Injustice in the news . . . Robert Latimer: Nobody wins but the lawyers | Canadian on Death Row in Huntsville, Texas (CBC Newsworld) New evidence could free convict in Perrin slaying (Hamilton Spectator, August 1998 now moved to his own page) | Greg Parsons free! | Group turfed by Web site provider finds new Net home(injusticebusters, StarPhoenix, July 1998) | Couple want public to hear truth in sexual abuse case (Klassen Foster-Parent case, StarPhoenix, 1993) | Martensville Redux(G&M, June 1995, major article on the Foster-Parent case) | Activists win major victory against Libel charge: Criminal Libel Charge Found Unconstitutional (1995) | Report of the Inquiry into the Canadian federal Prison for Women in Kingston Ontario. | (1996) Milgaard: Wrongfully imprisoned man(1995 report from Simon Fraser Peak) | |
Canadian on Death Row in Huntsville, Texas
| Faulder's case has again raised questions about the justice system in Texas. It's a state notorious for having the highest rate of executions in the United States. And there are questions about the fairness of the Faulder trial. No jury has heard the evidence that Faulder's behaviou (Text from CBC Newsworld) |
Robert Latimer: nobody wins but the lawyers
| It is considered unseemly to talk of money but whether or not Latimer ends up serving his ten years without parole, it seems likely Brayford will get a piece of the farm. And what of Randy Kirkham, the original Crown lawyer who was not content to overcharge Robert Latimer but thought he could tip the scales of justice by going beyond the rules of jury selection? He got a lengthy holiday with full pay!
We wish them well. |
Pictures from cbc. nov.6, 1998 | Another wrongly convicted Canadian Gregory Parsons is now free after spending eight years in prison. He was wrongly convicted of killing his mother. This is yet another Canadian whose life has been profoundly damaged by a system hell-bent on getting convictions rather than pursuing justice. | Greg! |
The cbc radio ideas documentary on the mishandling of Guy Paul Morin by the Justice Department
Canadian newspaper reports of inJustice
Martensville Redux(G&M, June 1995, major article on the Foster-Parent case)
Report of the Inquiry into the Canadian federal Prison for Women in Kingston Ontario. (1996)
Milgaard: Wrongfully imprisoned man (1995 report from Simon Fraser Peak)
Martensville Redux, Globe and Mail, June 1995
Activists
win major victory against Libel charge
Criminal Libel Charge Found Unconstitutional
by Kate Archibald-Cross
Charges of defamatory libel against two Kingston men have been found to be unconstitutional, and an Ontario legal precedent has been set. Bradley Waugh and Ravin Gill were charged with six counts each of defamatory libel, an indictable offence carrying a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment for each count. Waugh and Gill were arrested while postering downtown Kingston on December 2, 1994. The "wanted" posters described six Kingston prison guards implicated in the suspicious death of Robert Gentles in Kingston Penitentiary in 1993.
Section 301 of the Canadian Criminal Code
(under which the two were charged) states: "Every one who
publishes a defamatory libel is guilty of an indictable offence
and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years."
On December 19, 1995, the presiding judge
granted the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) intervenor
status. The CCLA argued that section 301 was unconstitutional,
and infringed the defendants' rights to freedom of thought and
expression
guaranteed under section 2 (b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Crown had previously argued that although section 301 has
been overturned in several cases, these involved offensive subject
matter rather than the defamation of a specific person or people.
He stated that the intention of section
301 was to protect individuals, and that the guards of Kingston
Penitentiary had rights as important as those of the accused.
In response to this argument, Judge Lally quoted Madam Justice McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada. In 1992, the Supreme Court found section 301 to be unconstitutional and thus inapplicable to the case at hand, that of the hate propaganda of Ernst Zundel.
Madam Justice McLachlin states, "Our
law is premised on the view that only serious misconduct deserves
criminal sanction."
She goes on to say that although such crimes as libel can be punished
by law, the harm caused by the act of libel must be
"clear and pressing" and the charge must not be permitted
to inhibit anyone's freedom of expression.
Under section 1 of the Charter of Rights
and Freedoms it is stated that certain limits to some rights will
be considered reasonable in order to maintain "a free and
democratic society". John Laskin, representing the CCLA,
had argued that "section 301 is not a reasonable limit on
free speech, since section 300 remains to prosecute those who
bear false witness against their neighbour".
