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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
Update on wrongful convictions in Canada, October,
2004
Gary Staples
Congratulations
Gary, Marie and the Burke family
Your hard
work was worth it!
Wrongfully convicted
man gets police apology
cbc, Dec. 5, 2002
HAMILTON, ONT. - An Ontario
man has received an apology and a cash settlement as redress
for being wrongfully convicted of murder.
Gary Staples, now 58, was 25
when he was convicted of shooting Gerald Burke to death.
He spent nearly two years in
jail in Kingston, Ont., before wining an acquittal on appeal
in 1972.
Staples wasn't officially cleared
until Thursday, when the Hamilton police force sent him a written
apology.
He also received an undisclosed
amount of cash.
Staples was cleared after a
retired judge and two law students found police had suppressed
evidence that would have acquitted him.
Written by CBC News Online
staff
See also Chris
McCullough from Hamilton
Gary Staples
seeking exoneration 30 years after malicious prosecution. When
will the Crown learn that staying charges just doesn't cut it
when they know the accused is innocent?
Victim's sons back accused
Cheryl Stepan, The Hamilton
Spectator, June 6, 2001
Gary Staples' second wife Marie
wipes her eyes at press conference. On Jan. 23, 1971, Gary Staples
was being led away to spend the "rest of his natural life"
in prison for pressing a gun to the head of a young cab driver
and father, and firing twice. "I haven't killed anyone,"
he protested at the time. Thirty years later he is still trying
to convince the world to listen to him.
The murdered cab driver's two
sons, Darrin Burke and Robert Denison, were among the many who
believed Staples was the one who pulled the trigger and left
their father slumped in the front seat of his cab behind an industrial
plant on Dunbar Avenue in December 1969.
Not any more. A quest to get
to know Gerald Burke, the father who was taken from them when
they were just one and two years old, recently led to some stunning
revelations about the investigation into his murder. They now
believe Staples didn't kill their father and yesterday stood
beside him in a show of public support.
"Gary Staples didn't murder
my father, somebody else did and I'd like to know who. If it
was your father, I'm sure you'd like to know," Denison said
during a tearful news conference.
Burke's sons are joining Staples
in his long-time plea to have Hamilton police reopen the murder
investigation and find the killer.
Staples also wants an apology
and a declaration from police that he did not kill Burke.
That would finally free him
of the shame and whispers he's faced in the community for decades.
To that end, the Dunnville
man has launched a $6.1-million lawsuit against the police. The
statement of claim, which contains allegations that have not
been proved in court, maintains that Hamilton police conducted
a malicious prosecution. This is based in part on a note Burke's
sons and law students uncovered in police files and suggests
investigators deliberately suppressed evidence that could have
exonerated Staples at the time.
Burke's sons are also part
of that lawsuit, suing for $1 for negligence.
Staples was convicted of Burke's
murder at his first trial, but the conviction was quashed on
appeal and a new trial ordered because new evidence was discovered.
A second jury found him not guilty in 1972, but by then he had
already spent 22 months in prison, and life as he knew it was
torn to shreds.
Staples' ordeal began when
he was dragged from his bed at gunpoint on April 26, 1970.
Police were led to his door
by his jilted lover who gave them information on Burke's murder
in exchange for leniency on robbery charges she was facing. She
said Staples had killed Burke for the $40 he was carrying.
Staples thought the arrest
was just a sick joke until an officer waved an arrest warrant
in his face, claiming he killed Burke. "At that point I
said if this isn't a joke, it's some kind of mistake. For months
I thought they made a mistake," Staples said in an interview
following yesterday's news conference.
But it wasn't a mistake. He
was tried, convicted and sent to prison for life. At Kingston
Penitentiary, a jail guard asked him if he'd like to work in
the kitchen.
When Staples told him he didn't
know anything about cooking, the guard reminded him that he had
the rest of his life to learn.
"I worked in an environment
where I was afraid for my own life. I worked with 24 men who
had committed murder," he said.
