Lawyer James Lockyer of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly convicted says in a release at the link below: "Mr. Salmon's wrongful conviction is another case of bad science causing a miscarriage of justice. It has taken 45 years for it to be fully exposed. Mr. Salmon has paid a terrible price. On the same day he, lost the woman he loved and was wrongly charged with her murder. Let us hope that today will see the end of this injustice." (Keep an eye on this post during the day for developments. HL);
https://mail.google.com/mail/
See Toronto Star story on Salmon's 45 year journey to exoneration: "For nearly forty-five years, John Salmon has tried to push the burden of his conviction for killing his common-law wife, a crime he has always insisted he didn’t commit, to the back of his mind. Rather than dwell on the frustration and the stigma, Salmon, 75, has tried to keep busy, first pulling double shifts in the prison kitchen, then pouring himself into his job as a welder after his release. “If you work all the time, you don’t think about stuff,” he says. But recently, Salmon has allowed hope to creep in. A decade after he approached the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted for help with his case, the Crown has agreed that Salmon should be absolved of killing Maxine Ditchfield on the basis of fresh medical evidence, which shows she died of a stroke caused by a fall. A Toronto Court of Appeal is expected to exonerate him on Monday. “It’s exhilarating,” said Salmon, now a grandfather living in Coldwater, Ont. “The legal system is flawed. Back then it was really flawed. But I believe now, since they got all these new forensics, it’s going to be a lot better.” Reports from four medical experts, including a neuropathologist retained by the Crown, arrived at a unanimous conclusion. Rather than being killed by a forceful blow to the head, as the Crown’s expert had argued at trial in 1971, Ditchfield, they found, died from a fall — an explanation that aligns closely with what Salmon himself has always said. “He told the truth about Maxine’s death on the day it occurred and for the 45 years since then has tenaciously maintained his innocence,” Salmon’s lawyers, James Lockyer and Marie Henein, wrote in their submissions to the court. “Modern medical science confirms the account of Maxine’s death he gave to his family, the doctor, the police and the jury in 1971.” The Crown agreed in its submissions that the fresh evidence in the case is “unquestionably admissible,” and removes “the very foundation for a circumstantial case against (Salmon).” So convincing is the evidence, that had it been proffered initially, it “would not just have affected the verdict, it would have eliminated the basis for a criminal prosecution,” the Crown said.
http://www.thestar.com/news/
See CBC news story on the court's decision exonerating Mr. Salmon. "New evidence indicates 1970 death of common-law wife Maxine Ditchfield caused by stroke."..."A man who fought for 45 years to clear his name of a manslaughter conviction was exonerated by an Ontario court today after experts said his common-law wife's death was linked to her having suffered a stroke. On Monday morning, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned John Frederick Salmon's conviction in the 1970 death of Maxine Ditchfield."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/
Insightful quote of the day: Lawyer James Lockyer, talking about the reaction of family members of the victim to an exoneration that comes after many years when that initial mistake has been made by the pathologist: (From Toronto Star): "Salmon’s lawyer, James Lockyer, senior counsel for the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, said the reaction of Ditchfield’s children shows you “the problems that happen when that initial mistake is made by the pathologist.” “It doesn’t just set up a chain of events for the person that’s wrongly convicted. It sets up a chain of events for family members of the deceased,” Lockyer told reporters. “They get trapped into the same wrong conclusions . . . It’s not unusual in the cases that we’ve done.”
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Posted By Harold Levy to the charles smith blog at 6/22/2015 07:14:00 AM