Judge Lally agreed with the arguments
put forward by Dan Scully and Laskin, the defendants' lawyers
and concluded that, "There will therefore be an order...declaring
section 301 of the Criminal Code of Canada unconstitutional and
of no force and
effect[in Ontario]." This sectionof the criminal code has
also been found unconstitutional in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The Crown has until April 29 to declare its intention to appeal, but it seems that the case has been satisfactorily resolved, and appeal would not be likely to overturn Judge Lally's decision. The Kingston Whig-Standard reported that "Waugh said he believes the charges against him and Gill were an attempt to silence critics of the local police and their handling of the investigation of Gentles' Death."
Robert Gentles died after six guards from
Kingston Pen maced and forcibly removed him from his cell. On
Monday, April 2nd and April 3rd, Julian Falconer, the lawyer of
Carmeta Gentles, will be appearing in Frontenac County Court to
have the private prosecution of the six prison Guards reinstated.
The six Guards were originally charged
with manslaughter but the crown dropped the charges against four
of the guards and then stayed the charges against the remaining
two. Robert Gentles was a founding member of the Prison Violence
Project, a prisoner based group documenting Human Rights violations
in Canadian prisons. The supicious death of Gentles, a politically
active African-Canadian inmate, at the hands of six white guards
has raised concern that his death was politically
and racially motivated.
For more about this and other
Kingston injustice busting activities, go to Kingston's
Direct Action History.
Report of the Inquiry into the Canadian federal
Prison for Women
in Kingston Ontario.
(From the Toronto Globe and Mail, April 2, 1996, by Jeff Sallot.)
Corrections system head
resigns
Prison service operates without concern for the rule of law, human
rights report declares.
The chief of the federal prison
system, John Edwards resigned yesterday in the wake of a blistering
report that says he heads a branch of the criminal justice system
that violated six women prisoners' rights and generally operates
without concern for the rule of law.
The report says the six women were subject
to "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment by an all-male
Correctional Service of Canada riot squad when they were strip-searched,
shackled and left nearly nude for more than 12 hours on the concrete
floors of cold, bare, solitary-confinement cells at Kingston Prison
for Women two years ago.
The women were traumatized by the incident,
their rights were violated and they should receive financial compensation
from Ottawa, Madam Justice Louise Arbour of the Ontario Court
of Appeals says in her report
The incident, and the later confinement
of the women in cramped isolation cells for more than eight months,
are evidence that the correctional service does not respect the
law or the fundamental rights of individuals, Judge Arbour said.
These failings are "systemic and institutional" and
the CSC cannot be trusted to put its own house in order without
supervision by the court, she added. Judge Arbour recommended
amendments to the Criminal Code that would allow prisoners to
appeal to the courts to have their sentences reduced if their
rights have been violated.
Solicitor-General Herb Gray offered a
"heartfelt apology" to the women, adding that the government
is considering financial compensation. Several of the women are
suing the government. The government accepted Mr. Edwards' request
for "reassignment" to other duties in the federal bureaucracy,
the minister said.
Mr. Edwards, 55, is a career public servant
who once helped manage national museums. He has "generally"
served Canada well in a variety of posts over the years, Mr. Gray
said. Mr. Edwards, who has been commissioner of corrections since
1989, will stay on for a month or so until his replacement is
an announced, Mr. Gray said. Kim Pate, spokeswoman for the prisoner-
advocacy group the Elizabeth Fry Society, said other correctional
service employees should follow his example. "We don't presume
to know who all was involved in these decisions," she told
a news conference, "but certainly we expect those that were
will take a responsible action."
Judge Arbour said she saw no point in
naming individuals within the correctional service because the
problems are systemic. Unlike police officers, whose actions are
often subject to scrutiny by the criminal courts, corrections
officers are able to get away with violations of the law and human
rights because prisoners do not have adequate recourse to the
courts, the report says.
As well, Judge Arbour, who has recently
been named by the United Nations to an international war-crimes
tribunal said she never would have completed her report by the
March 31 deadline if she had had to hear detailed testimony about
the individual actions of corrections officers and assess blame.
But Mr. Gray can take whatever disciplinary action he feels appropriate,
Judge Arbour told reporters.
