PUBLISHER'S NOTE: "The five day hearing before three Ontario Court of Appeal justices wound up yesterday (Friday June 28) with completion of evidence of yet another police officer who was unable to provide the three justices with any enlightenment whatsoever on a tape found years after his 1990 conviction and life sentence for murder, which showed that Tim Rees had been charged with the murder (based on a confession that he claims was false) - even though the police had evidence which showed that Jim Raymer, the landlord of the rooming house in which 10-year-old Darla Thurrott had been strangled to death, may have been the child's killer. This newly discovered evidence, allegedly concealed by the police, would have been 'gold' in the hands of Tim Rees lawyers, as it was a tape which showed that Raymer, since deceased, had given a highly incriminating statement to the police hours after the murder - and that Rees' lawyers were utterly unaware of this damning statement when the case came to trial. After sitting at that hearing for most of the five days, I can say that the police had a 'mountain' of other evidence in their possession, much of it shown during the hearing, that does not appear to have been disclosed by the police to the prosecutors responsible for the case - and which showed that Raymer, now deceased, was the killer - and that Tim Rees was not. As Innocence Canada put it:
"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."
NEXT STEPS: The Court of Appeal is scheduled to begin a three-day hearing on Tim Rees's fresh evidence application on December 9, 2024. Crown Counsel at the hearing has put on record that the Crown is seeking a new trial. Lawyer James Lockyer has told the court that Mr. Rees is seeking an outright acquittal, which, in my view, he truly deserves. (The sooner the better. HL).
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/3245685947737935876
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/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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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;