When he got out of prison following
his eventual acquittal -- his mother found witnesses to help
corroborate his alibi -- he returned home to Dunnville thinking
he could pick up his life where he left off.
Instead he found his first
wife and son had left him -- partly, he acknowledges, because
she learned during his trial that he'd been unfaithful.
"She took my son from
me. He grew up not really knowing me," he said, taking his
mind back to the painful events of 30 years ago.
He went through several jobs
over the years, but they'd always end, he said, when word would
spread that he was a "killer."
Hardest of all were the whispers
and stares from people who believed he was a murderer who'd gotten
away with it.
"I knew people would be
talking about me, but I thought in a couple of months it would
blow over. In a couple of months, it didn't blow over -- it never
did," he said. "I would never wish upon anybody the
last 30 years of my life."
But he never left Dunnville.
He said he didn't deserve to be driven out, because, "I
hadn't done anything wrong."
At the same time, Burke's sons
were being raised by a stepfather they loved, but deprived of
their natural father who was murdered before they got a chance
to know him.
They said that after he was
killed, their mother bundled them up, left the house and ran
from her old life.
"After my father died,
we kind of became estranged from the rest of the family,"
Darrin Burke said.
A few years ago, they set out
to learn more about their father. They met some law students
from the Innocence Project at Osgoode Hall law school who were
investigating Burke's murder on behalf of Staples.
At the sons' request, Hamilton
police granted access to the murder files. The law students and
Burke's sons spent an emotional day going through the piles of
documents last October.
For the first time, Robert
Denison got to see a photograph of his father -- unfortunately,
it was from a crime scene.
"The first pictures I
saw of him were autopsy pictures," he said.
In addition to learning a bit
about who their father was, they also came upon some revealing
information about the investigation.
"We were going in looking
for answers, but instead we came out with more questions,"
Darrin Burke said. "There was very, very little in there
to say Gary had anything to do with this. To this day, I don't
understand how Gary was arrested in the first place."
Among the documents was a interdepartmental
memo which allegedly says investigators withheld evidence about
two witnesses who saw three youths -- possible witnesses or suspects
-- fleeing the murder scene. The memo allegedly states that police
didn't pass on this information because it would confuse a jury
and lead to Staples' acquittal.
They grew up believing Staples
was the killer, but now they felt differently.
"Up until that point,
we were told the guy who did it lived in Dunnville and he got
off," Darrin Burke said.
In March, they met Staples
for the first time. Then they decided to help.
"What better way to have
people believe you didn't do it than having the victim's sons
sitting beside you?" Darrin Burke said.
You can contact Cheryl Stepan
by e-mail at cstepan@hamiltonspectator.com or by telephone at
905-526-3235.
Osgoode Students Discover
Incriminating Memo in Hamilton Murder Case
HAMILTON, June 5, 2001
Two Osgoode students with the Law School's Innocence Project,
a program in which students investigate cases of suspected wrongful
conviction, have been credited with discovering new evidence
in a 1969 Hamilton murder case pointing to alleged gross misconduct
by the Hamilton Police Department.
Working under the guidance
of Osgoode adjunct faculty member Paul Burstein, Osgoode students
Colleen Robertshaw, who completed her LLB degree this spring
and is presently articling with Blake, Cassels & Graydon
LLP, and Dean Ring found an incriminating internal police memo
related to the murder trial of Gary Staples. He was eventually
acquitted in 1972, but has been working since then to clear his
name.
Discovery of the new evidence,
which was revealed at a news conference on June 5 by lawyer Sean
Dewart, who represents Staples as well as the two sons of the
murder victim, has resulted in a lawsuit, served on the Police
Services Board, calling for " a thorough and competent police
investigation. " The Statement of Claim also seeks $5 million
in damages for negligence, malicious prosecution, misfeasance
in public office, conspiracy and assault and battery, and $1
million for punitive, exemplary and aggravated damages.
Copyright Osgoode ITS 2002
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