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Update
on wrongful convictions in Canada, October, 2004 | Truscott
will have to wait some more
 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
Greg Parsons: Congratulations
<<<
Gregory Parsons settlement
| Parsons renews call for public inquiry
| Lamer inquiry (indefinitely
postponed because of Commissioner's health)
Childhood
friend charged with murder
 Jun 11 2001
ST. JOHN'S, NFLD. - A childhood friend of Gregory Parsons
will be charged Monday with murdering Parsons' mother.
Catherine Carroll was found
dead in her home in 1991. Parsons was convicted of killing her,
but later cleared through DNA testing.
Last Friday, police arrested
another man for Carroll's murder. Brian Doyle, 31, was picked
up in Ontario.
Sources says Doyle and Parsons
knew each other well. They were childhood friends who lived in
the same neighbourhood in St. John's.
Justice Minister's Apology
The following
statement was issued today (November 5, 1998) by Chris Decker,
Newfoundland Minister of Justice, at a news conference held at
Confederation Building:
Today an acquittal has been
entered at the Supreme Court of Newfoundland in the murder charge
against Gregory Parsons. Based upon further investigation and
the results of DNA analysis received in the past 10 days, investigators
and officials responsible for the prosecution of this case are
now fully satisfied that Mr. Parsons did not have any involvement
in the killing of his mother, Catherine Carroll.
 I will
take just a moment to give you a brief history of this case.
In 1991, Mr. Parsons was charged with the murder of his mother.
In 1994, he was convicted by a judge and jury and sentenced to
life imprisonment. He spent a total of 68 days in jail. Subsequently,
the Newfoundland Court of Appeal overturned his conviction and
a new trial was ordered. Before that trial, new DNA methodology
allowed previously untested samples of evidence to be tested.
The results of the new DNA tests indicated that the samples had
not come from Mr. Parsons. The Crown then entered a stay of proceedings
while further investigation and DNA testing was undertaken by
police to provide further clarification. As a result of those
tests and investigation, police and prosecutors have concluded,
on the basis of the evidence now available, that Mr. Parsons
is innocent.
As Minister of Justice, and
on behalf of government and the people of Newfoundland and Labrador,
I wish to offer sincere apologies to Gregory Parsons and his
family for the disruption to their lives and the extreme anguish
they have had to endure over the past eight years.
Government has requested retired
Supreme Court Justice Nathaniel Noel to conduct a thorough and
comprehensive review of the investigation and prosecution in
this case.
In undertaking his review Judge
Noel will have the full cooperation of the Royal Newfoundland
Constabulary and the Office of the Crown Prosecutor, and full
access to all police and Crown prosecution records. As well,
he can receive such submissions and conduct such enquiries as
he sees fit.
Judge Noel has also been asked
to recommend whether government should pay compensation to Mr.
Parsons, and if so, to indicate what constitutes appropriate
compensation. Government will make a decision on this issue when
it receives Judge Noel's report. Judge Noel's report will be
made public.
In conclusion, I would again
like to apologize to Mr. Parsons for all he has been through
in the last eight years.
Greg Parsons to be exonerated
at unpublicized proceeding
Nov. 5 1998
Almost five years after a horrified
Gregory Parsons was convicted of killing his own mother, Newfoundland
authorities intend to exonerate him today at an unpublicized
special court proceeding in St. John's. The 26-year-old will
be acquitted on the basis of DNA evidence, putting him in the
burgeoning ranks of the wrongly convicted, defence lawyer Jerome
Kennedy said yesterday. The DNA test result arrived last winter,
on the eve of a retrial ordered by the Newfoundland Court of
Appeal.
The test proved that blood
found on a towel at the murder scene and under the fingernails
of victim Catherine Carroll did not come from her son.
But a stay of proceedings at
the time left Mr. Parsons under a continuing cloud of suspicion.
Rejected in his community as an unemployable, dangerous pariah,
he embarked on a legal fight to win exoneration. It has been
a horrible situation," he said in an interview yesterday.
"I felt like a monster. There are people in this city who
are afraid of me. It is a terrible thing to have people afraid
of you." Mr. Parsons said his wife, Tina, lost her job soon
after his conviction, and he has lived in fear of not seeing
his three-year-old son grow up.
In a stroke of good fortune,
Mr. Parsons spent only three months behind bars, coupled with
six months of virtual house arrest. This was the result of a
highly unusual decision by the Newfoundland Court of Appeal to
grant him bail pending his appeal and retrial. Still, Mr. Parsons
was prohibited from leaving the province to look for work. His
attempts to start small businesses failed. And scores of job
applications failed to get him a single interview, forcing his
family onto welfare. "It got to the point where I couldn't
walk through a mall," Mr. Parsons said. "People would
point and stare. I have always been a fighter, but after all
this, I am a very tired person right now. Once I have that acquittal
in my hand, the comfort level will go up." He said he will
seek compensation for hundreds of thousands of dollars that his
family and friends have sunk into his defence. He also hopes
there will be a public inquiry to help prevent more miscarriages
of justice.
His ordeal began Jan. 2, 1991,
when he found his mother dead in the bathroom of her home with
numerous stab wounds to her face, head and upper torso. He rushed
outside, screaming to his wife that his mother was dead. Mr.
Parsons spoke to police and readily provided hair samples, but
became a leading suspect within 24 hours. A week later, he was
charged with first-degree murder. His four-month trial in 1994
consisted of a parade of more than 30 witnesses who recalled
Mrs. Carroll voicing fears that her son some day would stab her
to death. Some recalled her saying he had punched her or threatened
her.
