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This is the wrongfully convicted Kyle Unger who was convicted of first-degree murder in 1992, for a crime that occurred in 1990, when Kyle was just 19 years old.

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This youtube video covers the backstory of how and why Kyle Unger was wrongfully convicted of the 1990 murder of Brigitte Grenier.

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This article from 2009, explains how the Crown decided against a retrial in the death of Brigitte Grenier. Having the Crown decide against a retrial, led to Kyle Unger being acquitted of the murder.

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Murder charges against Kyle Unger were dropped Friday in a Winnipeg courtroom, ending a 19-year legal odyssey after the Crown determined it didn't have enough evidence to retry him for a 1990 killing.

Don Slough, Manitoba's deputy attorney general, told Justice Glenn Joyal that the charges against Unger are being withdrawn because it would be unsafe to retry him on the available evidence.

Slough said DNA testing shows no trace of Unger on any of the exhibits and cannot link him to the crime scene.

Based on an absence of evidence, Joyal ordered that Unger be formally acquitted of all the charges against him. Joyal then wished Unger "good luck."

"Finally," a smiling Unger, 38, told reporters outside the courthouse. "It's still surreal, almost."

He said the decision marks "the first day of the rest of my life, a new beginning."

An acquittal does not necessarily mean a person is factually innocent, but what it does mean is that "in the eyes of the law, he's an innocent man," Unger's lawyer, Hersh Wolch, told reporters.

Asked whether he was angry about how many years of his life have been wasted, Unger said he wasn't.

"I never was angry - upset, but not angry," he said. "When you feed off anger, it takes more. They already took my younger years away from me. Why let them have my mind?"

Unger spent 14 years in a B.C. prison for the sexual assault and killing of 16-year-old Brigitte Grenier. She was beaten, strangled and sexually mutilated at a rock concert in the small Manitoba community of Roseisle, about 120 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg.

A new trial for Unger was ordered in March of this year after federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson ruled there was a reasonable likelihood he had been wrongfully convicted.

Unger said on Friday that the hardest part of his ordeal has been "waiting for it to come to an end. It's a long journey."

Wolch did not present evidence for the defence at Friday's hearing. Instead, he went through discredited prosecution evidence against his client then told Joyal the prosecutors "should be ashamed."

"It's not sufficient enough to say those were the standards then. You're wrong, and it had horrible consequences for this young man," Wolch said.

He called Unger's 1992 conviction "a blatant miscarriage of evidence" and "an extreme example of tunnel vision."

Slough told reporters that he spoke to the Grenier family leading up to Friday's events and explained what was going to happen.

"They're devastated by this. They've suffered this horrible loss," he said. "That's all I can say about that. I don't want to repeat the conversation."

Grenier's father, Ron, told CBC News the past 24 hours have been horrible for the family.

"I guess it can't compare to what happened to ... Brigitte. [It's] worse for her because she took the beating and the suffering and the whatever before she passed away," he said. "I'm still alive, I'm still here."

A Canadian first

The acquittal, rather than just a stay of the charges, is a Canadian first, Wolch said.

He said it was "a momentous day."

"The minister rarely from federal [government] sends the matter to a retrial. And then an acquittal? It's virtually unheard of. It is unheard of, so this is huge," he said.

"We do have an historical day today, but we haven't learned enough," he added. "When the Crown calls no evidence, it's because the Crown has no evidence to call.

"We did not fear a trial for a minute, and the reason is this man didn't do the crime. This has all the hallmarks of what causes wrongful convictions."

Wolch said he expects to pursue monetary compensation for Unger.

"We have to sit down and formulate a position, and we will," he said. "I anticipate making an approach for compensation."

But Manitoba Justice Minister Dave Chomiak said Friday afternoon there are no grounds for compensation because none of this would ever have happened without Unger making a confession. For the same reason, there are no grounds for inquiry either, he said.

Confessed to police

Unger had confessed to undercover police who were part of a sting operation known as Mr. Big, in which the officers promised money to a targeted suspect to help them out.

Asked on Friday why he made the confession in the first place, Unger said he was "young, naive and desperate for money."

