Taken from: http://www.razberry.com/raz/laframboise/full_texts/morin/gpmorin.htm

In July 1992, a 32-year-old Canadian man named Guy Paul Morin was convicted of murder and sentenced to prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. At his first trial, six years earlier, he had been acquitted. But Canadian law does not recognize the principle of double jeopardy.

The second trial dragged on for nine months. During that time, the jury heard that police had planted evidence, that the crime lab had lost hundreds of slides, that the pathologist had missed significant injuries when he conducted the autopsy, and that the prosecution had failed to disclose crucial information to the defence. Despite these irregularities, the jury convicted Morin anyway.

Morin was shipped off to prison where he feared for his life. Journalist Kirk Makin finished writing a book on the case titled Redrum the Innocent, but it wasn't published until late November. The fifth estate public affairs program aired its television coverage around the same time.


In the interim, as a weekly freelance columnist for The Toronto Star, I helped keep Morin's case in the public eye. I filed column after column, demonstrating how the justice system had failed. In January 1995, Morin was exonerated via DNA testing. In mid 1996, an inquiry was struck to investigate how matters could go so badly wrong.

http://www.razberry.com/raz/laframboise/full_texts/morin/morin15.htm

Four weeks from today will be Guy Paul Morin's first anniversary as a free man.

Last Jan. 23., after having hounded him for a decade, our criminal justice system admitted it had made a mistake. It acquitted him of first degree murder in the death of his 9-year-old neighbor, Christine Jessop, and apologized for damaging his life and the lives of his family.

Morin still hasn't received any financial compensation for those 10 lost years, nor has an inquiry into how matters could have gone so wrong commenced yet. But he is a patient man and, after having had lunch with him recently, I'm pleased to report he's also a well-adjusted one.

For the past nine months, Morin has been happily married. In a manner of speaking, The Star played matchmaker. A young woman named Allison Ferguson joined the Justice for Guy Paul Morin committee after reading some of my columns following his wrongful conviction in 1992. They got to know one another when he was released on bail pending his appeal.

Last March, the couple boarded a ship out of Fort Lauderdale for a week-long Caribbean cruise. Away from the media attention, on a mountain top overlooking the ocean, they exchanged vows in what he describes as "the perfect wedding" - warm, sunny and private.

The irony of having wed a woman who works for the Metro Toronto Police department is something Morin himself jokes about, while declaring that "married life is good," and that he doesn't think he could be happier in his relationship.

Now 36, this past year has been the first in a decade in which he hasn't been compelled to reside with his parents. Recently, the couple became the proud owners of a puppy.

Having gained a few pounds, Morin looks robustly healthy. He's kept busily self-employed, performing maintenance on cars and boats, and undertaking small building projects. In an agreeable turn of the tables, many of the lawyers he met over the years are currently his clients.

He says a day rarely goes by in which he isn't recognized by members of the public. "They stop and talk to me. They usually wish me the best," he says. Others have harsh words for the justice system. "They say, 'It's just disgusting what happened to you. I'm appalled to know, as a Canadian citizen, that this could happen.'"

On another short trip to Las Vegas (this past year was also the first in a decade in which Morin was permitted to leave the province), people in a restaurant wished him well. They were fellow tourists from Winnipeg.

Morin spent a total of 18 months behind bars - in four different jails and two prisons. He was subjected to the indignity of innumerable strip searches and had his life threatened by other inmates. In his dreams, he sometimes finds himself back in custody, in a cold, damp cell fearing for his safety.

"There's something about the institution that one just doesn't forget," he says. "The sounds, the echoes; you hear them in your dreams. Other prisoners screaming out at night, crying. The slamming of doors and the keys in the guards' pockets. The rats squealing."

But he observes that other people have suffered worse than he has - in war, for example - and so tries not to dwell on the past. When I asked him what advice he'd give to fellow wrongly accused persons he replied, "Try to get on with life as best as you can. Don't get wrapped up in the craziness of it all."

Morin doesn't expect the stigma of being an alleged child rapist and murderer ever to fade completely. Nor is he convinced that the individual police officers and crown attorneys who pursued him so relentlessly have learned much from their errors. But then he shrugs, "I believe what goes around, comes around," he replies.

As for what he might be doing a decade from now, Morin says he developed the habit of not thinking too much about the future - since his remained so uncertain for so long - and is finding the pattern a hard one to break.

I met Morin for the first time three years ago, when I visited him in Kingston Penitentiary a few days before Christmas. His story, as I've watched it unfold, has been alarming, infuriating and disheartening.

But it has also been inspiring. In the face of obstinacy and narrow-mindedness, against what often seemed like formidable odds, justice has prevailed. A great wrong has been set right. An innocent man is now free.

For me, the Guy Paul Morin story is an appropriate one for these holidays - because it demonstrates that while we sometimes lose our way, as a community we're also capable of redeeming ourselves.


http://www.razberry.com/raz/laframboise/full_texts/morin/morin1.htm

Suppose you're going about your business one day, when suddenly the police arrive, arrest you, and charge you with murder.

Suppose you're then refused bail and spend the next mine months in jail. After a five week trial, you are acquitted by a jury and think your nightmare is over.

