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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "After 36 years it would be kind of nice to have a judge in the courtroom."
Lawyer James Lockyer;
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SECOND QUOTE OF THE DAY: "When I walked in I felt as if I was in the wrong room."
Tim Rees;
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FROM THE PUBLISHER: Tim Rees' court appearance - possibly one of the most important moments of his life - was to happen Wednesday morning, in courtroom 4-2 at the District Court house at 361 University Avenue in Toronto.
His second-degree murder conviction for the killing of 10-year-old girl Darla Thurrott had been quashed and a new trial ordered a few weeks ago, on November 27, 2025.
Now, he would appear before another judge and learn his fate;
Whether the prosecutors would withdraw the charge - allowing him to walk out of court as an innocent man - or would the prosecutors who had put him in prison for 23 years, and then on parole for many more, put him through yet another trial, 37 years after Darla had been killed.
However as he entered the courtroom, Tim Rees, who had protested his innocence from the outset, realized that something was terribly wrong.
Indeed, as Tim told me later, "When I walked in I felt as if I was in the wrong room."
There was no judge in the courtroom, and prosecutors, who were responsible for arranging the proceedings, had not arranged for a judge to be there.
Entering the court you were met with huge monitor screens, on which Zoom hearings were taking place with prisoners.
For Tim Reese, a Zoom hearing - to be shared with prisoners awaiting their Zoom hearings -would just have to do.
Tim quickly became aware that on each side of the courtroom there were 40 screens - that's 80 altogether - and the judge assigned to conduct his hearing would be in one of them, somewhere in cyberspace, as would be their lawyers.
And in many of the others, he became aware that there were prisoners in their bright orange jumpsuits (so they couldn't escape into cyberspace), who were awaiting their hearings, represented by lawyers, wherever they were, who also appeared on screens.
Having spent so much of his life in prison cells, Tim must have wondered if these prisoners, contained like animals, each locked into their screen, had any idea that we, in the courtroom, were watching them, as they suffered the indignity of being locked up and displayed on tiny little screens.
There was something so dystopic, so impersonal, so sterile, so cruel and insensitive about this.
So seemingly indifferent.
It was like something out of George Orwell's '1984'.
A man awaiting his fate in a courtroom devoid of humanity, listening to a judge explain that he couldn't be present in the courtroom because he wasn't feeling well, and didn't want to infect anyone - and all those prisoners, clueless to having identified spectators gawking at them, far away from their lawyers, wherever they might be, reminding Tim what it had been like to be locked up for years in tiny spaces.
We know from all of the evidence we heard which caused Tim's second-degree murder charge to be quashed, that 37 years of his life were stolen by a justice system which was utterly unjust - and which owed him a huge apology and much more.
As I sat there, in this dystopian courtroom, I realized that what I saw was just a reflection of the deeply flawed impersonal justice system that had disgraced itself and abandoned him.
And many others in that courtroom who I talked to later, proved to be as shocked, if not horrified, as I was.
Win Wahrer, for one.
Co-Founder and Director of Client Services of Innocence Canada, which has fought incessantly for almost 12 years to exonerate Tim Rees, Win told me: "I'm glad somebody mentioned it. It was the inhumanity and disrespect for somebody who was wrongly convicted and incarcerated for 23 long, painful years, and somebody who has 37 years of fighting to clear his name."
Of course, Tim's Lawyer, James Lockyer, of Innocence Canada, insisted that Tim should have this important hearing conducted in his presence - in all of our presence - by a live judge, not a virtual one, in a courtroom, that looked like a place where justice was expected to prevail, and not like a television studio.
Indeed, as Lawyer Lockyer told me, "After 36 years it would be kind of nice to have a judge in the courtroom."
We can all imagine how Tim must have felt to learn that he would not know his fate for another 24 hours.
When Tim got back to the same courtroom on Thursday, December 18, the 80 screens were gone, there were no little prisoners in little boxes, there was no one else on the court docket, and there was a real judge.
Judge Kelly entered the courtroom, addressed the court, invited Tim to come forward and sit by his lawyer, and then after hearing brief comments from the crown, she acquitted him, publicly recognized the hell he had been put through by the justice system, treated him as a human being, and allowed him to leave that courtroom head high, innocent and exonerated.
Hopefully lessons have been learned, no one else will ever be treated like Ontario's justice system treated Tim Rees - and our courtrooms can be places in which everyone who graces its doors is treated with humanity and respect."
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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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/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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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;
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