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This article outlines Guy-Paul Morin's story from the beginning to the end. This article outlines the importance of the case and how he was proven to be innocent and how this occured.

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Author: Sarah Harland-Logan
Introduction
On October 3, 1984, nine-year-old Christine Jessop disappeared sometime after being dropped off at home by the school bus. When her parents came home, they found her school bag on the counter, but there was no sign of Christine. By early evening, her parents realized that something was terribly wrong and her mother called the police. Although the search for Christine lasted several days, there was no sign of her at all.[1]

Christine's body was not found until December 31, 1984, over 50 kilometers from her home. Christine had been stabbed to death. Investigators discovered semen stains on her underwear. Christine's mom described her as "a happy, sensitive, lively, caring" fourth grader who "loved school and ... sports, particularly baseball." On January 7, 1985, Christine was buried in the cemetery behind her family home where she used to play. Her shocking, untimely death is all the more tragic in that her killer has not yet been brought to justice.[2]

At the time of Christine's disappearance, Guy Paul Morin was working as a finishing sander with a furniture manufacturing firm. He also played the saxophone and clarinet, was a bee-keeper, and helped his father with renovations on the family home. Guy and his parents would later testify that on the day Christine vanished, Guy had brought the groceries in, taken a nap and then worked on the renovations until after dinner.[3]

The police first became interested in Guy on February 14, 1985, when Christine's mother mentioned that their neighbor was a "weird-type guy" who played the clarinet. On February 19, police set up surveillance of the Morin home. On February 22, Guy was interviewed by two police officers. During this interview, Guy did not say anything that objectively could have been construed as a confession nor did he give any indication that he was responsible for Christine's death. Nonetheless, the officers suspected he was responsible for her murder. The police thought it strange that Guy knew that Christine's remains had been found across the Ravenshoe Road despite the fact it was public knowledge at the time. They also did not like the sound of a comment he made to the effect that "All little girls are sweet and beautiful, but grow up to be corrupt." In addition, Guy made a snarky remark about his innocence, perhaps because he was irritated at being treated as a suspect.

After this interview, the investigators obtained Guy's time card from work, which suggested that it would have been difficult or impossible for Guy to return from his job and abduct Christine before her parents' return. However, the police remained convinced that this "weird-type guy" had sexually assaulted and murdered her.[4]

Guy was arrested on April 22, 1985. Later that evening, the police searched the Morin home and took samples of his hair, blood, and saliva, which Guy voluntarily gave. During his six-hour interrogation, Guy repeatedly stated that he was innocent, but a full decade would elapse before his exoneration.[5]
Guy's First Trial
On January 7, 1986, the first of Guy's two trials began. During this four-week event, the jury heard expert evidence suggesting that a hair stuck in Christine's necklace "matched" Guy's hair sample, and similarly, that three hairs found in Guy's car "matched" Christine's. Further, the experts testified that a number of fibres located on Christine's clothing and recorder case could have come from Guy's home and car.

The jury also heard from two of Guy's cellmates - Mr. May and someone identified only as "Mr. X" - that he had confessed to killing Christine while incarcerated prior to his trial. Guy, in fact, never confessed anything in prison.

The defence team maintained that it was impossible for Guy to have left work at the hour indicated on his time card and have arrived at Christine's house with enough time to commit the crime. Guy's lawyers also argued that the hair and fibre evidence did not really prove anything, and they called their own experts who disagreed with the Crown experts' analysis.[6]

On February 7, 1986, the jury reached a verdict of not guilty. Guy was acquitted and set free. However, his struggle to clear his name had only just begun.[7]
The Crown's Appeal and Guy's Second Trial
On March 4, 1986, the Attorney General of Ontario launched an appeal of Guy's acquittal. The Crown claimed that the trial judge had made a mistake in directing the jury about the meaning of "reasonable doubt" and that the acquittal should therefore be thrown out and Guy retried. The Court of Appeal agreed, and on June 5, 1987, it ordered a new trial. Guy appealed this decision to the Supreme Court of Canada, but that Court dismissed his appeal on November 17, 1988. Guy was out of options; he would have to stand trial again.[8]

