STORY: "B.C. inmate Phillip Tallio has waited 34 years to clear his name. These women might help him do it," by reporter Jana G. Pruden, published by the Globe and Mail on July 15, 2017. (Jana Pruden is a feature writer at The Globe and Mail.)
SUB-HEADING: "Phillip Tallio has been jailed for three decades for a brutal crime he says he did not commit.
Jana G. Pruden tells the story of a young outsider, a
troubling police investigation and the women whose efforts won him the
right to an unprecedented appeal.
PHOTO CAPTION: Robyn Batryn of Maple Ridge, B.C., holds up a picture of Phillip Tallio,
who has been in prison for 34 years, accused of raping and killing his
22-month-old cousin in 1983. He and his supporters say he’s innocent,
and now his case is being appealed."
GIST: "In the first year after he was charged
with the rape and murder of a child, Phillip James Tallio wrote his
teenaged girlfriend 116 letters, every one of them repeating the same
thing. He said it before his trial and after his conviction, and when he
was sentenced to life in prison. For more than 34 years he said it,
over and over, and he would not stop. He said it to family members and
to correctional staff, in prison programs and to the parole board, even
though he knew saying it meant he would not be released. When people
told him to stop saying it, so at least he could get out of prison and
have some kind of a life, he told them he would never admit to something
he didn’t do. And then he’d repeat the same thing he’d been saying for
34 years: I didn’t do this. Now, a lifetime later, people are listening. After years of intensive investigation
and research, the Innocence Project at the University of British
Columbia has won Mr. Tallio the right to appeal his 1983 conviction for
the murder of his 22-month-old cousin, Delavina Mack, well over three
decades after the appeal deadline passed. The historic appeal is based
on new DNA evidence and questions about a flawed and tunnel-visioned
police investigation, serious concerns about his two alleged
confessions, evidence of Mr. Tallio’s cognitive limitations, reports of
systemic racism, and witness accounts that raise the possibility of
other suspects never investigated by police.“It’s something that us outside of the
prison life will never be able to fully comprehend, especially that many
years,” says Rachel Barsky, who began working on the case six years ago
while a law student involved with UBC’s Innocence Project, and is now a
lawyer working as co-counsel on the case. “Thirty-four years in prison.
Phillip has missed out on a lifetime.”........ The case has largely come to light
because of a former correctional officer who knew Mr. Tallio when he was
a teenager and the subsequent efforts of her daughter, Robyn Batryn,
who, for the past 15 years, has been working to have the case reviewed. “It makes me sad. He’s lost everything.
It’s almost like he has to start right from the beginning,” says Ms.
Batryn, a health-care supervisor. She says her mother, now almost 93,
wants to see Mr. Tallio released before she dies. The questions around his conviction are
significant enough that even the judge who presided over Mr. Tallio’s
preliminary hearing has filed an affidavit saying he has come to wonder
whether the man imprisoned for 34 years is actually guilty. Mr. Tallio, 51, has been eligible for
parole since 1993, but has been repeatedly denied any kind of release,
because of his steadfast refusal to accept responsibility for the
murder. He has been held long past when most offenders are granted
parole, even for the most heinous crimes.........After his arrest, Phillip Tallio was
interrogated by RCMP for 10 hours without speaking to a lawyer. He
maintained his innocence during the recorded interview, but then
apparently confessed during a period in which the tape recorder
malfunctioned. Mr. Tallio also allegedly gave a second confession during
a later session with a forensic psychologist, which was
also unrecorded. With no direct evidence linking him to the murder, his conviction rested on the two confessions. A judge excluded the RCMP confession from
the trial based on doubts about the voluntariness of the statement
given Mr. Tallio’s intellectual level, that he was unable to speak with
anyone who could help him, and the length and nature of the
interrogation – including that he had been held in isolation for 10
hours. The decision left the entire case resting on the statements Mr.
Tallio had reportedly made to a forensic psychologist, Dr. Robert Pos. The Crown prosecutor in the case, Deirdre
Pothecary, now says she believes Mr. Tallio would have been convicted
of first-degree murder if the alleged confession to Dr. Pos was allowed
to go before the jury, but found not guilty if it was excluded. Instead, a plea deal was struck before that was decided. Mr. Tallio pleaded guilty to
second-degree murder nine days into his trial that fall, which would see
him eligible for parole after 10 years rather than face a first-degree
conviction with no chance of parole for 25......... Eventually she found a lawyer willing to
have some students review the proceedings, and she “hounded him to
death” until it happened. Ms. Batryn then took their notes to the
Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (now called Innocence
Canada), which had been involved in overturning high-profile wrongful
convictions such as those of David Milgaard and Thomas Sophonow. Progress stalled when it was discovered
that all the RCMP forensic evidence in the case had been lost or
destroyed, but Ms. Batryn refused to accept it was a dead end. In 2009,
she heard about the UBC Innocence Project, and after an extensive
review, the group took on the case. ........In his own affidavit, the judge who
presided over Mr. Tallio’s preliminary hearing described serious
concerns around policing and the administration of justice in the area,
including an RCMP practice of imprisoning young Indigenous men for no
reason on weekends to keep the community quiet. Judge Charles Cunliffe Barnett said that
people in the community were also extremely reluctant to believe a local
could commit a terrible crime, and noted that, having lived away for
most of his life, Mr. Tallio was an outsider. “I have, over the years, wondered about
Phillip Tallio’s case,” Judge Barnett wrote. “Initially, I focused my
thoughts upon what I perceived to be the failings of the child
protection system. As time went on and I learned that Phillip Tallio was
still imprisoned and refused to acknowledge guilt, I came to wonder if
he, an outsider in Bella Coola, had truly been guilty of violating and
killing Delavina Mack.” The affidavits also raised significant questions about both of Mr. Tallio’s confessions and his guilty plea. One psychologist who had examined Mr.
Tallio before the trial described him as being easily confused and
overwhelmed, unable to think things through and anticipate consequences,
and having “blind faith” that people would help him. She said he would
sometimes tell people what he thought they wanted to hear so that they
would stop questioning him, and she expressed concerns about his ability
to understand the court proceedings he was facing. She said that before the trial Mr. Tallio
appeared to think that the sooner he went to prison, the more likely he
would be home for Christmas. A court stenographer who worked on the
case described Mr. Tallio as being like a child, and said he was upset
over missing Halloween. Mr. Tallio claimed he did not make either
confession, and never even met with Dr. Robert Pos, the forensic
psychologist he supposedly confessed to. In one affidavit, a retired
criminal defence lawyer says he believes Dr. Pos lied about meeting with
his client in a different murder case, and the lawyer expressed serious
concerns about Dr. Pos (who is now dead), calling him a “deluded
professional” who believed he could tell if people were lying by looking
at their carotid artery. And then there was the lack of physical
evidence to prove or disprove Mr. Tallio’s claims. With all of the RCMP
exhibits missing, Rachel Barsky and her colleagues at the UBC Innocence
Project located 45 tissue samples that had been taken during the child’s
autopsy and were still being stored at the BC Children’s Hospital. Shortly after the samples were located,
Mr. Tallio was interviewed again by the RCMP. During the interview, he
repeatedly said he hadn’t killed Delavina Mack, and expressed
frustration at being unable to prove his innocence. He offered to give
the officers any kind of DNA sample they wanted. Asked by one of the officers what DNA meant to him, Mr. Tallio said, “Freedom.” “And if we take your DNA sample and have
it checked to the potential DNA located on the vagina sample, what’s
that going to show us?” the officer asked. Mr. Tallio answered, “That it wasn’t me.”........After more than 34 years, the case of Phillip James Tallio is far from over. Mr. Tallio’s lawyer, Ms. Barsky, says she
expects it to take at least five or six months to apply to the courts
to have additional samples released for DNA testing. If a judge does
order them to be released, the new samples have to be tested before the
appeal can proceed. “There are a lot of steps that go into a
case as complex as this,” Ms. Barsky says. “We’re dealing with a lot of
issues that are unprecedented and that haven’t been done in Canada
before … so we have to figure things out as we go along.""
The entire story can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the
Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my
previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put
considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith
and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic
pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses
on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