The Solicitor-General, however, said his priority is to get on with reforming the system, not laying blame for what happened in the past. He noted that many changes are already under way, and the Kingston prison for Women, a 1930s-vintage lockup, will be closed later this year. Federal women convicts will serve their time in newer regional facilities. Mr. Gray said the government will study Judge Arbour's recommendations for the next four to six weeks before deciding which it will implement.
He was non-committal yesterday on most
of them, including a suggestion on the creation of a deputy commissioner
of corrections for women. The prison guards' union puts the problems
at the Kingston Prison for Women on poor staff training and ambiguous
policies. Judge Arbour's report describes several days of rising
tension at the prison starting with a fracas on April 22, 1994.
The judge acknowledges she is unable to get to the bottom of the
incident, which involved injury to at least two female correctional
officers and the use of the chemical Mace to subdue inmates. Six
inmates were locked up in solitary confinement cells as a result.
Guards failed to file proper reports on
the use of Mace and failed to call police, in contravention of
established policy, the report says. Moreover, the inmates were
not allowed to contact their lawyers. The correctional service
later filed "misleading and inaccurate" information
with the courts on the right to consult counsel, Judge Arbour
said. The guards kept the unruly inmates confined to cells and
did not allow normal exercise periods. Sometimes inmates were
denied showers, clean clothes and toilet paper, or guards turned
off the water to the sinks and toilets in tiny segregation cells.
The denial of rights led to an increase
in hostility. Prison employees suffered stress and felt overworked.
At one point, guards staged a protest demonstration because they
felt troublemakers who spat at them and threw urine at them should
receive harsher treatment.
Against this backdrop, prison management
agreed to bring in the riot squad, an all-male unit comprising
specially trained squads from other federal prisons in the Kingston
area. The use of this team to subdue and strip-search female inmates
in a late-night operation was unprecedented. And under the circumstances,
it was illegal, Judge Arbour said.
The prison medic, Dr, Mary Pearson, protested
when she saw what was going on. But the operation continued.
"The process was intended to terrorize, and therefore subdue.
It also, unfortunately, had the effect of revictimizing women
who had had traumatic experiences in their past at the hands of
men.
"I find that the conditions in which
the inmates were left in their cells were, frankly, appalling
These women were left barely
covered by a paper gown, on a cement floor in an empty small cell,
with absolutely nothing to sit or sleep on - not a mattress, not
a blanket or a towel, while the windows were kept open for a considerable
period of time.
"They were left in body belts, shackles
and leg irons, and they were kept in that condition until mid-afternoon
of the [next day]
when they were given a security blanket." The incident was
videotaped by members of the riot squad, a standard procedure
to protect the guards from accusations of brutality and for use
as a riot-squad training aid.
The tape eventually emerged as an exhibit
in one of the inmates' lawsuit. It was broadcast nationally on
the CBC public affairs television program the fifth estate.
The above two articles
were found at Police
abuse
Milgaard: Wrongfully imprisoned man seeks support from university
by morray genge, The Peak, Simon Fraser University's Student Newspaper
Volume 91, Issue 3 September 18th, 1995 News
In 1969, at the age of sixteen, David Milgaard was arrested and later convicted of capital murder in the rape and murder of Saskatoon resident Gail Miller. Milgaard has always maintained his innocence and after a long struggle he was able to convince government officials to have his case reviewed by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Based on "fresh evidence," such as a key witness recanting part of his testimony, and the 1970 confession made by Larry Fisher that he committed sexual assaults against women in Saskatoon around the same time Miller was raped and killed, a Supreme Court decision on April 14, 1992 concluded that "continued conviction of accused would constitute miscarriage of justice." The court further related that "we are satisfied that there has been evidence placed before us which is reasonably capable of belief, and which taken together with the evidence adduced at the trial could reasonably be expected to have affected the verdict. We will therefore be advising the Minister to quash the conviction and to direct a new trial. . . "
Justice Minister and Attorney General for Saskatchewan, Robert Mitchell, later stayed the proceedings against Milgaard, who was then released on April 16, 1992. However, Mitchell refused a call for an inquiry into the case.
David Milgaard is now in the process of lobbying the Saskatchewan government in an attempt to have a public inquiry into the entire affair. Milgaard is attempting to organize an event at SFU as part of his ongoing effort to raise money, and to gain signatures for a petition that he hopes will pressure the Saskatchewan government to open an inquiry into his conviction and incarceration of almost 23 years. He hopes to raise money for his campaign to establish an inquiry by selling a book of poems called Rabbits Paw, For Bandit Blues, which he compiled while in prison.
