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By Nadine Robertson

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The Ontario government denied Anthony any comprehensions for ruining his life.

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Two men who were wrongfully convicted of crimes and later acquitted were denied compensation Wednesday by the Ontario government despite ordeals their lawyer said "completely wrecked" their lives.

Attorney General Chris Bentley said financial compensation only applied to "rare, unusual cases" and wasn't appropriate in the cases of Robert Baltovich and Anthony Hanemaayer.

"They have both been found not guilty as a result of the steps that the justice system has taken," Bentley said. "I actually think that speaks to one of the strengths of the justice system in the province of Ontario and in Canada generally."

Baltovich won an acquittal in 2008 for the murder of his girlfriend Elizabeth Bain, a crime for which he served eight years behind bars, while Hanemaayer served two years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault in 1987.

Lawyer James Lockyer sought compensation in both cases as well as an inquiry into why it took the province's top court so long to quash Baltovich's conviction. Calls for a public inquiry were also denied.

"The attorney general's decision today just demonstrates an indifference to the plight of these two men wrongfully convicted," Lockyer said. "It just seems to me to be an extraordinarily indifferent decision, as bad as anything, as unconscionable as anything I've run into for a while."

Civil suits possible

Neither Baltovich nor Hanemaayer were surprised with the decision given they way they've been treated by the justice system, Lockyer added.

"Their lives were completely wrecked by what happened to them, the amount of time they spent in jail," said Lockyer, who is also a founding director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted.

"Rob Baltovich was in for eight years. He went into jail with a recently acquired university degree and has come out unable to secure employment.

"Anthony Hanemaayer is without employment because he can only work seasonally at roofing."

Lockyer has advised them both to pursue a civil lawsuit to try to get financial compensation, and expects them to be successful.

When he initially asked the government to consider compensation in 2008, Lockyer said Baltovich could launch a civil suit against the police for negligence, against the Crown for breach of his Charter rights, and certain individuals in the case. But Lockyer added he didn't want to engage in yet another adversarial court process unless it was "absolutely necessary."

Baltovich was handed a life sentence in 1992 after he was found guilty of killing Bain, who disappeared in 1990, and served eight years before he was given a chance to appeal his case. He was released on bail in 2000. Five years later, Ontario's highest court quashed his conviction, ordering a new trial.

Baltovich was acquitted minutes into that second trial when the Crown said it had no evidence to support a conviction.

Lockyer has alleged the crime was committed by infamous serial rapist and schoolgirl killer Paul Bernardo - a claim Bernardo has denied.

Hanemaayer pleaded guilty part way through his 1989 trial for the assault of a 15-year-old Toronto girl, opting for a sentence of two years less a day instead of the stiffer six- to 10-year term he faced - a fact Bentley said figured into his decision.

The London, Ont., roofer was linked to the crime on the strength of eyewitness testimony by the victim's mother.

Hanemaayer had his record wiped clean in 2008 after the Ontario Court of Appeal heard the Crown believed Bernardo committed the offence - Bernardo had confessed to the crime in a jailhouse interview with police two years earlier.

NDP slams government

NDP critic Peter Kormos said the government's move to deny the men compensation shows a "shameful disregard" for people who were let down by the criminal justice system.

"It's important that they be compensated, and if anything it sends a clear message to the players in the system - police, Crowns and courts - that there will be a price to be paid when the system fails innocent people," said Kormos.

Nearly 20 Canadian men and women have had wrongful convictions acknowledged over the last decade.

Steven Truscott was 14 when he was sentenced to hang when he was convicted of the 1959 murder of schoolmate Lynn Harper. He spent months on death row until his sentence was commuted to life in prison and was paroled in 1969.

The Ontario Court of Appeal declared Truscott a victim of a miscarriage of justice and acquitted him of the crime, but stopped short of declaring him innocent due to a lack of physical evidence.