This second trial began on May 28, 1990. The new jury heard similar evidence about the supposedly incriminating hairs and fibres, and about Guy's alleged confession to Mr. May, overheard by Mr. X. Moreover, the jury also heard a great deal of new evidence from witnesses who had not testified at the first trial, but who had now recalled a wide range of damaging information - much of it focused on aspects of Guy's behaviour shortly after Christine's death that, in the witnesses' opinion, had reflected his guilty conscience. For example, the Crown called a police constable who claimed to have visited the Morin residence on the night of Christine's disappearance. The constable testified that he saw Guy, who appeared unconcerned that the young girl from next door had gone missing. Another member of Guy's band testified that she had been shocked at the "very uncaring" way that he had remarked on Christine's death. The Crown also called Christine's best friend, who testified that the two girls had had several conversations with Guy - during which he had kept such a tight grip on his hedge clippers that his knuckles turned white. Another neighbor, Paddy Hester, testified that Guy had chased her away from his car (where the incriminating hair and fiber evidence had been found). Finally, Christine's mother testified at the second trial that after Christine's funeral, she and several guests had heard a man's voice screaming, "Help me, help me, Oh God, help me." She believed that this frightened, desperate voice was Guy's.[9]

On July 30, 1992, Guy was found guilty of first degree murder.[10]
Guy's Appeal and Acquittal
Fortunately, not everyone believed that Guy had committed this heinous crime. Immediately after Guy's wrongful conviction, a grass-roots organization sprang up to aid him in his quest for exoneration. This group was called the Justice for Guy Paul Morin Committee, and it was the seed from which AIDWYC was born. The group's first objective was to help Guy to appeal his conviction and in the meantime, to apply for his release on bail while he waited for the appeal to be decided. Guy and the Committee were successful: despite his murder conviction, Guy was granted bail on February 9, 1993.[11] In the wake of this decision, the Committee reconstituted itself as the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC), having decided to broaden its mandate from defending Guy, to working on behalf of all wrongly convicted Canadians.

Guy and what became the AIDWYC team had intended to win his appeal by demonstrating that neither the Crown's hair and fibre evidence, nor the "jailhouse informant" evidence about his supposed confession, was reliable. But just days before they were to present these arguments to the Ontario Court of Appeal, DNA test results came in that made these issues moot. Several previous attempts to perform DNA testing on the semen stains found on Christine's underpants had been unsuccessful, but the technology had now advanced enough that a more sophisticated test could be conducted. This test proved that the DNA in question could not belong to Guy. The Crown prosecutor explained the new findings to the Court as follows: "The evidence proves as an indisputable scientific fact that Mr. Morin is not guilty of the first degree murder of Christine Jessop, and should be acquitted."[12]

On January 23, 1995, the Ontario Court of Appeal set aside Guy's conviction and entered an acquittal instead. The Crown prosecutor expressed his "deepest regret for all that" Guy and his family "had to endure." Ten years after his arrest - and having spent 18 months in prison - Guy had finally proven his innocence and cleared his name.[13]

On June 26, 1996, the Lieutenant Governor ordered that a public inquiry be conducted into the causes of Guy's wrongful conviction. The resulting report, which was released in April 1998, identified numerous factors that had contributed to this egregious miscarriage of justice.[14]
Causes of Guy's Wrongful Conviction: Tunnel Vision
The root cause of Guy's wrongful conviction is a dangerous and all too common phenomenon known as "tunnel vision." Commissioner Kaufman, who wrote the Inquiry's report described tunnel vision as "the single minded and overly narrow focus on an investigation or prosecutorial theory" - in this case, the theory that Guy had killed Christine - "so as to unreasonably colour the evaluation of information received and one's conduct in response to the information." It is easy for police and prosecutors to fall into tunnel vision, particularly if they are under intense pressure to solve or prosecute a case. Tunnel vision is therefore a common feature found in many miscarriages of justice. Moreover, "it is a trap that can capture even the best police officer or prosecutor," because "it is mutually reinforcing amongst police officers [and] ... prosecutors." Tunnel vision must therefore "be guarded against vigilantly."