"They hold a lot of promises to you, so you say and do what you have to do to survive, just like in prison - you have to do what you have to do to survive and get through it."

Unger, who now lives in B.C., was asked whether he intends to move back to Manitoba.

"I don't know. I definitely will be coming back a lot for holidays [to] see my family," he said.

Co-accused committed suicide

Unger was convicted, along with Timothy Houlahan, who was released on bail in 1994 when his conviction was overturned by the Manitoba Court of Appeal in 1994. Houlahan killed himself later that same year.

Although court was told at the time of the trials that Unger and Houlahan did not know one another, Crown prosecutor George Dangerfield argued they conspired to kill Grenier.

Dangerfield, now retired, has made news in recent years as a number of his cases have been overturned as wrongful convictions. Some of those past cases involve Thomas Sophonow and James Driskell.

In September, the case of a fourth Dangerfield murder conviction, Stanley Ostrowski, was put under review. Ostrowski is still in prison.

Appeal initially rejected

Unger's initial appeal to the Manitoba Court of Appeal following his conviction was rejected and leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was denied. But in September 2004, a forensic evidence review committee established by the province called into question the hair comparison evidence used at Unger's trial.

New DNA testing suggested a strand of hair found at the scene of the crime and originally used to convict Unger did not come from him. Evidence from a jailhouse informant and a police sting operation were also discredited.

Unger's lawyer subsequently filed an application to the minister of justice for a review of the murder conviction. Based on the DNA evidence, a judge of the Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench said she had "very serious concerns [he] may have been wrongly convicted of murder."

In November 2005, Unger was granted bail pending the minister's decision.

Following Nicholson's announcement in March, Unger's bail conditions were loosened by a Court of Queen's Bench judge in Winnipeg. A curfew restriction was lifted by the court.

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Kyle Unger acquitted of 1990 killing | CBC News

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Murder charges against Kyle Unger were dropped Friday in a Winnipeg courtroom, ending a 19-year legal odyssey after the Crown determined it didn't have enough evidence to retry him for a 1990 killing. Don Slough, Manitoba's deputy attorney general, told Justice Glenn Joyal that the charges against Unger are being withdrawn because it would be unsafe to retry him on the available evidence.

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This picture was posted in the Winnipeg Free Press in a 2009 article titled
'Unger's ordeal to end Friday

Crown to announce it has no evidence for murder retrial'.

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At the age of 43, Kyle Unger receives the news that The Manitoba attorney general’s office has responded to the $14.5 million lawsuit that he filed. This article goes on to explain the process of why the Manitoba attorney general's office decided to respond to the lawsuit.

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WINNIPEG - The Manitoba attorney general's office has responded to a $14.5-million lawsuit filed by Kyle Unger, who spent 14 years in prison for murder before being cleared.

A statement of defence filed recently in Court of Queen's Bench says the office acted in good faith and followed accepted procedures in investigating and prosecuting Unger.

The attorney general also says Unger was convicted largely on repeated confessions he made to undercover police officers in a sting operation.

Unger, who is now 43, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 1990 death of Brigitte Grenier (GREHN'-yay) at a rock concert south of Winnipeg.

His lawsuit alleges he was tricked into making a false confession by undercover officers posing as gangsters who offered him money and work if he had committed a serious crime.

In 2009, the federal justice minister determined that the conviction had probably been a miscarriage of justice.

The provincial attorney general said the undercover sting, known as Operation Drifter in the Unger case, was accepted practice at the time.

"The investigation into Grenier's death, including all aspects of Operation Drifter, was conducted on a good-faith basis and in a careful and conscientious manner consistent with accepted law enforcement standards and procedures in place at the material time," the statement of defence reads.

"Any loss or damages ... were caused, or significantly contributed to, by the plaintiff's own conduct which includes but is not limited to his repeated confessions to having murdered Grenier."

The federal government used similar wording in its statement of defence filed last year. It also pointed out that while federal agents such as the RCMP were part of the investigation, the ensuing prosecution was the responsibility of the provincial Crown.

Unger was sentenced to life in prison along with his co-accused, Timothy Houlahan, but as the years went by the evidence used to convict him began to unravel.