Truscott received a $6.5-million compensation package from the Province of Ontario - a package Bentley described as an "extremely unusual, once-in-a-lifetime situation."

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No cash for wrongfully convicted men: Ontario | CBC News

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Two men who were wrongfully convicted of crimes and later acquitted were denied compensation Wednesday by the Ontario government despite ordeals their lawyer said "completely wrecked" their lives. Attorney General Chris Bentley said financial compensation only applied to "rare, unusual cases" and wasn't appropriate in the cases of Robert Baltovich and Anthony Hanemaayer.

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the stars view on the wrongfully convinced case

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Anthony Hanemaayer's acquittal yesterday for a 1987 sex attack committed by Paul Bernardo exposed what his lawyers call a multitude of problems plaguing Canada's justice system, including the use of dangerous eyewitness evidence.

Hanemaayer's lawyers hope his wrongful conviction and the 20 years he spent paying for Bernardo's crime will translate into compensation for their client and a police investigation into whether the serial killer committed other offences, including the 1990 disappearance of Elizabeth Bain.

They also hope the case will change how eyewitness testimony is used, considered the leading cause of wrongful convictions. In the U.S., "eyewitness identification evidence" has played a role in about 75 per cent of wrongful convictions overturned through DNA testing.

In Canada, a hard-hitting report came seven years ago on the case of Thomas Sophonow, who was wrongly convicted twice of a 1981 murder. Few of its recommendations to reduce miscarriages of justice from the use of this evidence have been put into place.

"Anthony Hanemaayer's wrongful conviction could happen just as easily in 2008 as it did back in 1989," lawyer James Lockyer said after Hanemaayer emerged with his parents into the sun outside the Ontario Court of Appeal to enjoy his first moments as a finally free man.

"I'm very happy that it's over," said Hanemaayer, a soft-spoken 40-year-old roofer who appeared close to tears, including when asked about his parents, Peter and Wilma. "If I didn't have them," he said, "I'd be lost."

Hanemaayer was accused of being the knife-wielding assailant who broke into a Scarborough house through a basement window sometime before dawn on Sept. 29, 1987, crept upstairs to a 15-year-old girl's bedroom and threatened to kill her if she didn't stay quiet. Startled by the victim's mother, the attacker ran out the door.

"This was a particularly nasty crime and it took no imagination to know what the intruder's intentions were," Lockyer told an appeal court panel headed by Justice Marc Rosenberg, who expressed profound regret for the "devastating effect" the case had on Hanemaayer and his family.

Hanemaayer said it's impossible to reduce the ordeal to dollars. Nineteen at the time of his arrest and newly married, he lost his wife and expectations for the future.

He had been working at a construction site in the neighbourhood, when he was identified by the victim's mother as the attacker. Her honest but mistaken observation was the key component of the Crown's case.

Hanemaayer felt certain her testimony would put him behind the walls of a penitentiary for at least six years. Part way through his 1989 trial, he changed his pleas to guilty and was sentenced to two years less a day for breaking and entering and assault with a weapon.

"It happens more often than you think, in serious cases with a defendant who swears he's innocent," said Frank Addario, president of the Criminal Lawyers' Association, "They cave in and plead guilty for the certainty of a reduced sentence."

Lockyer said both Hanemaayer and the victim were let down by the justice system.

Notes made by the prosecutor at Hanemaayer's preliminary hearing indicate she recognized the weakness of her case was that it was based on one woman who had at most a 60-second glimpse of the attacker, the appeal panel was told. On the other hand, the prosecutor considered it a plus that the victim's mother was very confident.

That, in itself, is a problem.

Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist and noted memory expert from the University of Washington, told the public inquiry into Sophonow's case that there's little connection between an eyewitness's confidence level and accuracy - but confident eyewitnesses have a powerful effect on jurors.

Hanemaayer's trial lawyer seemed awed by the testimony of the victim's mother and only too willing to arrange for his client to enter a guilty plea, Lockyer said.