One way that prosecutors must guard against this trap is by keeping in mind that their role is not to secure a conviction, but rather to ensure that justice is done. This means that their role "excludes any notion of winning or losing," as the Supreme Court put it in the now-famous case R v Boucher. In fact, the current Ontario Crown Policy Manual specifically comments that prosecutors must be "open to the possibility of the innocence of the accused person and avoid 'tunnel vision.'"[18]

Sadly, the prosecutors who worked on Guy's case lost sight of these obligations. Commissioner Kaufman observed in his report that there were "various instances where the prosecutors called evidence which, objectively viewed, was highly suspect. At times, their perspective was coloured by their strong views as to [Guy Paul] Morin's guilt," and "they were unable ... to objectively view the evidence" or to "be at all introspective about the very serious reliability problems with a number of their own witnesses." Commissioner Kaufman also found that some of the people involved in Guy's investigation and prosecution still suffered from "'tunnel vision' in the most staggering proportions" at the inquiry proceedings, despite the fact that Guy had been acquitted due to incontrovertible DNA evidence.[19]
Causes of Guy's Wrongful Conviction: Bad Science
In the Conclusion to his Report, Commissioner Kaufman commented that, "An innocent person was convicted of a heinous crime he did not commit. Science helped convict him. Science exonerated him." It is very fortunate that we now live in an era where miscarriages of justice like Guy's can be rectified through DNA testing. However, Guy was wrongly convicted in the first place due in part to the hair and fibre evidence that supposedly linked him to Christine's murder. Commissioner Kaufman found that the forensic scientist who analyzed the hairs failed to adequately explain the limitations of these findings, meaning that the police thought that they provided stronger evidence linking Guy to Christine than was actually true. Moreover, it is generally agreed today that hair comparison evidence is not reliable enough to be used in a criminal trial, due to the "inherent frailties" of this type of evidence. James Driskell's and Kyle Unger's cases are two known cases where hair microscopy evidence contributed to a wrongful conviction.

The fibre evidence put forward by the Crown proved to be similarly unreliable. In fact, it was contaminated during the forensic investigation and although the scientists working with the fibres realized what had happened, they kept this information from the police and prosecutors. Leaving aside the contamination problem, the fibre evidence simply did not support the Crown's position that it provided a link between Guy and Christine. Rather, the similarities observed between the fibres found on Christine's clothing and those from Guy's home and car were "equally explainable by random occurrence or environmental contamination" at the scene.[21]

Disquietingly, as forensic science continues to evolve, it has become clear that many other forensic scientific techniques are much less reliable than we 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 generally reliable, properly validated forensic techniques such as DNA typing and serology can produce inaccurate results if the samples are contaminated (as the fibre samples were in this case). Finally, the experts tasked with interpreting forensic scientific 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.
Causes of Guy's Wrongful Conviction: Unreliable Witness Testimony
As discussed above, a number of witnesses testified at Guy's second trial to a range of damaging things, all of which turned out to be untrue. In fact, by the time of the Inquiry, some of the witnesses had realized and admitted that the evidence they had given was wrong. Commissioner Kaufman found that there were several problems with these witnesses' "late-breaking revelations." First, this type of "consciousness of guilt" evidence - i.e., evidence that is meant to show that the accused felt guilty or was otherwise displaying inappropriate emotions - is in general of very little value. Second, some witnesses actively decided to change their testimony in order to help convict Guy, since they strongly believed that he was guilty. These witnesses were influenced by the police and prosecutorial tunnel vision discussed above, and by the understandable but pernicious need to believe that the man who had committed this terrible crime would indeed be brought to justice. It is a sad irony - and a common one in wrongful conviction cases - that the miscarriage of justice that Guy suffered may have ensured that the real killer will never be caught.[23]

The third reason for the unreliability of these witnesses' testimony is simply that human memory is far more malleable than most people realize. In the words of Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, one of the leading experts on human memory, people are "particularly prone to having their memories be affected by misinformation when it is introduced after the passage of time has allowed the original event memory to fade."[24] Commissioner Kaufman caustically noted that "it is truly remarkable the extent to which the memories of a number of Crown witnesses improved as the proceedings progressed" and that some of this "improvement" was "a product of an interviewing process ... that was not designed to create unreliable evidence, but which nonetheless had that very effect." For example, prior to Ms. Hester's informing the police that Guy had chased her away from his car, the police had actually told her about the forensic evidence that had been found there, and that they believed that Guy was indeed guilty.[25]
Causes of Guy's Wrongful Conviction: Reliance on Jailhouse Informants
Another cause of this miscarriage of justice was the false testimony of the jailhouse informants, Mr. May and Mr. X, who claimed that while he was incarcerated, Guy had confessed to killing Christine. Unlike the witnesses described above - who believed that they were telling the truth, and/or that they were helping to put a heinous criminal away - these informants deliberately lied, simply to further their own interests. Both Mr. May and Mr. X. had lengthy criminal records, and had made offers to implicate other inmates in addition to Guy. Moreover, Mr. May was diagnosed as a pathological liar by experts at Guy's second trial and he went on to tell several people that he had committed perjury at both trials. Mr. X had been diagnosed as having a personality disorder with sociopathic tendencies, including suggestibility and a propensity to lie.[26]

