GIST: "Deep in the recesses of the mandate letter given to Justice Minister and Attorney General David Lametti by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are directions for Lametti to implement an independent Criminal Case Review Commission that has been long needed and a long time coming. Some 25 years ago, a group of hotshot young Toronto lawyers — among them the late Dianne Martin, Peter Meier, Clayton Ruby, Marlys Edwardh, James Lockyer and Daniel Brodsky, among others — founded the Association for the Wrongly Convicted, which aggressively called into question the legitimacy and integrity of our criminal justice systems. Almost 100% of the cases they took on were pro bono because the convicted person did not have the financial wherewithal to hire lawyers or do any legwork on their own because they were locked away in prison. So, the group tried to overthrow wrongful convictions on their own, working thousands upon thousands of unbillable hours and paying for DNA tests and private detectives out of their own pockets because they believed their cause was a just one. Whatever was necessary, they anted up for it. It was the group’s determination to assist Toronto lawyer and friend Jack Pinkofsky in overturning not one but two murder convictions against Guy Paul Morin for the 1984 murder of his nine-year-old neighbour, Christine Jessop. The group of lawyers who freed Morin after 18 years in prison originally called themselves the Justice for Guy Paul Morin Committee, later changing it to the Association of the Wrongly Convicted when they decided to press on to other cases, and finally named their project Innocence Canada. The names behind their successes, none ever coming easily, included the late Donald Marshall Jr., 11 years in prison; Glen Assoun, 17 years; David Milgaard, 23 years; Romeo Phillion, 31 years; and Steven Truscott, originally sentenced to hang for murder — all of them wrongly convicted. When Phillion stepped out of prison for the first time in three decades, he asked his lawyer what that strange thing was high in the Toronto sky. “That’s the CN Tower,” he was told. “A federal plan to create an independent body to seek out and correct possible wrongful convictions represents the realization of a 25-year dream for the innocence movement,” said Brodsky. “Over this time, Innocence Canada has participated in the exoneration of 23 wrongly convicted people in Canada in addition to contributing to a number of public inquiries and commissions. “All seven inquiries and commissions have recommended the creation of the independent review commission,” he said. “After 25 years, it’s nice to know that somebody has been listening and we have pledged to give Justice Minister David Lametti our full support and assistance as the government establishes the independent commission.” More about Brodsky. On most days he shows in court looking somewhat dishevelled and overworked, but there is no lawyer more willing to represent the mentally ill than him, as well as vulnerable indigenous clients caught up in a world they just don’t understand, and he does it with great respect to the accused as well as to the law. Those cases alone are worth attending just to see Brodsky’s mastery of massive and complex files that most lawyers run from. In his 25 years with Innocence Canada, he has worked “thousands and thousands of hours to save the innocent,” and making not a single nickel. This goes, too, for all the founders, each of them remarkable in the quest to right some very grievous wrongs. If not them, there’d be no one."

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