PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Kudos to National Post reporter Joe Breen for tackling this important subject matter which may be relevant to cases relevant to this Blog.
Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Dead people are not supposed to appeal their convictions. Judicial resources are already scarce for living people. The rule is that the appeal dies with the appellant, as it did in the recent Ontario case of Michael Beaton, a chiropractor in Ottawa. He was convicted of three historical sexual offences against three male patients, and sentenced to 15 months. He appealed his convictions, the Crown appealed the sentence, and the whole case was heard last summer, a few months before Beaton died. His family wanted the appeal to continue toward a decision, as it could clear his name of the stigma of sexual crimes. But all serious crimes carry stigma, the Ontario Court of Appeal observed. If all such cases could be appealed by the family after the offender’s death, “the rule would become the exception and the exception, the rule.” So it decided Beaton’s appeal was moot, and declined to decide it."
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STORY: "'Nothing can be undone': Ontario's top court acquits a dead woman, but it's cold comfort to her father," by reporter Joseph Brean, published by The National Post on January 27, 2019.
SUB-HEADING: " Dead people are not supposed to appeal their convictions. Judicial resources are already scarce for living people."
GIST: "Crystal Weir, a 33-year-old mother of two who was convicted as an
accessory in a 2016 attempted murder in Sudbury, Ont., has just won
total vindication at Ontario’s highest court.
Weir may have driven the getaway car from a botched robbery that ended with a man shot in the back, but she did so on orders of a man holding a shotgun, and she tried to signal other motorists for help. She may have pleaded guilty to being an accessory, but she only did so because she was being kept in jail with one of her co-accuseds who threatened and later assaulted her for being a “rat,” for which that woman was eventually charged and convicted. Weir’s 2017 guilty plea was not only involuntary and the product of real fear of reprisal. It was also false, and her conviction was a “miscarriage of justice,” according to three judges of the Ontario Court of Appeal who heard the case this week, voided her conviction, and acquitted her. But Weir was not able to enjoy this courtroom success that clears her name and restores her legal innocence. That is because Crystal Weir died last October in Newfoundland when the car her friend was driving left the road, causing a crash that is still under investigation.
“To find her innocent now is totally useless. Nothing can be undone,” said her father Melvin Weir in an interview from Roddickton, N.L. “It makes me very angry at the system. It brings me no satisfaction.” Being charged was “the start of the downfall of my daughter’s life,” he said. “She was victimized by the justice system, which led to her death.” Dead people are not supposed to appeal their convictions. Judicial resources are already scarce for living people. The rule is that the appeal dies with the appellant, as it did in the recent Ontario case of Michael Beaton, a chiropractor in Ottawa. He was convicted of three historical sexual offences against three male patients, and sentenced to 15 months. He appealed his convictions, the Crown appealed the sentence, and the whole case was heard last summer, a few months before Beaton died. His family wanted the appeal to continue toward a decision, as it could clear his name of the stigma of sexual crimes. But all serious crimes carry stigma, the Ontario Court of Appeal observed. If all such cases could be appealed by the family after the offender’s death, “the rule would become the exception and the exception, the rule.” So it decided Beaton’s appeal was moot, and declined to decide it.
The entire story can be read at:
Weir may have driven the getaway car from a botched robbery that ended with a man shot in the back, but she did so on orders of a man holding a shotgun, and she tried to signal other motorists for help. She may have pleaded guilty to being an accessory, but she only did so because she was being kept in jail with one of her co-accuseds who threatened and later assaulted her for being a “rat,” for which that woman was eventually charged and convicted. Weir’s 2017 guilty plea was not only involuntary and the product of real fear of reprisal. It was also false, and her conviction was a “miscarriage of justice,” according to three judges of the Ontario Court of Appeal who heard the case this week, voided her conviction, and acquitted her. But Weir was not able to enjoy this courtroom success that clears her name and restores her legal innocence. That is because Crystal Weir died last October in Newfoundland when the car her friend was driving left the road, causing a crash that is still under investigation.
To find her innocent now is totally useless. Nothing can be undone,As such, she joins one of the rarest groups in Canadian jurisprudence — the posthumously acquitted.
“To find her innocent now is totally useless. Nothing can be undone,” said her father Melvin Weir in an interview from Roddickton, N.L. “It makes me very angry at the system. It brings me no satisfaction.” Being charged was “the start of the downfall of my daughter’s life,” he said. “She was victimized by the justice system, which led to her death.” Dead people are not supposed to appeal their convictions. Judicial resources are already scarce for living people. The rule is that the appeal dies with the appellant, as it did in the recent Ontario case of Michael Beaton, a chiropractor in Ottawa. He was convicted of three historical sexual offences against three male patients, and sentenced to 15 months. He appealed his convictions, the Crown appealed the sentence, and the whole case was heard last summer, a few months before Beaton died. His family wanted the appeal to continue toward a decision, as it could clear his name of the stigma of sexual crimes. But all serious crimes carry stigma, the Ontario Court of Appeal observed. If all such cases could be appealed by the family after the offender’s death, “the rule would become the exception and the exception, the rule.” So it decided Beaton’s appeal was moot, and declined to decide it.
She was victimized by the justice system, which led to her deathBut sometimes important legal issues persist after death, and while the rule against posthumous appeals used to be absolute, now there are occasional exceptions, for reasons that include effects on the family. In Nova Scotia for example, William Roger MacLellan died in 2017, after filing an appeal of his conviction for sexually assaulting an Antigonish university student in his taxi. He had testified he was not driving the cab that night, and pointed to conflicting eyewitness evidence about the race and skin colour of the driver. His sister asked a court to let her represent him on appeal, but was denied. In a ruling last week, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, but one of the three judges dissented, partly out of concern for the effects on MacLellan’s family, and decided that “the interests of justice command that the appeal go forward.” Technically, that dissent means the case could be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. The top court has ruled on this before, in the 2004 appeal of a 1985 murder conviction. By the time it was heard, the offender Brian Joseph Smith had been dead for nearly a decade. In declining to hear it, the top court observed that posthumous appeals should be “rare and exceptional.” But it left open some exceptions, for when the interests of justice demand the appeal continue. “If we know there’s been a miscarriage of justice, that there’s not basis for the conviction, then it is important for administration of justice to correct it when we can,” said Erin Dann, the Toronto lawyer who acted for Weir on her appeal. The appeal judges “agreed that in the unusual circumstances of this case, where it was clear this was a miscarriage of justice, and the facts did not support a finding of guilt, that it was important for that to be corrected,” Dann said. Dann submitted a factum, outlining the reasons Weir ought to be cleared, just a few days before her death in October. It describes how the Crown in Sudbury learned about the threats against Weir about a month after she pleaded guilty, as they were preparing her as a witness against the other accused. The Court of Appeal ruling notes that it was in fact the Crown that helped Weir begin the appeal process, with no intention of ever retrying her. “She not only turned herself in, but she became a material witness for the Crown without any benefit to herself. Indeed, as a result of her cooperation with the Crown, (Weir) became a victim of a vicious assault. Her testimony helped secure committal for the main preparators of the robbery and attempted murder,” the factum reads."
The entire story can be read at:
