PUBLISHER'S NOTE: A previous Winnipeg Free Press story makes clear that no other prosecutor in George Dangerfield's jurisdiction was responsible for so many miscarriages of justice, so many years rested from the lives of innocent people and their families, so much pain and isolation, so many tears. The one missing voice in this otherwise excellent story is the voice of his wrongfully convicted victims, who instead of debating his legacy abstractly, are likely still haunted by their memories of their horrific experiences. My view of George Dangerfield's legacy? I don't believe in speaking ill of the dead. Therefore I'm just going to shut up. Besides, there's not enough time and space.
Harold levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Commissions of inquiry were struck to look at the particulars of the Sophonow and Driskell cases and to identify systemic issues that might have contributed to the miscarriages of justice. Three of the cases — Sophonow, Driskell and Unger — resulted in millions of dollars in compensation being paid. The cases showcased the most pervasive systemic issues found in most wrongful convictions: junk scientific evidence, jailhouse informants, secret deals with unsavoury witnesses and non-disclosure of exculpatory evidence. The performance of Dangerfield — once considered Manitoba’s most respected prosecutor and now cast in history as its most infamous — was central to each case."
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STORY: "Raising Reasonable Doubt," by Dan Lett and Katrina Clarke, published by The Winnipeg Free Press, on January 31, 2025. (Born and raised in and around Toronto, Dan Lett came to Winnipeg in 1986, less than a year out of journalism school with a lifelong dream to be a newspaper reporter. Katrina Clarke is an investigative reporter with the Winnipeg Free Press.)
SUB-HEADING: "Amid renewed calls to search for potential wrongful convictions, the province has yet to conduct a comprehensive review of George Dangerfield's legal career"
GIST: It remains the great unanswered question lurking over Manitoba’s justice system. How many wrongful convictions did prosecutor George Dangerfield engineer during his career? It’s a legitimate question, considering no other Crown attorney in Canada has been connected to as many.
Over the course of five decades, Dangerfield was responsible for the wrongful convictions of seven Manitoba men in homicide cases: Thomas Sophonow, James Driskell, Frank Ostrowski, Kyle Unger, Brian Anderson, Allan Woodhouse and Clarence Woodhouse. An eighth man, Clarence’s brother Russell Woodhouse, died in 2011. He remains convicted of manslaughter but Innocence Canada is seeking a posthumous declaration of his innocence.
Also pending is the case of Robert Sanderson, who was prosecuted by Dangerfield and convicted of three counts of first-degree murder in 1997. In 2023, after Sanderson served 25 years in prison, the federal justice minister sent the case back to the Manitoba Court of Appeal. Sanderson is still waiting for that process to conclude.
If the Sanderson and Russell Woodhouse convictions are quashed, Dangerfield’s scorecard for infamy would list six cases involving nine men who served more than 140 years behind bars for crimes they did not commit.
Commissions of inquiry were struck to look at the particulars of the Sophonow and Driskell cases and to identify systemic issues that might have contributed to the miscarriages of justice. Three of the cases — Sophonow, Driskell and Unger — resulted in millions of dollars in compensation being paid.
The cases showcased the most pervasive systemic issues found in most wrongful convictions: junk scientific evidence, jailhouse informants, secret deals with unsavoury witnesses and non-disclosure of exculpatory evidence. The performance of Dangerfield — once considered Manitoba’s most respected prosecutor and now cast in history as its most infamous — was central to each case.
There have been calls for a more thorough review of Dangerfield’s cases through the years, but interest intensified two years ago, when Manitoba Court of King’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal held an extraordinary hearing to acquit and declare innocent two Indigenous men — Anderson and Allan Woodhouse — convicted of murder in 1974. An investigation by Innocence Canada confirmed falsified confessions were used to convict the men from Pinaymootang First Nation who at the time had a limited grasp of English.
Despite signs the confessions obtained by Winnipeg police had been coerced, if not fabricated, Dangerfield forged ahead and was able to assuage any concerns the court had about the veracity of the statements.
Clarence Woodhouse, a third man convicted of the same killing, was declared innocent by Joyal last October.
The 50-year-old case has sharpened the appetite of some within the justice system to once again take a broader look at Dangerfield’s cases.
Based on concerns about systemic racism in the Anderson and Allan Woodhouse convictions, Innocence Canada — an independent, non-profit organization that investigates wrongful convictions — suggested a review of all homicide cases where an Indigenous person was convicted. In Ottawa, there was a growing interest in reviving efforts to investigate Dangerfield more broadly.
Then-federal justice minister David Lametti made the decision in 2023 to quash the original convictions of Anderson and Allan Woodhouse and order a new trial. That decision set the stage for Joyal’s history-making exonerations.
In a recent interview, Lametti, who left politics in January 2024, said the insight he gained from the Anderson-Woodhouse case piqued his interest in seeing a broader review of the prosecutor’s cases.
“Having seen a number of those files … I felt there were patterns of behaviour that needed to be investigated,” he told the Free Press.
Lametti said he went as far as discussing with federal justice officials the possibility of calling for the broader inquiry. However, he was fighting a larger battle at the time: trying to get Bill C-40, which became David and Joyce Milgaard’s Law, through a minority Parliament.
The bill, which was passed and given royal assent just before Christmas, will create Canada’s first formal federal institution to review wrongful convictions: the Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission. When the commission is up and running, Lametti said it could conduct a review of Dangerfield’s cases — or the current federal justice minister, or Manitoba justice minister, could do the same.
“I am sympathetic with that inquiry; I think that’s fair to say,” he said.
It is unclear whether the federal commission will have the mandate or the resources to undertake a review of Dangerfield’s other cases. If it does have the opportunity, it might look to Manitoba, where a review — at least in name — was undertaken almost two decades ago.
Unfortunately, the federal commission is unlikely to be encouraged by what transpired.
Almost from the moment of inception, the Dangerfield review started to come undone.
In the final report from the 2007 commission of inquiry examining James Driskell’s wrongful conviction, chief commissioner Patrick LeSage found the efforts of Dangerfield and other senior Manitoba Justice officials fell below “professional standards” expected of representatives of the attorney general. LeSage recommended an external review of Dangerfield’s other cases to see whether there were more miscarriages of justice in his body of work.
Then-provincial justice minister Dave Chomiak responded quickly. In February 2007, on the same day the commission’s final report was released, Chomiak ordered “external reviews of similar cases prosecuted by George Dangerfield where a claim of a wrongful conviction is made.”
The province hired former Ontario Superior Court judge Roger Salhany to oversee the review. In a July 2007 meeting in Kitchener, Ont., where Salhany lived, the retired judge sat down with representatives of Manitoba Justice and the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted, the organization now known as Innocence Canada, which had fought to clear the names of both Sophonow and Driskell.
It seemed like everyone had come together in a common purpose to undertake a historical — and historic — review, the first of its kind in Canada.
Over the next year, there were additional discussions between Manitoba Justice and the association about parameters: the review would be limited to cases Dangerfield oversaw that were homicides; where the accused was convicted at trial; an appeal was undertaken; and the original conviction was upheld. As well, priority would be given to cases where the convicted person was still in custody. If cases were identified, the association would be allowed to determine the order in which they were to be investigated further.
Even though it appeared everyone was on the same page, fissures began to appear almost immediately.
Although Chomiak had adopted LeSage’s language when ordering a broad external review, Manitoba Justice began to reframe and limit its scope internally, describing it as a process to identify cases where it could be shown that “the actions of G. Dangerfield fell below professional standards.”
It remains unclear why Manitoba Justice recast the parameters. Before the Driskell inquiry, the province sought to identify other cases that had involved hair and fibre analysis. Manitoba Justice went as far as to write all defence counsel asking them to flag cases where the visual comparison of hairs or fibres — now largely discredited by forensic specialists as a useless form of evidence — played a role in a conviction. None were identified.
Wrongful convictions, or at least “unsafe verdicts” — that is, those that can lead to a wrongful conviction or a miscarriage of justice — might emerge from cases that include one or more of the following.
Despite assurances LeSage’s recommendation would be fulfilled, Salhany never had the opportunity to conduct a thorough review. Within a few months, government sources confirmed Salhany had grown concerned about the limitations, having been told he could only engage in cases involving non-dislosure. However, identifying those cases was proving nearly impossible; the sources said Salhany said he had not been given the resources to undertake a deeper dive.
During his brief time working on the review, Salhany only delved into one case — Ostrowski’s — that had already been identified by the association as a possible wrongful conviction. Salhany’s analysis was provided to then-federal justice minister Peter MacKay, who referred it for additional review to the Manitoba Court of Appeal. The appellate court quashed the conviction in 2018.
The Free Press filed a freedom of information request in an effort to uncover any memos or reports produced by Salhany. The resulting response stated the record “does not exist or cannot be located.”
A letter from Manitoba assistant deputy attorney general Michael Conner stated Salhany only looked at one case (Ostrowski). “Justice Salhany’s review therefore came to an end, and as a result, no reports or documents were submitted outlining his findings,” the letter said. “Manitoba Justice did not receive any other reports regarding alleged wrongful convictions from Justice Salhany.”
In the aftermath, Manitoba Justice took one more step to help fulfil the commitments made in the wake of the Driskell inquiry report: it produced a list of 12 Dangerfield cases that met the initial criteria set out in 2007.
The list, obtained by the Free Press, included a wide array of cases between 1971 and 1991. While most are relatively unknown, there are a few surprises.
Dwayne Archie Johnston, the only man convicted of the 1971 murder of Helen Betty Osborne, was on that list. So, too, were Jerry Stolar and Barry Nielsen, two Winnipeg cops convicted of murdering Nielsen’s brother-in-law, Paul Clear, to keep him from ratting them out for an illegal break-and-enter ring they had been operating.
A senior Manitoba Justice official said the list was provided to the association sometime in 2007 but could not locate an accompanying letter confirming the exact date. The official said the list was sent out again in 2019 but could not explain why it was re-sent.
It would be hard to argue the list met the original recommendation in the Driskell inquiry report.
Manitoba Justice only gave Innocence Canada basic documents, usually appellate court briefs that in some instances did not include the facts of each case. Documents from Crown files, which typically are the best evidence of non-disclosure, were not included nor offered. There is no evidence Manitoba Justice officials took the time to examine the forwarded files.
Innocence Canada’s James Lockyer said it would require an enormous amount of work by multiple lawyers and investigators to determine conclusively whether any of the cases were wrongful convictions, given that so little information was provided. Manitoba Justice did not offer to investigate or support an investigation; Innocence Canada on its own would not have the resources to undertake the work.
“It takes years to pull these cases together, and we simply don’t have means to take a closer look,” Lockyer said.
When asked if the Manitoba government would consider paying for a review now, Justice Minister Matt Wiebe was not enthusiastic about the idea.
In an interview, Wiebe said there are many competing needs in the criminal justice system and while uncovering additional wrongful convictions is a noble cause, it would be hard to justify the expense.
“We are challenged by the resources that we have in the justice system,” Wiebe said. “So it is a matter of understanding what the priorities are, working with Innocence Canada, and understanding where the opportunities are to right the wrongs. Adding a whole bunch of resources that, frankly, we just don’t have … it can be a challenge.”
Searching for a wrongful conviction is a bit like looking for a particular needle in a shipping container full of needles.
The ways and means by which someone could be wrongfully convicted are complex and varied. They could be the victim of junk science, particularly hair and fibre comparison evidence. Many wrongful convictions are the product of deals made with jailhouse informants, criminal co-conspirators whose motivation for testifying is skewed toward self-interest. In some instances, victims of miscarriages were threatened and coerced into confessing to crimes they did not commit.
There is also the issue of non-disclosure. It is hard to find a case of wrongful conviction where a key piece of evidence — something that could have created reasonable doubt for a judge or jury — went missing, was overlooked or deliberately withheld from the accused, their lawyers and, ultimately, the court.
Although some of the hallmarks of a possible wrongful conviction can be obtained by reviewing publicly available court files, the real “smoking guns” are tucked deep within police and Crown documents that are, in most instances, unavailable to the general public. Non-disclosure, for example, could only be proven by looking at what evidence the Crown had in its files and comparing it with what was disclosed to the defence.
As a result, it becomes clear why a vast majority of confirmed wrongful convictions are only uncovered after years of lobbying and investigation by the victim, their friends and family, and advocates for the wrongfully convicted.
A simple search of public records was never going to turn up other wrongful convictions.
Few lawyers in this country know more about searching for that needle than Jerome Kennedy, a former Newfoundland justice minister and current chair of the case-review committee for Innocence Canada.
When Innocence Canada begins to vet a case, it starts with publicly available records — trial transcripts, court files, exhibits, appellate court briefs — and statements from the person claiming innocence, Kennedy said. However, while that might provide some hints as to whether a case is a miscarriage of justice, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Complicating matters further is that recognizing the hallmarks of a wrongful conviction has become a specialized area of law, something an average lawyer would not be able to glean solely by reading documents such as appellate court briefs.
“It’s very hard to find wrongful convictions by reviewing case files,” Kennedy said. “Our ability to recognize cases comes from a combination of intuition and experience, having dealt with so many cases. The average lawyer looking at a case would not be able to recognize it as a possible wrongful conviction.”
Kennedy said many of the cases in which Innocence Canada has been involved did not, at first, appear to be miscarriages of justice. There were some telltale signs, such as the use of junk scientific evidence or jailhouse informants, but much of the compelling evidence is not found in public court records. It must be unearthed through meticulous investigation of Crown and police files, which rarely see the light of day.
“You cannot tell just from looking at publicly available records — I can tell you that now, right?” Kennedy said. “You’ve got to get deep into the file, and ultimately where we find the answers is in the police and Crown files. Publicly available files will never tell you the whole story.”
There are others in Canada who believe a deeper review should still be undertaken.
Kent Roach, a law professor from the University of Toronto, has done more research and writing on wrongful convictions than any other academic in Canada. He gave expert testimony at the Driskell inquiry and was consulted on the creation of the country’s first federal wrongful conviction commission.
Roach said a review is still needed, although he does not believe it requires a full judicial inquiry. Instead, he said, the Manitoba government could take a new approach and release the Crown files from Dangerfield’s cases and transfer them to the provincial archives so that advocates for those convicted, lawyers, journalists and law students could study them.
Roach said this would be the only way to really identify miscarriages of justice. He agreed with Kennedy that key evidence of a wrongful conviction would be contained within the intimate correspondence and internal documents that are not disclosed to defence counsel during criminal proceedings.
In the Driskell case, Manitoba Justice agreed to provide the Crown file to the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted and the Free Press for further review. The documents — which included internal memos, invoices and correspondence sent between federal and provincial agencies — confirmed a secret deal had been reached with a key Crown witness. That witness, Ray Zanidean, was paid tens of thousands of dollars, relocated to another province and granted immunity on an arson charge in Saskatchewan in exchange for testimony.
During the Driskell inquiry, Dangerfield admitted he was aware a deal had been made with Zanidean but still allowed the witness to claim otherwise at trial.
Provincial prosecution services generally don’t release such files into the public domain, Roach said, although they are nearly always provided to the federal justice department’s Criminal Conviction Review Group when a case is being investigated under Sec. 696 of the Criminal Code. That is why transferring the Crown files en masse would be an important step forward in not only revealing additional wrongful convictions, but also discouraging Crown attorneys from withholding key evidence.
“One possible response is to make special arrangements for all of (Dangerfield’s) cases to go to the archives, where they would be open for independent researchers and media,” Roach said. “That would be very important to support the work of investigating wrongful convictions. I think prosecutors should be made aware that these files, after a certain amount of time, will be available in the archives for people to examine.”
Lockyer, who has been lobbying for a broader review since 2007, said there is reason to believe there are more miscarriages of justice waiting to be unearthed.
“I imagine there were other prosecutors out there like him back in those days,” Lockyer said. “Yes, I’m sure there were, and we may have caught one or two of them here and there. But no one matches Dangerfield in terms of the sheer number of cases.
“So, we need to keep on digging. And in a perfect world, it would be all his cases.”
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CASES IN POINT
In the wake of the 2007 inquiry examining the wrongful conviction of James Driskell, chief commissioner Patrick LeSage recommended an external review of Crown prosecutor George Dangerfield’s other cases to see if other miscarriages of justice occurred.
Then-Manitoba justice minister Dave Chomiak responded quickly and ordered the review. While it initially seemed all parties were pulling in the same direction, cracks quickly appeared as Manitoba Justice began to limit the scope and a thorough examination of other Dangerfield cases was never conducted.
However, Manitoba Justice did take one step toward fulfilling commitments made in the wake of the Driskell inquiry: it produced a list of 12 Dangerfield cases that met the criteria initially set for the external review. The list, obtained by the Free Press, includes an array of cases between 1971 and 1991.
Dwayne Archie Johnston (1971)
Johnston was one of four men who kidnapped, raped and murdered Helen Betty Osborne, an Indigenous woman from Norway House First Nation.
The case: It would be 16 years before police could build a case against Johnston and the three other men. He was convicted largely on the testimony provided by co-accused Lee Colgan, who received immunity in exchange for his co-operation with prosecutors.
Issues raised on appeal: Johnston claimed he did not intend to kill Osborne; his lawyers argued it was unconstitutional to “convict a citizen of murder in the absence of an intention to kill or at least to cause bodily harm which he foresees is likely to cause the death of another person.”
Result: Johnston was the only one of the four men to be convicted. He served 10 years of a life sentence for manslaughter and was paroled in 1997.
Richard John Zanewich (1972)
Police charged Zanewich with the stabbing murder of his brother, Kenneth Zanewich, in the kitchen of a house they shared. He was convicted of manslaughter.
The case: Zanewich said his brother, extremely drunk while making a sandwich, slipped and fell on the knife. There were no fingerprints found on the knife handle and no other direct evidence implicating Zanewich. Despite this, the Manitoba Court of Appeal felt the defence assertions that the brother fatally injured himself was “speculative and conjectural. It has precious little factual foundation to support it.” The facts implicating Zanewich were “sufficient though not overwhelming.”
Issues raised on appeal: Zanewich argued there wasn’t enough evidence to support a conviction and asked the trial judge to consider a motion for a directed verdict of acquittal. The trial judge refused. Zanewich also argued the manslaughter conviction was not supported by the evidence. The appellate court disagreed with both arguments.
Charles Jager Tom (1975)
The case: The murder took place in an apartment where Charles Tom and his two brothers, Oscor Tom and James Tom, had been drinking heavily. A physical confrontation between Charles and Oscor ensued, ending with Oscor suffering a fatal stab wound. Charles Tom was convicted of manslaughter.
Issues raised on appeal: Defence raised concerns about how testimony given by James Tom was different than the statements he gave to police immediately after the murder. More specifically, that the trial judge allowed prosecutor George Dangerfield to cross-examine James Tom on the differences between testimony and his previous statements, notwithstanding the fact he was a Crown witness.
The result: Charles Tom’s conviction for manslaughter was upheld.
Richard Gilbert Henderson (1976)
The case: Henderson was acquitted of murder but convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter in the stabbing death of Cyril Nielands following a fight outside a Burrows Avenue apartment building.
Issues raised at appeal: Evidence at the original trial showed Henderson had been provoked by Nielands. The Manitoba Court of Appeal found the evidence presented at trial was “contradictory. There was ample evidence which, if believed, would support a finding of self-defence. There was also evidence which, if believed, would support a verdict of manslaughter.” The jury, the appellate court said, was “wavering between acquittal based on self-defence and a conviction of manslaughter based on provocation.” The court dismissed the original conviction and ordered a new trial.
The result: Henderson was convicted again of manslaughter at his second trial. The jury recommended leniency in sentencing, and the court gave Henderson a two-year term.
James Victor Vawryk and Lloyd James Appleyard (1977)
The case: Vawryk and Appleyard were two of three men convicted of the murder of Laurence Smith, who was beaten to death with a hammer. A woman originally charged with organizing the murder had charges against her dropped.
Issues raised at appeal: The trial judge provided the jury with printed copies of a section of the Criminal Code, purportedly to help them study and understand it in greater details. However, the appeal court found the judge did not instruct the jury properly on how to interpret the text.
The result: Vawryk’s appeal was dismissed on the basis that even with insufficient instructions to the jury, the evidence of his involvement in the crime was “so overwhelming that the jury could not have failed to convict.” Appleyard’s appeal was successful and a new trial was ordered at which he was convicted again, but of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Allan Wilfred Bird (1978)
The case: Bird, 18, was charged with murder in the shooting death of his father, Allan Coy Bird. Bird pleaded not guilty, arguing that he was drunk and suicidal on the night of the shooting. After having tried unsuccessfully to kill himself by slitting his wrists, he grabbed a rifle but had trouble getting it to fire. A confrontation ensued with his father that resulted in the elder Bird being shot in the chest. The jury eventually convicted Bird of manslaughter.
Issues raised at appeal: Bird did not appeal the verdict, only the sentence. His four-year sentence was upheld on appeal.
Barry Craig Nielsen and Jerry Carl Stolar (1981)
Nielsen and Stolar were two Winnipeg police officers charged with the murder of Paul Clear, whose body was found buried in a shallow grave. Clear had been bludgeoned with a blunt instrument.
The case: Clear was Nielsen’s brother-in-law. The Crown argued that Nielsen and Stolar believed Clear was an informant who had provided information leading to their conviction on charges of possession of stolen property.
Issues raised on appeal: Hair, fibre, footprint/shoe-print impressions, tire-comparison evidence and blood serology evidence — all now largely excluded as viable evidence — were used to convict Nielsen and Stolar. There were no witnesses to the crime and no murder weapon was ever recovered. Both Nielsen and Stolar introduced alibi evidence — largely testimony from family and friends — to contest the charges.
Result: Both Nielsen and Stolar were convicted of murder. Nielsen’s appeal was dismissed; Stolar’s conviction was overturned and a new trial was ordered. At the 1989 retrial, Stolar was convicted again of second-degree murder.
Daryle Kent, Walter Sinclair and Frank Gode (1984)
Kent, Sinclair and Gode were among a group of Stony Mountain Institution inmates involved in a riot in 1984, during which two unarmed prison guards were murdered.
The case: At trial, it was argued Sinclair, armed with scissors, stabbed the two guards, one of whom died in the prison and the other on the way to hospital. The Crown argued Kent held one of the guards while Sinclair stabbed him, and Gode had “aided the accused Sinclair.” A fourth man was acquitted.
Issues raised on appeal: All three accused argued the trial judge should have given the jury the option of convicting them of lesser charges.
Result: Sinclair was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder; Kent was guilty of one count of first-degree murder and one count of manslaughter; Gode was found guilty of two counts of manslaughter.
Irvin Michael Davidson and Kenneth Wilkes (1984)
Davidson and Wilkes were found guilty of the first-degree murder of gas-bar attendant Lynne Kenny.
The case: Davidson and Wilkes were found guilty after only two-and-a-half hours of jury deliberation. The shocking murder saw both of the accused try to blame the other for killing Kenny following a robbery. The main evidence against the two men was the statement of Frank Milkowsky, a witness with a long criminal record who had received immunity from prosecution on other matters in exchange for his testimony.
Issues raised on appeal: Davidson’s lawyer, Greg Brodsky, argued the judge had made two mistakes in his final charge to the jury. There were also concerns raised about the Winnipeg Sun’spublication of details of the case that were presented during a voir dire, without the jury present. Wilkes, in his appeal, also argued that his confession was coerced by police and that he was denied legal representation.
Result: Both appeals were dismissed.
Adele Rosemarie Breese (Gruenke) (1987)
Gruenke was convicted along with James Robert Fosty of murdering 81-year-old Philip Barnett, whose bludgeoned body was found locked in a car in November 1986 in a ditch about 40 minutes outside Winnipeg.
The case: Trial revealed that Gruenke, then 22, had been in a complex, platonic relationship with Barnett, who had given her gifts including a car and money. The two bought a house together at one point. Barnett named Gruenke as beneficiary in his will.
Issues raised on appeal: Gruenke’s lawyers argued that an inculpatory admission given to a pastor was inadmissible because it was a privileged interaction. She also argued Barnett had stalked and threatened her, which made her fear the victim.
Other issues raised subsequently: A review of murder convictions of women, conducted in 1995 by Ontario Court of Justice Judge Lynn Ratushny, identified Gruenke’s case as one worthy of further review. The review was designed to identify cases that were decided before the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1990 Lavallee decision, which established new law on the right of abused women to defend themselves.
Result: The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the results of the Ratushny review, on their own, did not qualify as fresh evidence. The SCC also determined a revised statement by a psychiatrist about Gruenke’s mental state — in which a battered-woman theory was advanced — was similarly inadmissible.
Norman Duck and John Duck (1989)
The case: Cousins Norman and John Duck participated in a prolonged drinking party with victim Benjamin Fuhl, 79, in Selkirk and Winnipeg on the night of Nov. 9, 1989. A fight broke out among the men and Fuhl was beaten, bound and gagged and eventually thrown into the Red River. Fuhl’s body was found under the river ice on Nov. 14. Norman was convicted of first-degree murder; John was convicted of second-degree murder.
Issues raised on appeal: Both men appealed their convictions on various grounds, including mistakes made in the judge’s final charge to the jury. The Manitoba Court of Appeal agreed and ordered new trials for both men, for the charge of second-degree murder.
The result: Both men were convicted of second-degree murder at their second trial.
Carl Leslie Caldwell (1991)
Caldwell was found guilty of the brutal murders of his children, Carla, 13, and James, 7, in a Sherbrook Street apartment.
The case: In a crime that shocked the city, Caldwell drugged and then murdered his children with an axe and knife. When he was arrested, he told police he was “not crazy” but that he believed in “mercy killing.” “My objective was to get them into peace and serenity, to a place where it was Christmas every day,” police report Caldwell told them. Testimony at trial showed Caldwell had not been taking any of the antipsychotic or antidepressant medications he had been prescribed since 1986.
Issued raised on appeal: Caldwell’s lawyer argued the trial judge did not instruct the jury correctly on the issue of “capacity” and the use of an analogy to examine the issue of delusion.
Result: Conviction was upheld.
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2025/01/31/raising-reasonable-doubt
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;