An RCMP hair analysis expert had testified at Unger's trial that a hair found on Grenier's sweater belonged to Unger. It was the only physical evidence against him, but DNA tests in 2005 showed the hair belonged to someone else.

The only witness who claimed to have seen Unger kill Grenier was Houlahan, who committed suicide in 1994 while waiting for a retrial he was granted when he appealed his conviction. Unger's attempts to appeal were rejected.

The other key piece of evidence - the confessions Unger gave to undercover police officers - also came into question. Unger told them he had killed Grenier, but got several facts wrong. He mentioned a bridge at the concert site that had actually been built several months after Grenier's death.

Eventually, Unger was formally acquitted.

His lawsuit alleges that police and Crown attorneys relied on faulty science, ignored evidence that pointed to Houlahan as the killer and used a flawed undercover sting to get a false confession.

"The plaintiff was led to believe that if he said he committed the Grenier murder, he would receive a career, money, respect, companionship and many things sorely lacking in his life," Unger's statement of claim reads.

No court date has been set to hear the lawsuit.

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Province responds to wrongful conviction lawsuit

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WINNIPEG - The Manitoba attorney general's office has responded to a $14.5-million lawsuit filed by Kyle Unger, who spent 14 years in prison for murder before being cleared. A statement of defence filed recently in Court of Queen's Bench says the office acted in good faith and followed accepted procedures in investigating and prosecuting Unger.

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October 23, 2009, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Minister of Justice and Attorney General Dave Chomiak talks publicly about the decision that was made to exonerate Kyle Unger of murder the murder charges.

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Dave Chomiak Media Scrum on Kyle Unger Exoneration - Oct. 23, 2009 - Winnipeg, Manitoba

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http://www.ChrisD.ca Minister of Justice and Attorney General Dave Chomiak speaks on the decision to exonerate Kyle Unger of murder charges on Friday, October 23, 2009 relating to the 1990 murder of Brigitte Grenier in Roseisle, Manitoba.

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Innocence Canada is a non-profit foundation that works to fundraise as well as advocate and provide proper identification for those who have been wrongfully convicted. This link provides summaries and details of all aspects of Kyle Unger's conviction, the night of the incident, the forensic evidence, the police investigation, jailhouse informants and all the way to Kyle's exoneration.

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Introduction

On Friday, June 22, 1990, nineteen-year-old Kyle Unger attended a rock music festival at a ski resort near his hometown of Roseisle, Manitoba. Brigitte Grenier, then sixteen years old and a high school classmate of Kyle's, also attended the festival. Between midnight and 1:30 a.m., Brigitte Grenier was observed dancing, kissing and fondling seventeen-year-old Timothy Houlahan. All three-young people had attended the festival separately, with unrelated groups of friends. Neither Kyle nor Brigitte Grenier were friends with Houlahan.

The following day, Brigitte Grenier's body was found lying in a creek in a heavily wooded area of the concert grounds. She had suffered a terrible beating: she had been bitten, struck several times in the head, and strangled, and long, sharp sticks had been forced into her vagina and anus. The town of Roseisle was distraught and, correspondingly, the pressure on the police to solve the crime was overwhelming.

Evidence against Kyle Unger and Timothy Houlahan

The Night of the Concert

Ms. Grenier and Mr. Houlahan were last seen dancing at approximately 1:30 a.m. They left the dance area together and made their way to a nearby, secluded, wooded part of the ski resort. At about the same time, Kyle went to the washroom; upon his return, he told a friend, John Beckett, that he'd seen Brigitte "going at it with some guy." Kyle and Mr. Beckett parted ways between 2:00 and 2:30, Kyle having declared that he was going to "look for some tail."

Beckett estimated that Kyle was out of his sight for as little as 20 minutes, while other witnesses claimed not to have seen Kyle again until 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. There was no disagreement, however, that when Kyle returned to the group he did not have any dirt on his clothing or scratches or bruises to his face. Kyle left the music festival by car between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m.