"We didn't have money for a top-notch lawyer," said Peter Hanemaayer.

Bernardo made an overture to police through his lawyer to discuss other crimes in 2006. He described the 1987 attack in detail to two Toronto police detectives.

Although police met with Hanemaayer soon after the Bernardo interview and told him they didn't believe he'd committed the crime after all, they never mentioned they'd spoken with the serial killer, let alone that he'd confessed.

Hanemaayer only learned that last year, when the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted offered to take up his case. Were it not for that, "I probably would have gone to the grave" blamed for Bernardo's crime, he said.

The association had been given the transcript of the Bernardo interview as part of the evidence the Crown turned over to the defence for the trial of Robert Baltovich, Bain's former boyfriend, who had been scheduled to stand trial a second time this past spring for her murder.

Acquitted in April after the Crown admitted it had no case against him, Baltovich was also in court yesterday, supporting Hanemaayer, and echoed calls for an inquiry.

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Acquitted man demands justice reforms | The Star

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Anthony Hanemaayer's acquittal yesterday for a 1987 sex attack committed by Paul Bernardo exposed what his lawyers call a multitude of problems plaguing Canada's justice system, including the use of dangerous eyewitness evidence.

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At 19 years old he was arrested based on an eye witness statement. The witness was the mother of the assaulted victim, a 15 year old girl, at the time the mother was not wearing her eye glasses, but believed to have memorized the person's face.

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The case was built on an eye witness testimony, and even though someone else confessed, the police and courts pursued and accepted a plea bargain despite this confession of Paul Bernardo

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An Ontario man convicted of assaulting a teenage girl 21 years ago was exonerated Wednesday by the Ontario Court of Appeal after new information revealed imprisoned killer and serial rapist Paul Bernardo had confessed to the crime.

Speaking outside the Court of Appeal in Toronto, London resident Anthony Hanemaayer, now 40, said he was relieved and pleased that he had finally been acquitted, after serving jail time.

"Why it took so long, I have no comment, I have no idea," he said.

"I'm very happy that it's over.... It was very stressful. I'm a very soft kind of guy. To have something like that over my head, that people would think of me that way, is mind-blowing."

Three Appeal Court justices formally acquitted Hanemaayer of a 1987 knife assault on a 15-year-old girl in her Toronto bedroom.

"There has been a miscarriage of justice," Justice Marc Rosenberg said as the court reversed Hanemaayer's conviction.

The Crown earlier submitted that it had no case against him in light of the new information.

"The fresh evidence points to only one conclusion - Paul Bernardo committed this attack," Crown counsel Howard Leibovich said in a legal argument filed this week with the court.

"It is clearly in the interests of justice that the fresh evidence be admitted, the appeal allowed and the appellant's conviction[s] set aside."

Plea bargain lands Hanemaayer in jail

At the time of his trial in 1989, Hanemaayer pleaded guilty and was given a jail sentence of two years less a day.

Speaking to CBC News, he said he accepted a plea bargain on the advice of his then lawyer, who warned he could receive a long prison sentence.

After serving his sentence, Hanemaayer said he didn't hear about the case until Toronto police questioned him about it again in 2006.

At that time, he said, police were aware that Bernardo had confessed to the assault on the 15-year-old, but they didn't mention it to him.

The confession was brought to Hanemaayer's attention late last year by the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWC), a legal rights organization.

Appearing Wednesday in the Appeal Court, he formally withdrew his guilty plea from 1989.

Hanemaayer said the Crown's case against him in his 1989 trial was founded on an erroneous eyewitness identification of him by the mother of the victim during a quick encounter early in the morning at the time of the attack.

Unreliability of eyewitness identifications

The AIDWC took up Hanemaayer's case earlier this year upon learning of the Bernardo confession, and complained it should have been reopened immediately after the admission.

