
manipulate the justice system.
In the mid-1990s, Mr. Nelson
was involved in a bitter child-custody battle with his former
girlfriend, Christine Thompson. Ms. Thompson was friends with
Cathy Fordham, 30, who took an active role in the battle.
Twice, when Mr. Nelson won
more access rights to his son in family court, Ms. Fordham accused
him of crimes against her. First she said he assaulted her. After
a trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 120 days in jail.
After he was released in 1995,
he won access to his son on weekends and one night a week. But
every time over five weeks that he showed up to collect his son,
Ms. Thompson said the child wasn't there. The last time, Mr.
Nelson told Ms. Thompson they were going back to court. When
he did this, she produced the child.
That Sunday when he pulled
into his driveway with his son in tow, he was arrested at gunpoint
by police. It was April 30, 1996. The day before, Ms. Fordham
told police Mr. Nelson had viciously raped and beat her two months
previously in her Vanier apartment.
She said she waited so long
because she was afraid of Mr. Nelson.
The truth is, Mr. Nelson did
no such thing. He was at home on the night in question. But the
allegations were so brutal he was deemed a threat to society
and denied bail.
His trial took place over seven
days. Assistant Crown attorney Mark Moors prosecuted. Ken Hall
defended Mr. Nelson. Ontario Court Justice Hugh Fraser presided
without a jury.
Ms. Fordham was the Crown's
main witness. She took the stand and gave details of the rape.
She cried often. Mr. Nelson took the stand and denied the allegations.
Several others were called to establish an alibi for him.
In the end, Judge Fraser found
Ms. Fordham was telling the truth, Mr. Nelson and the other defence
witnesses were lying and convicted him of sexual assault, assault,
forcible confinement and uttering death threats.
On Nov. 14, 1996, after six
months in jail awaiting his fate, the judge sentenced Mr. Nelson
to 3 1/2 years in prison. He served every day until his statutory
release date. His refusal to participate in sexual deviancy counselling
landed him in solitary confinement for a total of 15 months.
While he was trying to stay
alive in prison, Ms. Fordham set her self up as a leader of a
group home for men caught in the court system. A later police
investigation, the results of which were part of Mr. Nelson's
appeal, showed the home was a snake-pit of drugs, alcohol, and
sex.
Here, she refined her skill
at using the justice system as her weapon of choice. She reported
breaches of court orders when there were no breaches. This landed
several men in jail.
In January 1998, Andre Emile
Masson, 26, got the same treatment as Mr. Nelson -- a rape allegation
with almost the same details. This led to his arrest.
In August 1998, Ms. Fordham
accused Allan Kamen and Phillippe Francois of brutally assaulting
her while she was praying at a grotto in Vanier. Ottawa police
Sgt. Paul Turner investigated, but after the men produced solid
alibis, and Ms. Fordham refused a polygraph, she was charged
with public mischief for making a false complaint.
This touched off the police
investigation that exposed Ms. Fordham as a calculating liar
willing to abuse the courts. She was found guilty of public mischief
last summer after a trial in which she also accused Mr. Kamen
of sexually assaulting her while Mr. Francois watched.
Cathy Fordham's credibility
was shot. The charges against Mr. Masson were dropped. Others
proceedings were discontinued. However, Mr. Nelson was still
in prison. He was paroled in March 1999 and successfully completed
this in early 2000.
During this time, Ms. Fordham
was charged with making a false police complaint again and threatening
to kill a former boyfriend. These charges are still before the
courts.
In his appeal, lawyer Todd
Ducharme relied heavily on new evidence of Ms. Fordham's character,
and how Judge Fraser, who noted Ms. Fordham's testimony at trial
wasn't "perfect," misjudged her credibility.
Mr. Hall at trial, the appeal
said, raised many issues that should have raised a reasonable
doubt Mr. Nelson was guilty.
So compelling was yesterday's
appeal, Scott Hutchison, a seasoned Crown attorney, did something
he'd never done before -- asked for an acquittal. Afterwards,
he shook Mr. Nelson's hand. "The right thing happened today,"
he said.
Mr. Ducharme called yesterday
one of the most rewarding days of his career. "It is a cautionary
tale," he said. "People make false allegations, and
they make false allegations about serious crimes like sexual
assault. I hope it makes people remember why people accused of
crimes are presumed innocent."
Yesterday, after being informed
Mr. Nelson was acquitted, Ms. Fordham held to her story. "I
had no idea this was even going on," she said. "If
I had known about this, I would have done something to try and
fight it. I would never accuse anybody of anything they didn't
do."
Copyright 2001 Ottawa Citizen
Group Inc.
Police probe false
accuser: Woman's testimony cost innocent man 3 years in jail
By LISA LISLE -- Sun Media
, August 25, 2001
OTTAWA -- The woman responsible
for putting an innocent man behind bars for three years for sexual
assault is now under investigation herself. Ottawa Police opened
a new file on Cathie Fordham yesterday after Jamie Nelson visited
the police station and made a formal complaint against the woman
who accused him of raping her five years ago.
"All I can say is that
we'll be looking at it early next week," said Det. Gary
Grainger, one of the officers assigned to the file. "But
I can acknowledge that there is a police investigation."
The complaint comes on the heels of the decision Thursday by
the Ontario Court of Appeal to acquit the 34-year-old man of
the sexual assault and forcible confinement charges that stemmed
from false allegations made by Fordham.
"I can't allow her to
just walk away," Nelson said of the woman who cost him his
freedom. "Now we get to the accountability part of this
story."
This isn't the first time Fordham
has found herself being investigated for public mischief. Fordham
was convicted last summer of the same crime after she made up
a story about being attacked by a resident of the Vanier Community
Support Centre, where she worked.
It was that conviction that
ultimately brought on Nelson's acquittal. Fordham, who was the
best friend of Nelson's common-law wife Christine Thomson, alleged
that Nelson forced his way into her apartment and sexually assaulted
her in February 1996. At the time, Nelson and Thomson were embroiled
in a custody dispute over their son.
By November 1996, Nelson had
been sentenced to 31/2 years in prison, where he tried to hang
himself, only to be saved by his cellmate. Yesterday, for the
first time in five years, Nelson walked the streets of Ottawa
without looking over his shoulder.
"I finally feel like I'm
a free man," he said, sitting on the steps of the courthouse
where he had been convicted in 1996. Although there was nothing
legally preventing the former Ottawa resident from visiting the
city after his parole expired last spring, he said he never really
felt safe visiting his father there.
MONDAY MEETING
"Of course it crossed
my mind that all she had to do was see me and make a call to
the police and I'd land in jail again charged with something
I didn't do," Nelson said. "That's really all she had
to do last time."
He is now looking forward to
meeting his accuser face-to-face on Monday, when she is expected
to appear in court for sentencing on charges of uttering death
threats against her ex-boyfriend. "I don't know what to
expect," he said. "I do know that if I hold out and
wait for her to apologize, I'll be a very old and very grey man."
Copyright © 2001, CANOE
Limited Partnership. All rights reserved.
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