Although relieved to be out of prison, Milgaard is still demanding an inquiry into his conviction, and in regards to what he feels was an unreasonable amount of time government officials took to finally allow his case to go to the Supreme Court. When contacted, Milgaard disclosed that in order to fully clear his name and to ensure that ìthe same thing doesnít happen to another sixteen year old,î an inquiry is necessary. Although the 1992 Supreme Court decision stated that Milgaard ìhad the benefit of a fair trial in January 1970,î and that they were presented with no information that the police had acted improperly, many of Milgaardís supporters assert that coercion was used by the Saskatoon police in order to force witnesses to testify against Milgaard.
Milgaard personally feels that he has been treated unfairly from the time of his arrest, and feels that an inquiry would expose the unjust treatment he experienced from the Saskatchewan justice system. The need for an inquiry is shared by observers such as Toronto lawyer Brian Greenspan, president of the Criminal Lawyersí Association. Greenspan has declared that the Milgaard matter needs to be addressed and that without an inquiry it would be difficult for Milgaard to achieve financial compensation.
When asked if his motivation for a public inquiry was directly related to his hopes of getting financial compensation, Milgaard reiterated that his main concern is that the same thing does not happen to another young person. He further relates that prison is ìa very horrible place and he does not want to see innocent people incarcerated: "Compensation is one thing; the people involved are the most important." Milgaard avoided providing a figure on the financial compensation he is seeking other than that there can be "no price tag on what has taken place." He suggested that both he and his family suffered greatly, both throughout his incarceration and afterwards.
Although Milgaard seems determined to lobby the Saskatchewan government until he achieves his goal, it appears unlikely that an inquiry will ever come to pass. The NDP government in Saskatchewan is reluctant to call an inquiry. The official government line is that there is no reason for an inquiry due to the Supreme Court's conclusion that the original trial in 1970 was fair. This has lead some critics to suggest that the government's actions are politically motivated, due to the possible fear within NDP ranks of dredging up skeletons from the closet. This accusation is made due the fact that during the 1970 conviction of Milgaard, the now Premier of Saskatchewan, Roy Romanow, was serving as the Attorney General. As well, NDP backbencher Serge Kugawa was a Crown prosecutor who had some involvement in the Crown's original case; however, the government strongly denies the accusation that their decision against having a public inquiry was based on political self interest.
Whatever the result of such issues as the inquiry, compensation, or accountability, David Milgaard looks forward to it coming to an end-- "I would just like to see it all over with at this point."
Although David Milgaard has received some compensation, and some apologies, the Saskatchewan government has steadfastedly refused to hold a public inquiry into the matter. There is no excuse. The Ontario government showed how to do it in the matter of Guy Paul Morin.
A British Columbia case which has been compared to Milgaard's is that of Derik Lord.
There is some discussion going on about how to deal with youthful offenders.
See also Gillian Guess and Randy Kirkham
 | E-mail injusticebusters |
This page created August 2, 1998
Twenty-one years ago, an Albertan named Stan Faulder was convicted in Texas of the murder of a 75-year-old woman from one of the Lone Star state's wealthiest family. Faulder has been on Death Row since then. Eight times Texas authorities have tried to execute him and eight times Faulder has won a reprieve. Now he is running out of time. On December 10th, 1999 Faulder will face death by lethal injection
r hasn't been the same since he was injured in a car accident as a child or that the psychiatrist who gave evidence that was crucial to his conviction has been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association for unethical behaviour in death-penalty cases.
Robert Latimer, seen here surrendering to the RCMP after the Saskatchewan Court of Appeals overturned his light sentence to mandatory life imprisonment, should hate lawyers as much as we do. The Crown did not charge him properly. The right charge was manslaughter. But the Crown lawyers have their own agenda which generally involves overcharging. Mark Brayford would seem to have his agenda as well. That would seem to be playing high risk poker with a controversial issue in hopes that he will be responsible for ground-breaking legislation.
injusticebusters' hearts go out to Robert Latimer, his wife and children. Their private grief over Tracy will no doubt be sullied for some more months as this case proceeds to the highest Court in our land.
Enjoy freedom,