The defence explanation for
this was that Mrs. Carroll was a lonely alcoholic who abused
prescription drugs and would say practically anything that would
bring her attention. "What we had was a man being convicted
on rumour, innuendo and gossip," Mr. Kennedy said. "It
was referred to at the trial as 'hearsay from the hearse.' "
Mr. Parsons was emphatic yesterday
that he "never laid a hand on my mother." He said that
as a single mother she did her best to raise him and his brother
despite having few financial or emotional resources. There was
turmoil in their relationship, he conceded, and it became more
pronounced as his mother's mental balance eroded. "My mother
was a very lonely woman. I'm not knocking her, but she simply
wasn't up to par." In a remarkable mid-trial event, jurors
sent a note to the trial judge expressing concern about a bloody
footprint they had spotted in a photograph of the crime scene.
A police witness examined the photograph, later testifying the
print was made by an RCMP officer's boot. The defence refuted
this by calling a former FBI agent to say it came from neither
an RCMP officer nor from Mr. Parsons. The Crown had no eyewitnesses,
no murder weapon, no physical evidence and no self-incriminating
statements.
Its only other evidence was
a tape of a song that Mr. Parsons -- a would-be rock drummer
-- had co-written in 1988 with a group of shaggy friends. It
was titled Kill, Kill, Kill and included the lyrics: "Kill
your fuckin' mother, kill your fuckin' father. Stab once. Stab
twice. Kill your parents. Ha, ha, ha, ha."
When Mr. Parsons's conviction
was eventually overturned in late 1996, the Newfoundland Court
of Appeal said the song was unduly prejudicial. It also noted
evidence that it was a rather typical example of "trash
music" and was written by Mr. Parsons and his friends as
a lark. The court also concluded that the sheer bulk of repetitious
hearsay dominating the case was highly prejudicial and could
easily have overwhelmed the jury.
In his legal bid to have the
stay of proceedings set aside, Mr. Kennedy referred to it as
"oppressive, abusive and founded on improper motives."
He said yesterday he has not changed his mind. "They expected
Mr. Parsons to be very happy, say 'Thank you' and go home."
At the same time, Mr. Kennedy
and lawyer Robert Simmonds -- who represented Mr. Parsons at
his first trial -- praised the Crown for finally agreeing to
acquit their client. "If they also apologize, it will show
significant gumption and fortitude," Mr. Simmonds said in
an interview. "It would mean a great deal to Mr. Parsons."
Mr. Kennedy said the acquittal would be a personal vindication
for Mr. Simmonds, who was so convinced of his client's innocence
that the conviction crushed him. "Bob Simmonds had to take
three months off after the conviction," Mr. Kennedy said.
"He didn't even know if he was going to practice criminal
law any more. The system certainly [wreaks] havoc on an accused
and his family and friends, but as lawyers we are not immune
to the emotional devastation." Mr. Kennedy said a crucial
lesson arising from the miscarriage of justice is that the Supreme
Court of Canada made a terrible mistake several years ago when
it interfered with hundreds of years of jurisprudence to allow
a broad spectrum of hearsay evidence to be admissible in a trial.
He said the Parsons case shows
how unreliable such evidence can be and how unfair it is when
the purported source is dead and cannot be cross-examined.
Globe and Mail
Something needs fixing
in Newfoundland's justice system
Globe and Mail op-ed piece
September 1, 2000
We aren't referring to the
case of Richard Ryan, the dangerous sexual offender who was supposed
to be shackled and guarded by two officers while on escorted
release, and instead was left unshackled and guarded by only
one officer -- at which point he escaped. (To general relief,
he was recaptured Monday after 25 days at large.) That was the
product of a monumental goof by Newfoundland's Corrections Department.
No, the greater problem seems
to be systemic. As The Globe's Kirk Makin reported yesterday,
a province that prosecutes about four murder cases a year has
seen three of them collapse in the past two years.
In
1998, Gregory Parsons, who had been convicted in 1994 of the
1991 murder of his mother, was officially exonerated after DNA
samples proved he wasn't the killer. Three months ago, the jury
in a retrial found Ronald Dalton not guilty of the murder of
his wife in 1988, a crime for which he had spent 8* years in
prison. On Wednesday of this week, the Crown stayed a murder
charge against Randy Druken, who was convicted in 1995 of killing
his girlfriend.
Mr. Parsons was convicted on
the hearsay evidence of people who said his mother had worried
that he might one day kill her. There was no physical evidence;
there were no witnesses or incriminating statements. An independent
commissioner found that a constable in the case had "conducted
himself in a manner that can best be described as overzealous
and devoid of police professionalism." Even when the DNA
evidence cleared Mr. Parsons in February of 1998, prosecutors
merely stayed the proceedings against him; it took another nine
months for the cloud to be officially lifted.
 Mr. Dalton won his acquittal after
two forensic experts testified that his wife, far from being
strangled to death, choked to death on food. They raised questions
about the way the forensic pathologist at the first trial had
conducted his investigation.
Mr. Druken received his stay
after DNA tests found that a cigarette that burned a hole at
the murder scene was not his. The Newfoundland Court of Appeal
had earlier ordered a retrial because a key witness recanted
his testimony, saying the police had bullied him into lying.
Mr. Parsons is now suing the
police and the province. Mr. Dalton said in June that he would
call for a public inquiry into his case. Mr. Druken is left under
the cloud of his stay (which means the charge will remain live
for another year) instead of receiving the acquittal his circumstances
appear to warrant.
As well as reminding us of
the wisdom of not executing prisoners, these cases must have
Newfoundlanders wondering what flaws in the provincial justice
system produced these three injustices, and how many other injustices
have yet to see the light. An independent public inquiry stands
the best chance of finding out.
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