Jailhouse informants have contributed to many wrongful convictions. According to statistics compiled by the Innocence Project at the Cardozo Law School in New York:

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.[27]

Given the alarming unreliability of jailhouse informers' testimony, Commissioner Kaufman concluded that the prosecutorial policy at the time did not adequately take into account the dangers of using this type of evidence. He noted that most jailhouse informants "wish to benefit for their contemplated participation as witnesses for the prosecution," and that the use of these informants in criminal proceedings should therefore be "significantly limit[ed]" in order to avoid further miscarriages of justice.[28]

Today, Crown Prosecutors are required to view jailhouse informers' purported evidence in a much more skeptical and vigilant light. For example, the Ontario Crown Policy Manual states that jailhouse informants' evidence "requires a rigorous, objective assessment of the informer's account of the accused person's alleged statement, the circumstances in which that account was provided to the authorities and the in-custody informer's general reliability." The Manual notes that "a principal purpose of this policy is to help prevent miscarriages of justice, which can occur when in-custody informers falsely implicate accused persons" - as did the two jailhouse informants in Guy's case. [29]
Wounds that AIDWYC Cannot Heal
Guy spent 10 years of his life - and 18 months in prison - living with the stigma of a horrifying crime: the sexual assault and murder of a nine-year-old girl. As Commissioner Kaufman phrased it:

The criminal proceedings against Guy Paul Morin represent a tragedy not only for Mr. Morin and his family, but also for the community at large: the system failed him - a system for which we, the community, must bear responsibility. An innocent man was arrested, stigmatized, imprisoned and convicted. The real killer has never been found. The trail grows colder with each passing year. For Christine Jessop's family there is no closure.[30]

Although nothing can restore to Guy the years of his life and the peace of mind that were taken from him, he received $1.25 million and a public apology in compensation for his wrongful conviction. Despite this miscarriage of justice, Guy has been able to get married, raise children, produce a CD of his clarinet music, and develop his skills as a repairperson. As the years go by, however, it becomes less and less likely that Christine's real killer will ever be caught and that this little girl and her family will ever get the justice they deserve.[31]

[26] Ibid at pp. 9-10.

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Author: Sarah Harland-Logan Introduction On October 3, 1984, nine-year-old Christine Jessop disappeared sometime after being dropped off at home by the school bus. When her parents came home, they found her school bag on the counter, but there was no sign of Christine.

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Factors that led up to Guy-Paul Morin's Conviction:

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Factors that led up to Guy-Paul Morin's Conviction:

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1. Public Pressure to convict
2. Police/Prosecutorial misconduct - failed to secure crime scene
3. Unpopular Defendant
4. Faulty forensic evidence
5. Jailhouse informants
This is relevant to Guy- Paul Morin's case because it outlines the facts and the reasons he was accused/convicted of this tragedy

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Uploaded by Brittany White on 2013-12-08.

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This video outlines the seriousness of this trial and how it was handled. If Canada still had the death penalty while this trial was going on then this could have been a completely different story for Morin , he may have been put to death before ever being proven innocent. This is important because it outlines the importance of having all the facts of the trial before convicting someone as guilty.

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Convicted Killer Paul Bernardo Interview on Elizabeth Bain

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Nicole Morin Investigation Update News Conference

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Win Wahrer - Founder, Justice for Guy Paul Morin Committee

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Win Wahrer - Founder of the Justice for Guy Paul Morin Committee speaks about the death penalty.

