QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Innocence Canada counsel James Lockyer, who filed the ministerial application, said today: "The decision of the two Ministers to send the case back to the Court of Appeal is a huge step forward in establishing Tim Rees’ innocence. He was a victim of extraordinary non-disclosure. He has always claimed his innocence and testified to his innocence at his trial Fortunately, his parole officer believed he was wrongly convicted because, without that, he would likely not have been given parole."
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RELEASE: Posted by Innocence Canada on August 9, 2023:
POST: After 34 Years, a Toronto Man’s Conviction for the Murder in Etobicoke of a 10-Year-Old Girl is Sent Back to the Court of Appeal by the Minister of Justice
GIST: "Today, the new Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, and his predecessor, David Lametti, announced that Tim Rees’s conviction for the 1989 murder of 10-year-old Darla Thurott was to be sent back to the Ontario Court of Appeal to be reviewed.
Darla was strangled in her bed at her home in Etobicoke on March 16, 1989. She was found byher mother in the morning.
Tim Rees, then 25 years old, who had visited Darla’s parents the evening before and stayed overnight, was convicted of the murder on September 15, 1990, and sentenced to life imprisonment. His appeal to the Court of Appeal was dismissed on June 16, 1994, and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his case. After 26 years in prison, he was released on parole in October 2016, and he remains on parole today.
Innocence Canada adopted Mr. Rees’ case in 2016 and in 2018 filed an application claiming that he had been wrongly convicted with the then Minister of Justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould. The compelling feature of his application was an undisclosed tape-recorded statement of the landlord who lived in the same home and slept in the room immediately across the hall from Darla.
The landlord, since deceased, had given a highly incriminating statement to the police hours after the murder but the defence knew nothing of it. The landlord was able to testify with impunity, and falsely, that he never had a relationship with Darla and had not been in her bedroom on the night she was murdered.
If the missing tape-recording had been disclosed in 1989, it is doubtful that Mr. Rees would ever have been charged, let alone convicted of Darla’s murder.
In a remarkable twist, in 1989 it was members of the Toronto Police Homicide Squad who did not reveal the existence of the missing tape-recording, and in 2016 it was members of the Toronto Police Homicide Cold Case Squad who found the missing tape-recording after they had been assigned to respond to Innocence Canada’s request for access to the original investigative files.
Innocence Canada counsel James Lockyer, who filed the ministerial application, said today:
“The decision of the two Ministers to send the case back to the Court of Appeal is a huge step forward in establishing Tim Rees’ innocence. He was a victim of extraordinary non- disclosure. He has always claimed his innocence and testified to his innocence at his trial. Fortunately, his parole officer believed he was wrongly convicted because, without that, he would likely not have been given parole.”
Innocence Canada will be advocating for Mr. Rees in the Ontario Court of Appeal. Mr. Rees is now 60 years of age. He is very relieved and grateful for the Minister’s decision."
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Read Department of Justice release at:
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
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