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 January 25, 2005: The Federal government
released the
first national examination of the reasons for so many wrongful
convictions in Canada. This should be required reading for every prosecutor,
cop and criminal defence lawyer in the country. News reports
See also
Globe and Mail news story By Kirk
Makin, August 31, 2000 | Lamer
inquiry
Randy Druken
Druken evidence still
tough to weigh: former prosecutor
CBC, Jan 19 2005 08:17 AM
NST
ST. JOHN'S - A former Crown prosecutor will not
say if he would have charged Randy Druken with murder in 1993.
Bern Coffey testified Monday
in St. John's at the Lamer Inquiry, which is examining Druken's
conviction of the murder of his girlfriend, Brenda Young.
Druken was released from prison
after almost seven years, after DNA evidence indicated he did
not commit the crime.
At the time, Coffey was the
assistant director of public prosecutions, but he was not consulted
on the case.
The Crown's case focused on
a jailhouse informant who was later charged with perjury.
No physical evidence pointed
to Druken.
When asked if he would have
prosecuted the case himself, Coffey said the question is difficult
to answer.
"I honestly can't say
now," Coffey testified. "It would be unfair."
Druken spent more than six
years in prison, DNA evidence put Druken's brother, Paul, at
the murder scene.
These details were not publicly
revealed until several weeks ago, during testimony at the Lamer
Inquiry.
A second trial was ordered
for Druken.
Coffey testified when that
happened, the charge against Randy Druken should have been dismissed
or withdrawn.
However, that didn't happen.
Instead, the Crown eventually filed a one-year stay of proceedings
against Druken.
At the time, Druken said the
charge should have been withdrawn in order to clear his name.
http://stjohns.cbc.ca/regionalnews/caches/nf-lamer-coffey-20050119.html
Previous CBC report
CBC Regional News - Wednesday,
August 30, 2000
The lawyer
for Randy Druken says he can't understand why the justice department
hasn't dropped murder charges against his client. The department
announced today it has entered a stay of proceedings in the charges
against Druken. He's accused of killing his girlfriend, Brenda
Young, in 1993.
Druken's lawyer,
Bill Collins, says the stay means the Crown has another year
to decide whether to go ahead with the charges. Collins says
that's astonishing, since recent DNA testing suggests his client
was not the killer. "I mean, the evidence that is there
is very clear . . .it certainly points to someone else being
present when Brenda Young was killed, not Randy Druken. I'm stumped,
I don't know what's going on."
The justice
department says it's acting on advice from the Ontario Attorney-general's
office, which says the case needs further investigation. Collins
says Randy Druken is upset over the wording of the release, because
it still appears to point to him as the prime suspect.
Justice minister comments
on Druken developments
(August 14, 1998)
Justice Minister
Chris Decker confirmed that the Department of Justice received
a document on Monday afternoon concerning the murder of Brenda
Young and the subsequent Randy Druken murder trial.
"A copy
of the document has been given to Randy Druken's lawyer and to
the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary for investigation and appropriate
follow-up," said Minister Decker. "Due to the contents
of the document, the RNC has asked the Ontario Provincial Police
(OPP) to investigate the matter, pursuant to a Memorandum of
Understanding between the two police forces."
The minister
added that he cannot make further comment on this matter at this
time.
Newfoundland justice
suffers a major blow: Three murder cases collapse within two
years
Globe and Mail news story
By Kirk Makin, August 31, 2000
The Newfoundland justice system
took another jolt yesterday when the Crown stayed a murder charge
against a 35-year-old man convicted in 1995 of killing his girlfriend.
The stay of proceedings in
the Randy Druken murder case comes after a key witness recanted
his testimony and DNA tests pointed toward somebody else as the
killer.
The murder case is the third
in the province to collapse in the past two years, prompting
calls yesterday for a major inquiry into the provincial justice
system.
Jerome Kennedy, a St. John's
lawyer active on behalf of the wrongly convicted, said it is
"absolutely scary" that there could be three wrongful
murder convictions in a province that prosecutes just three or
four murder cases each year.
"It is time for an independent
inquiry to look at what is going on here," Mr. Kennedy said
in an interview. "Is it attributable to the police? Is it
attributable to the Crown? The Newfoundland government is refusing
to acknowledge that there are problems in the system, so we don't
know what is going wrong."
Yesterday's stay of proceedings
leaves Mr. Druken in legal limbo. His retrial for the murder
of Brenda Young will not go ahead, yet he has not been exonerated.
If the charge is not reactivated within a year, it will disappear
from the books.
"This is not a happy day
for Randy Druken," his lawyer, William Collins, said in
a statement.
"What has happened to
Randy Druken today is wrong," Mr. Collins said. "The
Crown should have entered an acquittal."
The move comes several weeks
after the Newfoundland Court of Appeal ordered a retrial for
Mr. Druken on the basis that a key witness at his trial, identified
as D.M., recanted his evidence. D.M. testified at the trial that
Mr. Druken confessed the murder to him after a sexual relationship
developed between them in jail. He later said the police harassed
him into making the false statement.
D.M. was sentenced to five
years in prison in connection with his false testimony in the
Druken case and several other offences.
Ms. Young's body was found
by her daughter in the living room of her home on June 12, 1993.
She had been involved for a year in a stormy relationship with
Mr. Druken. There was evidence of a struggle. A coffee table
had been overturned, causing a cigarette to fall onto the floor
and burn a hole in the carpet.
Within two days Mr. Druken
was arrested on other charges. He was charged with the murder
on Aug. 20, 1993.
The big break in Mr. Druken's
case came late last year. A major reinvestigation of the case
by the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary concluded that the cigarette
at the murder scene probably landed on the carpet during the
struggle, implying it belonged to the killer.
At the request of the Association
in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, Ontario's Centre of Forensic
Sciences tested the butt last month. The DNA from it has been
identified as coming from someone other than Mr. Druken. The
man has not been arrested.
In a release yesterday announcing
its decision to enter a stay of proceedings, the Crown made reference
to an opinion it sought from the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney-General
over the summer.
"Ontario Crown counsel
has concluded that the case against Mr. Druken is circumstantial,
and further investigation is required," the Crown statement
said.
Mr. Collins was critical of
the statement yesterday. He said it reinforces a suggestion that
the Crown believes Mr. Druken is somehow guilty.
Mr. Kennedy said the attitude
is typical of a province that is in deep denial about the shortcomings
of its justice system.
On June 8 Thomas Sophonow was
officially absolved of an 18-year-old killing of a 16-year-old
Winnipeg doughnut shop waitress for which he had spent 45 months
in prison. His case joined other high-profile cases, including
those of Donald Marshall, David Milgaard and Guy Paul Morin.
The first of the most recent
miscarriages of justice in Newfoundland came in 1998, when Gregory
Parsons was exonerated in the murder of his mother, Catherine
Carroll. Mr. Parsons, who is also represented by Mr. Kennedy,
had spent three months in jail and six months under virtual house
arrest.
In June of this year, Ronald
Dalton was found not guilty of murdering his wife. He had served
nine years in prison for the crime. Mr. Kennedy, who represented
the 31-year-old man at his retrial, produced five forensic pathologists
who testified that the victim choked to death on food.
Mr. Kennedy said yesterday
that in each wrongful conviction, the Department of Justice has
clung tenaciously to its belief that the defendant was guilty
instead of moving to exonerate him when the cases collapsed.
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