After entering the wooded area with Ms. Grenier at 1:30 a.m., Mr. Houlahan was next seen between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m. His face and clothes were covered in mud, and he had scratches on his face and blood on his chin. One witness testified that it appeared as though he had received a good beating. Mr. Houlahan claimed that his injuries were the result of a surprise beating by an unknown male, and the reason for his absence was that he had passed out after the beating. Mr. Houlahan continued to party with his friends until the early morning hours when he left the festival. Before leaving, however, he and a friend stopped to set fire to the contents of a barrel near the entrance to the festival area.

The Forensic Evidence

The forensic evidence tendered at the trial against Mr. Houlahan was strong; blood found on his running shoes was consistent with that of the victim, a hair found on Ms. Grenier's pants was consistent with having originated from Mr. Houlahan's head, and a pubic hair found on her sock was consistent with having originated from Mr. Houlahan's pubic hair sample.

The forensic evidence implicating Kyle was a single hair found on Ms. Grenier's sweatshirt, consistent with the sample of scalp hair he had willingly provided to police. It should be noted, as will be discussed further below, that these samples were taken prior to the advent of DNA technology and their analysis was based on hair microscopy, now regarded as having very limited use in forensic investigations.

The Police Investigation

Kyle and Mr. Houlahan were both interviewed by the RCMP in the days following the murder. The RCMP noted that Mr. Houlahan, whom they visited two days after Ms. Grenier's body was discovered, had visible markings on his face and hands; however, a statement was not taken from him at that time, as he was a young offender and his parents were not present.

On June 27, the RCMP obtained the first of two formal statements from Mr. Houlahan. In this statement, he admitted to having consensual sex with Ms. Grenier, but claimed that he was thereafter attacked by an unidentified male who left him unconscious. Mr. Houlahan was asked if he'd seen Kyle, whom he would have recognized, at the concert. Mr. Houlahan stated that he had not observed Kyle at the venue, but nevertheless gave police a description of his attacker that led the RCMP to conclude that it was Kyle who had attacked him. Curiously, however, Mr. Houlahan was also asked to describe Kyle, and provided a description very different from his description of the unknown attacker.

In his second statement to the police, Mr. Houlahan directly implicated Kyle in Ms. Grenier's murder. He gave the police a detailed description of the murder, which was consistent with the forensic and medical evidence. Mr. Houlahan claimed that while Kyle was savagely attacking Ms. Grenier, Kyle insisted that Mr. Houlahan punch her a couple times which he did. Mr. Houlahan also claimed to have assisted Kyle in moving the body and said that he did out of fear for his own safety and under duress.

The Stay of Proceedings

Mr. Houlahan's case was transferred to adult court, and both Kyle and Mr. Houlahan were charged with first degree murder. Kyle's preliminary hearing resulted in a stay of proceedings on December 11, 1990.[1] Despite the Crown's doubts about Kyle's involvement in Ms. Grenier's murder, the RCMP held fast to their theory that Kyle was a killer, and set out to find evidence that could bolster their suspicion.

Jailhouse Informant

With only a single hair linking Kyle to the crime scene, the RCMP interviewed upwards of twenty inmates in the hopes of finding someone who would testify that Kyle had confessed to them. In fact, the RCMP found five inmates willing to testify to that effect; however, when the case eventually proceeded to trial, the Crown called only one to give evidence, as the other four had made such bizarre claims that the Crown did not view them as reliable.

The jailhouse informant selected to testify, Jeffery Cohen, claimed that he and Kyle had shared a cell at some point while Kyle was in pre-trial custody. Mr. Cohen swore that immediately before Kyle was released from the Winnipeg Remand Centre following the stay of proceedings, Kyle said to him, "I killed her, and I got away with it." At trial, however, the defence was able to prove that following the stay, Kyle had been released directly from the courthouse and thus had never returned to the Remand Centre. On the stand, Mr. Cohen admitted he lied, but the Crown nevertheless tried to rehabilitate their jailhouse informant by suggesting that the confession had happened at the Public Safety Building the day before Kyle's release.