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Guy-Paul Morin : 10 Things Learned from the Case

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Guy-Paul Morin : 10 Things Learned from the Case

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1. The dangers of tunnel vision- police were sharply criticzed fir quickly fixating on Morin because they considered him an odd ball

2. The dangers of "demeanour evidence"- he was criticized for what was considered innapropriate facial expressions, and the fact that he did not search for her body or attend her funeral

3. The need to be skeptical of "experts"- hair and fibre evidence was incorrectly presented to the jury.

4. The need to take a broad look at the system and wrongful convictions

5. The need for police not to bond to tightly with the victim's family

6. The dangers of jailhouse snitches

7. The realization that prosecutors are capable of misconduct

8.  The dangers of cutting a deal to avoid trial

9. The dangers of withholding evidence

10. The need for full and accurate records of interviews with witnesses.

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Guy Paul Morin and the Christine Jessop killing: 10 things learned from the case

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It has been 30 years since 9-year-old Christine Jessop was abducted and then killed. The culprit still hasn't been caught but experts say much was learned from the case

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Canada's Wrongful Conviction of Guy-Paul Morin

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Canada's Wrongful Conviction of Guy-Paul Morin

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This is article is relevant to the case of Guy-Paul Morin because it outlines a summary of the main details of the case such as :

- Christine Jessop, a 9 year old girl disappeared from her Queensville home in Oct 1984. Her body was found in a farmers field 2 months later

- Guy Paul Morin, the Jessops' nextdoor neighbour, was later charged with her murder

At his second trial Morin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison

He appealed in 1995 and was exonerated by DNA testing

It concluded that mistakes by the police, prosecutors, and forensic scientists combined sent an innocent man to jail.

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They languished behind bars for years, wrongfully jailed for crimes they did not commit.

But the high-profile ordeals of Donald Marshall Jr., David Milgaard and others have put a spotlight on what has been called the fallibility of Canadian justice.

High-profile cases

These cases are not unique and certainly not isolated to Canada, although estimates of the actual number of wrongful convictions vary widely.

Each miscarriage of justice, however, deals a blow to a society's confidence in the legal system, experts say.

"Wrongful convictions undermine the two prongs of the criminal justice system's legitimacy," states a 1992 report prepared by the Library of Parliament. "If someone is wrongfully convicted, that person is punished for an offence he or she did not commit and the actual perpetrator of the crime goes free."

To make it worse, advocates say many who were ultimately exonerated watched their applications stall for years in the federal review board process.

In 2000, federal Justice Minister Anne McLellan announced plans to try to prevent such cases from happening again. The changes, since enacted in the Criminal Code of Canada, enable the justice minister to use his or her discretion to respond to persons who believe they have been wrongfully convicted.

Groups such as the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted have also advocated on behalf of those they say have been jailed unfairly.
Here are some of the major cases in recent Canadian history:
James Driskell

Perry Harder of Winnipeg had been shot several times in the chest in September 1990. Driskell - his friend - was convicted and sentenced to life in prison a year later.

The RCMP said three hair samples found in Driskell's van were Harder's, and that evidence convicted him. Later test results from the U.K. found none of the hairs belonged to Harder.

Driskell was granted bail in November 2003. The federal justice minister at the time, Liberal Irwin Cotler, quashed the conviction and ordered a new trial in 2005. Despite that, the Manitoba government opted to stay the trial and end the case without exonerating Driskell. It also called for a public inquiry into the case.

The inquiry's final report, released in February 2007, said the jury in Driskell's trial was "seriously misled" on issues including the reliability of a key Crown witness. The report also said the failure of the Crown to disclose information to the defence was "careless indifference."

Anthony Hanemaayer

In 1987, Hanemaayer was charged with assault in connection with a knifepoint attack on a 15-year-old girl. The Toronto resident pleaded guilty part way through his trial and was sentenced to two years less a day in jail.

Hanemaayer said in a later interview with CBC News that he accepted a plea bargain on the advice of his then-lawyer, who warned he could receive a long prison sentence.

In 2006, convicted murderer and rapist Paul Bernardo confessed to the crime during a jailhouse interview. The Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted learned of the confession and took up the case. Hanemaayer, now 40 and living in London, Ont., took his case to the Ontario Court of Appeal and was acquitted on June 25, 2008.

Donald Marshall Jr.

In 1971, Marshall was wrongfully convicted of murdering his friend, Sandy Seale, in a Sydney, N.S., park. Marshall was just 17 years old when he received a life sentence.