But it isn't. Two-and-a-half years later, the Supreme Court rules that the judge who heard your case erred while giving instructions to the jury. In a rare move, it orders a retrial.

Suppose your second trial reveals:

that the Ontario government's Centre of Forensic Science has lost over 200 slides of hair and fibre samples connected to your case;
that a cigarette butt submitted as evidence at your first trial was planted by police. This is formally admitted by the Crown, which concedes that the one actually retrieved from the murder scene can't be located;
that five months after the victim's body was discovered and police searched the area, the victim's family found more of her bones at the site;
that the province's chief pathologist failed to detect a number of significant injuries when he performed the autopsy. These were only discovered during a second autopsy - which was made necessary largely because proper records weren't kept the first time;
that a hair, similar to your own, which was found on the victim also matches samples taken from two other people. But these samples weren't even examined by the lab until long after your first trial was over;
that a button discovered near the body is now missing;
that crucial wiretap tapes have been erased by police;
that the senior officer responsible for collecting and maintaining the physical evidence was charged with perjury and obstructing justice in connection to your first trial. However, the charges were stayed due to his poor health.

Suppose it's your life hanging in the balance. And that, despite all of these appalling irregularities, the second jury finds you guilty.

This is what has happened to Guy Paul Morin, who was convicted last week of murdering his 9-year-old next door neighbor, Christine Jessop, in 1984.

I know it's unwise to second-guess a jury, to criticize from afar a decision that followed a nine-month trial, eight days of deliberation, and was doubtless made in good conscience by decent, honest people. But something feels terribly wrong here.

This case has revealed shameful inadequacies in the day-to-day operation of our criminal justice system. Many of the police and associated personnel have come out looking downright incompetent. They seem not to be very concerned about the fact that theirs isn't just any job. That when they get careless, the innocent may be convicted and murderers may go free.

To be fair, the judge specifically told jurors that it wasn't their responsibility to establish guidelines for criminal investigations. Their role was simply to decide Morin's guilt or innocence.

But now that the jury has made its decision, some hard questions remain:

How and why has so much evidence disappeared?
If police missed a number of the victim's bones at the murder scene, what else did they miss?
Why did the lab not examine all the samples it received?
Since the criminal charges against the police officer haven't been pursued, how do we know the extent to which the evidence has been tampered with? How do we know, for example, that evidence which might have cleared Morin was not disregarded or even deliberately destroyed?
And, most important, can a person be said to have received a fair trial under these circumstances?

As long as these issues remain outstanding, we should all pray that we're never accused of having committed a serious crime in this country

http://www.razberry.com/raz/laframboise/full_texts/morin/morin6.htm

I've never met Guy Paul Morin. Nor do I know his family. Rather, I became interested in his case the way most people have: through the news media.

As Morin's trial unfolded during the first half of this year, I read about the hundreds of pieces of evidence that have been lost, overlooked or faked. About how the police neglected to tape crucial interviews and deliberately erased important wiretap recordings. About how a key investigator kept two sets of notes on the case - with a different version of events in each.

As the trial wore on, I became increasingly alarmed. How was it possible, in view of all this, to be sure of anything? How could we even consider convicting Morin when there were such grave doubts about the quality of the evidence against him?

When I heard that the jury had found him guilty anyway, my heart sank. It was the same feeling I'd experienced a few months previous when the Rodney King jury had absolved four police officers of wrongdoing - even though their brutal assault of an unarmed man had been caught on videotape.

Every bone in my body, every instinct, told me that this conviction fell far short of what I understood by the word "justice." That if a jury was willing to consign someone to life imprisonment when it knew full well the authorities had been, at the very least, dreadfully sloppy in their handling of the case, then none of us were safe. That I - or someone I loved - could also be convicted of a serious crime on the flimsiest of evidence.

In the months following the verdict, I began researching the case. I read trial transcripts and reference works. I interviewed forensic experts and prominent lawyers. I began to discover that the news reports had contained only the tip of the iceberg. That there seemed to be no end to the incompetence and irregularities, to the myopia and outright bias on the part of some of the officials involved.

Warning bells began ringing in my brain. I began to wonder whether the Morin case was so unusual after all.

While I'd like to believe the vast majority of people are dealt with fairly by our judicial system, I began to wonder what we'd find if more cases received the kind of scrutiny Morin's has.

It's a frightening notion. And, unfortunately, I've seen little to assuage my fears.

Indeed, one gets the sense that none of these people - the police who failed to properly investigate other suspects in the murder, the analysts from the Centre of Forensic Sciences whose findings were seriously called into question, the prosecution which didn't disclose significant information to the defence until being forced to do so - have learned anything from this.

And, if they aren't prepared to acknowledge that mistakes have been made, it follows that they won't be doing much to avoid repeating them in future.

Surely the victims of criminal acts deserve better than this. Accused persons deserve better than this. And the families of both these groups of people deserve better.

It is, therefore, our responsibility as citizens of this province to start making some noise. If we want to have faith in our justice system, it's up to us to make it clear that we expect concrete action to be taken so the kinds of things which occurred in the Morin case will never happen again.



Just thought I'd throw that in there . . .

Giving you true Calcio since 1986

Marinera? Ain't that a bitch?