Hanemaayer's lawyer, James Lockyer, said he hoped the case would alert officials again to the unreliability of eyewitness identifications, and the dangers of building prosecutions on them.

Lockyer also called for a new investigation into crimes that might have been committed by Bernardo during the 1980s and early '90s, to search for more wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice.

"What a piece of luck that Bernardo should decide - for God knows what reason - that he would finally confess," Lockyer said. "Our [legal] system should not have to depend on someone like him to come forward and confess the way he did."

Bernardo is serving a life sentence in Kingston, Ont., for the first-degree murders of Ontario schoolgirls Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French.

Later at a news conference, Hanemaayer's lawyer said he would be seeking compensation but gave no specific details of what that request would entail.

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Court clears Ontario man after Bernardo confession | CBC News

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An Ontario man convicted of assaulting a teenage girl 21 years ago was exonerated Wednesday by the Ontario Court of Appeal after new information revealed imprisoned killer and serial rapist Paul Bernardo had confessed to the crime.

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During this court case Anthony took a plea bargain because of fear of a longer sentence, even knowing his innocence.

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http://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/think-and-grow-rich/198261 Anthony Hanemaayer was convicted nearly 20 years ago of a sexual assault that imprisoned killer and serial rapist Paul Bernardo has now confessed to. James Lockyer represented Anthony Hanemaayer today, asking that his client's 1989 assault conviction for the violent rape of a 15-year-old girl in Toronto be overturned.

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“mistaken eyewitness testimony” and” tunnel vision, where police investigators do not proceed with an open mind”

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In this video It breaks down the case and how Anthony Hanemaayer was accused by an eye witness

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cbc news take on the case

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An Ontario man who says he pleaded guilty on the advice of his lawyer to a 1987 crime that Paul Bernardo later confessed to is suing Toronto police, the Ontario Attorney General and his former lawyer.

Anthony Hanemaayer, now a 42-year-old resident of Harriston, Ont,, seeks $1.1 million in damages.

The case stems from a 1987 knife assault on a 15-year-old girl in her Scarborough bedroom. At the time of his trial in 1989, Hanemaayer pleaded guilty and was given a jail sentence of two years less a day. Including eight months of pre-trial custody, he spent 16 months behind bars.

Hanemaayer is suing Gerry Samulovitch, his former attorney, saying he was innocent and received poor advice from his lawyer about the prospects of being convicted after the victim's mother identified him, mistakenly, as the assailant.

Hanemaayer didn't hear about the Bernardo confession until Toronto police questioned him about it again in 2006. However, he has said police didn't mention the confession of Bernardo, who is currently serving life in prison for the murders of schoolgirls Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French.

The Bernardo confession was ultimately brought to Hanemaayer's attention in late 2007 by the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, a legal rights organization.

In June 2008, in an Ontario Court of Appeals, Hanemaayer formally withdrew his guilty plea from 1989, and he was exonerated.

Earlier this year, the Ontario government said it wouldn't pay compensation to Hanemaayer over his imprisonment.

In his suit, Hanemaayer claimed police were negligent in that they rushed to judgment in the 1987 case by not considering other suspects, and by not informing him in 2006 that Bernardo had confessed to the assault.

Hanemaayer also named the Attorney General of Ontario in his suit, claiming that an assistant crown attorney failed to inform him of Bernardo's confession.

Hanemaayer's claims have yet to be proven in court.

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Wrongly convicted man sues police, lawyer | CBC News

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An Ontario man who says he pleaded guilty on the advice of his lawyer to a 1987 crime that Paul Bernardo later confessed to is suing Toronto police, the Ontario Attorney General and his former lawyer. Anthony Hanemaayer, now a 42-year-old resident of Harriston, Ont,, seeks $1.1 million in damages.

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in this article Anthony Hanemaayer's case is broken down in detail

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We've helped exonerate 21 innocent people since 1993.

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a joyous moment after his life being turned upside down and labeled a sex offender