The Mr. Big Operation

The Mr. Big Operation - or, as it is known abroad, the Canadian Technique - is a large-scale undercover operation that involves multiple, and sometimes upwards of 100, undercover officers; costs tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars and takes months or even years to complete. In a nutshell, the undercover officers create a fictitious crime syndicate and lure the target into the "gang," with the end goal of obtaining a confession to a crime that they are confident the target has committed, usually murder. The RCMP have operated such stings more than 350 times since they began using this technique in the early 1990s. In "Mr. Big" cases where the undercover officers obtain a confession and the case goes to trial, the RCMP report a 95% conviction rate.[2]

Based on the information obtained from Jeffrey Cohen (the jailhouse informant), the RCMP decided to undertake an undercover operation, which commenced on June 13, 1991. On that day, two undercover RCMP officers staged a breakdown of their vehicle outside the hobby farm in rural Manitoba where Kyle lived. In comparison to some of the Mr. Big Sting operations that the RCMP has conducted, the operation targeting Kyle was relatively small. Four officers took part in the sting. The primary undercover officer, Larry Tremblay, befriended Kyle and was tasked with conveying to him that there was an opportunity available to become involved in the criminal organization. On four separate occasions in the first week of the operation, Kyle told his new "friend" that he had been wrongly imprisoned for murder. At no point did P.C. Tremblay request clarification regarding Kyle's declarations of innocence.

Corporal Larry Forbes was cast in the role of "Mr. Big," that is, the head of the fictitious criminal organization. Kyle was eager to make a good impression, since he viewed the meeting as a job interview and in addition did not want to embarrass his new friend. Early in their first meeting, on June 22, 1991, Cpl. Forbes said to twenty-year-old Kyle:

"Larry tells me that you whacked somebody. That's fine with me. That's, that's fuckin' excellent. It's the kind of thing that, uh, I know that I'm dealing with somebody that's on my fuckin' - somebody that I can trust... That's the kind of person I'm looking for."

Cpl. Forbes further told Kyle that he did not want to take someone into the organization who had ongoing problems with the police. Kyle, initially hesitatingly and eventually enthusiastically, confessed to the murder. Later he would maintain that he simply acted out the part, to please his new "boss."

Several additional relevant conversations took place between Kyle's initial confession and his eventual re-arrest for Brigitte Grenier's murder, on June 25, 1991. In his conversations with the undercover agents, Kyle contradicted himself with respect to details concerning the murder. Further, police intercepted a conversation between Kyle and John Beckett (the friend with whom he had attended the concert), during which Kyle told Mr. Beckett that he had obtained a trusted position within the criminal organization, where would be making a great deal of money; and that he had obtained this position because of the reputation he had gained because of being charged with murder.

On February 28, 1992, both Kyle and Mr. Houlahan were convicted of first degree murder. Both young men appealed their convictions. On July 7, 1993, the Manitoba Court of Appeal upheld Kyle's conviction, although it allowed Mr. Houlahan's appeal and ordered a new trial for him. However, Mr. Houlahan committed suicide before he could be retried. On December 2, 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada denied Kyle's application for leave to appeal the Court of Appeal's decision to uphold his conviction.

Innocence Canada and Kyle's Exoneration

Kyle maintained his innocence, to no avail, throughout the following decade; but finally, the tide turned in April of 2003. DNA results obtained in another Innocence Canada (formerly AIDWYC) client's case - that of James Driskell - called into question the hair microscopy comparison evidence that had been given at his trial. In an unprecedented and proactive move, the Government of Manitoba, under the leadership of Deputy Attorney General Bruce MacFarlane, set up the Forensic Review Committee, the mandate of which was to ascertain whether there were other cases like James Driskell's, where DNA typing might shed new light on the validity of previous hair microscopy comparison evidence. Under the Committee's Terms of Reference, Innocence Canada designated Ian Garber, a lawyer in the private sector of Manitoba, to sit on the Committee.

In the spring of 2004 the Committee decided that Kyle's conviction fit within their mandate, and arrangements were made for post-conviction mitochondrial DNA typing. The single hair that had been retrieved from Ms. Grenier's sweatshirt and identified by an RCMP expert as likely belonging to Kyle - that is, the hair which constituted the only forensic evidence linking Kyle to the crime - was scientifically proven not to be his.

On September 13, 2004, Innocence Canada filed an application on Kyle's behalf with the Minister of Justice, pursuant to section 696.1 of the Criminal Code, for ministerial review of his conviction. The application requested that the Minister exercise his power to quash Kyle's murder conviction and order a new trial.

On November 4, 2005, Kyle was granted bail pending the Minster's decision, more than thirteen years after he was convicted. The Federal Minister of Justice ordered a new trial. Four years later, Unger's name was finally cleared when, on October 23, 2009, Manitoba's Deputy Attorney General formally withdrew the charges against Kyle and asked that he be officially acquitted.[3] However, there would also be no public inquiry into his wrongful conviction, nor would he be offered compensation.[4] While Kyle's freedom was no longer in jeopardy, his battle for justice was far from over.

The Causes of Kyle's Wrongful Conviction

As in most cases that end in a wrongful conviction, there were many factors that contributed to Kyle spending 19 years - 14 of them in jail - during which he was incorrectly believed to have committed a brutal sexual assault and murder. The most significant of these causes are described below.

Jailhouse Informants

Jailhouse informants, sometimes referred to as in-custody informers, are notoriously unreliable sources of testimony and have contributed to many wrongful convictions. According to statistics compiled by the Innocence Project at the Cardozo Law School in New York:[5]

In more than 15% of wrongful conviction cases overturned through DNA testing, an informant testified against the defendant at the original trial. Often, statements from people with incentives to testify - particularly incentives that are not disclosed to the jury - are the central evidence in convicting an innocent person.

The Report of the 1989-90 Los Angeles County Grand Jury Investigation of the Involvement of Jail House Informants in the Criminal Justice System in Los Angeles County (The Grand Jury Report) revealed shocking information about the motivations of jailhouse informants, which cannot be limited to the American experience:[6]

The myriad benefits and favored treatment which are potentially available to informants are compelling incentives for them to offer testimony and a strong motivation to fabricate, when necessary, to provide such testimony. This premise is a basic concept to the understanding of jailhouse informant phenomena. The courts have sometimes lacked adequate factual information to fully realize the potential for untrustworthiness which is inherent in such testimony because of the strong inducements to lie or shape testimony in favor of the prosecution.

Jailhouse informants want some benefit in return for providing testimony. The more sophisticated may attribute their willingness to testify ... to other motives such as their repugnance toward the particular crime charged, a family member having been a victim of a similar occurrence, the lack of remorse shown by the defendant, or other explanation to account for their assistance to law enforcement. Nevertheless, in the vast majority of cases it is a benefit, real or perceived, for the informant or some third party that motivates the cooperation.

The benefits can range from added servings of food to the ultimate reward, release from custody. According to an officer at the central jail, inmates who provide information about problems within the jail might be rewarded with an extra phone call, visits, food or access to a movie or television...

As this report chillingly reveals, there are many reasons to be wary of the testimony of a jailhouse informant. Kyle's case is by no means the only one where an informant's untrue testimony has contributed to a wrongful conviction.

In Canada, several Commissions of Inquiry - notably the Morin and Sophonow Inquiries - have warned against the use of jailhouse informants.[7] As a result, Crown Prosecutors and the Courts in Canada have changed the way they deal with the evidence of such informants, adopting a much more sceptical and vigilant perspective.[8] That said, there are still some cases where informants are seen as "necessary to the justice system because of their unique position to acquire potential information directly from the accused. Despite obvious reliability problems, they are sometimes relied on to provide persuasive confessions, most notably in the context of high profile murder cases."[9]

In Kyle's case, despite the defence counsel's success in impeaching jailhouse informant Jeffery Cohen, the Crown's attempt to rehabilitate his testimony - by suggesting an explanation for the impossible story he had told on the stand, other than the obvious (and correct) explanation that he had simply lied - no doubt contributed to the wrongful conviction. As long as jailhouse informants are permitted to testify in court despite their dubious motivations, they will continue to contribute to miscarriages of justice.

Tunnel Vision

Another factor that contributed to Kyle's wrongful conviction was a common problem known as "tunnel vision" which has been described as "the single minded and overly narrow focus on an investigation or prosecutorial theory" - in this case, the theory that Kyle was guilty of Ms. Grenier's murder - "so as to unreasonably colour the evaluation of information received and one's conduct in response to the information."[10] It is easy for police and prosecutors to fall into tunnel vision, particularly if they are under intense pressure to solve a case. Tunnel vision is therefore a common feature found in many miscarriages of justice.[11] Moreover, "it is a trap that can capture even the best police officer or prosecutor" and thus "must be guarded against vigilantly."[12]

Mr. Big Stings and False Confessions

The inducements offered in exchange for a confession to a crime by undercover officers posing as organized crime participants can be overwhelming, as they were in Kyle's case. For Kyle, the seductive promise of money, power and friendship was worth confessing to a crime in which he had played no part. In other Mr. Big operations, violence and fear have also induced the target to confess.

Furthermore, false confessions do not occur exclusively in Mr. Big cases. As noted by the Innocence Project, "in about 25% of DNA exoneration cases, innocent defendants made incriminating statements, delivered outright confessions or pled guilty."[13] Despite the pervasiveness of this phenomenon, the public - judges and jury members included - have a hard time accepting that someone would confess to a crime that they did not commit. Kyle was not the first, and certainly will not be the last, wrongly convicted person to have made a false confession after succumbing to the pressure of police inducements, coercion, or any number of other factors.

Bad Science

When Kyle was tried in the early 1990s, "hair microscopy" was accepted as "science" in courtrooms across the country. Following James Driskell's exoneration, an Inquiry was held to determine the causes of his wrongful conviction. Commissioner LeSage recommended in the resulting Report that "microscopic hair comparison evidence should be received with great caution and, when received, jurors should be warned of the inherent frailties of such evidence. "[14] Following the creation of Manitoba's Forensic Evidence Review Committee, all Canadian legal jurisdictions reviewed their use of hair comparison evidence.[15] The advent of DNA technology has to some extent rendered hair microscopy obsolete, and so its evidentiary unreliability is less likely to contribute to wrongful convictions in the future.

That being said, as forensic science continues to evolve, it has become clear that many other forensic science techniques are much less reliable than once believed. Shoe print comparison, bite mark analysis, firearm tool mark analysis, and other such techniques that have never been properly tested remain potential causes of wrongful convictions. Furthermore, even reliable, properly validated forensic techniques such as DNA typing, and serology can produce inaccurate results if the samples are contaminated. Finally, the experts tasked with interpreting forensic science evidence for the court may make mistakes that can contribute to miscarriages of justice, as in the many wrongful convictions resulting from the infamously inaccurate testimony of Dr. Charles Smith.[16]

Kyle's Battle for Justice Continues

As mentioned above, although the Manitoba Crown chose to withdraw the charges against Kyle on October 23, 2009, it was not willing to offer Kyle any financial compensation for the 14 years that he spent in jail. On September 21, 2011, Kyle launched a civil lawsuit naming the RCMP officers and prosecutors who were involved in his wrongful conviction,[17] seeking $14.5 million in damages.[18] Notably, one of the prosecutors in Kyle's case, George Dangerfield, has also contributed to the wrongful convictions of at least three other Innocence Canada clients: Thomas Sophonow, James Driskell and Frank Ostrowski. Kyle's civil proceedings are still ongoing. So far both the Attorney General's Office and the RCMP have refused to take any responsibility for Kyle's wrongful conviction, instead maintaining that the damage he suffered was "caused or significantly contributed to by ... [his] own conduct, which includes, but is not limited to, his repeated admissions of having committed the offence for which he was convicted."[19] In other words, these officials are implicitly defending the coercive Mr. Big techniques that they employed to induce Kyle to confess to a crime he did not commit. The court date to hear Kyle's lawsuit has not yet been set.

The Wounds Innocence Canada Cannot Heal

Like many wrongly convicted people, Kyle continues to do battle in the court of public opinion. Ms. Grenier's death was a tragedy in their small, closely knit community. Like the police who were unwilling to let go of their initial suspicion of Kyle - even in the face of significant evidence of his innocence - many people in Roseisle continue to believe that Kyle killed Ms. Grenier.

