GIST: "In many ways Ivan Henry's case is a textbook example of a wrongful
conviction," said Henry's lawyer, Cameron Ward, in an interview with W5.
"You have a series of notorious offenses, public pressure coming to
bear on the police to find the perpetrator and get him off the streets.".........All along, Henry maintained his innocence. Sitting in his jail cell he
wrote and filed applications seeking to overturn his conviction and his
sentence. More than fifty were sent to various courts and justice
ministers. No one was listening to Henry's appeals, even though he may have been
right, according to lawyer Cameron Ward, who took up Ivan's cause. "You have a zealous prosecutor who was trying to get the conviction,
and you have investigative techniques that are flawed and faulty," Ward
said. Ward picked holes in the case and the evidence that helped convict Henry, beginning with the police lineup. "Obviously anybody viewing that live line-up from an adjacent room
would be struck by this extraordinary sight and their attention would be
drawn to the person who's in the headlock and obviously he would look
guilty," said Ward, who also questioned whether the victims could truly
identify their attacker. "All they had was the eye witness testimony of the complainants which
came from these assaults that occurred usually in the dark, they were
perpetrated by a stranger, the stranger's face was often covered and
they were stressful circumstances. Eyewitness evidence is notoriously
weak. In addition, physical evidence, like hair, fingerprints and semen was never presented in court. "That's not to say that physical evidence wasn't obtained by the police
investigators, it was. Bodily fluids were left behind at four of the
scenes where Ivan Henry was suspected of committing sexual assaults,"
said Ward. But the samples that were collected were never presented in court and
then lost. When DNA technology was developed as an identification tool
only a few years later, there was no way to confirm the true identity of
the "rip-off rapist".........Ivan Henry was a free man. But although his convictions were quashed,
he was not declared factually innocent. This is not uncommon among
Canada's wrongful convictions, where few are completely exonerated. He is now suing the City of Vancouver, individual police officers, and
the provincial and federal governments for the years he spent wrongly
imprisoned. But the Vancouver Police Department has rejected the claim.
In their statement of defense the VPD insists that "the quashing of the
convictions does not mean that (Ivan Henry) is factually innocent" and
that he "committed one or more of the sexual assaults." Unfortunately, evidence which could conclusively clear Ivan Henry --
the bodily fluids collected at the crime scenes more than 30 years ago
have been lost -- meaning it is not available for DNA testing. Ivan
Henry can neither be cleared nor convicted through forensic analysis. "He's innocent. He didn't commit any of these offenses. The state had
the ability to conclusively determine that question if they had kept the
DNA from some of these offenses, but it's gone," said Ward. Ivan Henry's civil claim for compensation is expected to go to trial in
August 2015.
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