Kyle spent his 20's and early 30's in prison; and while he has regained his freedom, he will never be able to replace those lost 14 years, but we hope that his future will hold positive life experiences and opportunities that will allow him to grow and achieve his life's goals.

[1] In Manitoba, the decision to prosecute an offence involves an assessment of whether or not there is a "reasonable likelihood of conviction." McGoey, Christine, "The "Good" Criminal Law Barrister: A Crown Perspective" The Law Society of Upper Canada: Papers and Videos from Past Colloquia online: The Law Society of Upper Canada http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lsuc.on.ca%2Fmedia%2Fchristine_mcgoey_good_criminal_lawyer_mar0504.pdf&ei=AEsmUqbCLIKU2QXawoGQAw&usg=AFQjCNHRt5wR1fzloX5kPTsrjOBJYXlEOg&bvm=bv.51495398,d.b2I.

[2] Keenan, Kouri T. & Joan Brockman, "Mr. Big Exposing Undercover Investigations in Canada" page 23

[3] CBC News. "Kyle Unger acquitted of 1990 killing." 23 Oct 2009: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/kyle-unger-acquitted-of-1990-killing-1.783996

[4] Bruce MacFarlane. "Wrongful Convictions: Is It Proper for the Crown to Root Around, Looking for Miscarriages of Justice?" 36 Manitoba Law Journal 1 at 20.

[5] http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Snitches-Informants.php

[6] Report of the 1989-90 Los Angeles Country Grand Jury, Investigation of the Involvement of Jail House Informants in the Criminal Justice System in Los Angeles County.

[7] See the Report of the Kaufman Commission on Proceedings Involving Guy Paul Morin at http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/about/pubs/morin; The Inquiry Regarding Thomas Sophonow at http://www.gov.mb.ca/justice/publications/sophonow/toc.html.

[8] See, for example, the Ontario Crown Policy Manual section on In-Custody Informers, at http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/crim/cpm/2005/InCustodyInformers.pdf.

[9] FTP Heads of Prosecutions Committee Report of the Working Group on the Prevention of Miscarriages of Justice: http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/ccr-rc/pmj-pej/p4.html#foot114 at 97.

[10] Morin inquiry, Recommendation 74: http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/about/pubs/morin/morin_recom.pdf

[11] See discussion in Truscott (Re), 2007 ONCA 575, 225 C.C.C. (3d) 321.

[12] "4. Tunnel Vision." FTP Heads of Prosecutions Committee Report of the Working Group on the Prevention of Miscarriages of Justice: http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/ccr-rc/pmj-pej/p4.html#foot114

[13] https://www.innocenceproject.org/exoneration-statistics-and-databases/

[14] As quoted in the FTP Report on the Prevention of Wrongful Convictions (page 136)

[15] FTP Report on the Prevention of Wrongful Convictions (page xi)

[16] http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Unreliable-Limited-Science.php

[17] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/kyle-unger-sues-for-wrongful-conviction-in-murder-of-manitoba-teen/article4256694/

[18] Bruce MacFarlane. "Wrongful Convictions: Is It Proper for the Crown to Root Around, Looking for Miscarriages of Justice?" 36 Manitoba Law Journal 1 at 20.

[19] CBC News. Feds deny liability in Kyle Unger wrongful conviction. Aug 27, 201: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/feds-deny-liability-in-kyle-unger-wrongful-conviction-1.1339338.

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On Friday, June 22, 1990, nineteen-year-old Kyle Unger attended a rock music festival at a ski resort near his hometown of Roseisle, Manitoba. Brigitte Grenier, then sixteen years old and a high school classmate of Kyle’s, also attended the festival. Between midnight and 1:30 a.m., Brigitte Grenier…

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This 2019 youtube video talks about the whole wrongful conviction of Kyle Unger, and how lots of evidence and statements were ignored by police which led to Kyle being convicted of the murder charge.

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This picture of Kyle Unger was posted in a 2019 article called 'Kyle Unger reaches out-of-court settlement for wrongful conviction'.