He was released in 1982 after RCMP reviewed his case. He was cleared by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal the following year. Though the Appeal Court declared him not guilty, Marshall was told he had contributed to his own conviction and that any miscarriage of justice was more apparent than real.

Marshall, a Mi'kmaq, was exonerated by a royal commission in 1990 that determined systemic racism had contributed to his wrongful imprisonment. The seven-volume report pointed the finger at police, judges, Marshall's original defence lawyers, Crown lawyers and bureaucrats.

Roy Ebsary, an eccentric who bragged about being skilled with knives, was eventually convicted of manslaughter in Seale's death and spent a year in jail.

Marshall died in a Sydney hospital in August 2009 after a lengthy illness. He was 55.

Simon Marshall

Simon Marshall was imprisoned from 1997 to 2003 after he wrongly confessed to a string of sexual assaults in Ste-Foy, a Quebec City suburb. A DNA test later cleared Marshall, a mentally handicapped man. The Quebec Court of Appeal ruled he was a victim of miscarried justice and ordered his criminal record expunged.

It was later found that DNA evidence first collected in the investigation that led to Marshall's conviction was never tested. An inquiry also revealed multiple breaches in police conduct during the investigation.

In December 2006, the Quebec government awarded the 24-year-old $2.3 million, the highest wrongful conviction compensation to date in the province. The money went to Marshall's parents, who are in charge of his care.

David Milgaard

Milgaard was charged with the 1969 murder of Saskatoon nursing aide Gail Miller and in January 1970 was sentenced to life in prison. Appeals to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada in the two years after his conviction were unsuccessful.

Milgaard's mother, Joyce, believed from the day he was arrested that her son was innocent. She kept his case alive, talking to whoever would listen - and many who didn't - while he spent more than two decades in prison.

In 1991, Justice Minister Kim Campbell directed the Supreme Court of Canada to review the conviction. The Supreme Court of Canada set it aside in 1992, and Milgaard was subsequently cleared by DNA evidence five years later.

The Saskatchewan government awarded Milgaard $10 million for his wrongful conviction in 1999. That same year, Larry Fisher was found guilty of the rape and stabbing death of Gail Miller.

A provincial judicial inquiry, which released a comprehensive 815-page report in September 2008, concluded that "the criminal justice system failed David Milgaard." The inquiry also found that Milgaard might have been released from jail years sooner if police had followed up on a lead they received in 1980.

Guy Paul Morin

Christine Jessop, a nine-year-old girl, disappeared from her Queensville, Ont., home in October 1984. Her body was found in a farmer's field two months later. Guy Paul Morin, the Jessops' next-door neighbour in the community about 60 km north of Toronto, was later charged with her murder.

Morin was acquitted in 1986, but a new trial was ordered by the Ontario Court of Appeal. At this second trial, Morin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

He appealed and in 1995 was exonerated by DNA testing.

A public inquiry into the case was called, and its report was tabled in 1998. It concluded that mistakes by the police, prosecutors and forensic scientists combined to send an innocent man to jail.

William Mullins-Johnson

William Mullins-Johnson was convicted in the 1994 slaying of his four-year-old niece. He spent more than 12 years in prison for first-degree murder, partly on the now-questionable testimony of a discredited pathologist.

However, Crown prosecutors called for the Sault Ste. Marie man's acquittal, which was granted by the Ontario Court of Appeal on Oct. 15, 2007.

The Crown apologized in the Toronto courtroom for all the hardship caused.

"I wish to extend our sincere, profound and deepest apology to Mr. Mullins-Johnson and to his family for the miscarriage of justice that occurred," lawyer Michal Fairburn said.

Romeo Phillion

Ottawa firefighter Leopold Roy was stabbed to death in August 1967 and Romeo Phillion was convicted of his murder five years later. Though Phillion confessed while in custody on a robbery charge, he immediately recanted and has maintained his innocence ever since.

In May 2003 - 30 years into Phillion's sentence - a group of law students from York University sought to secure Phillion's exoneration. One basis for their application was a police report, not shown to the defence at the original trial, that placed Phillion 200 kilometres away at the time of the crime.

Phillion was granted bail two months later while the federal justice minister investigated.

In January 2008, the Ontario Court of Appeal reopened Phillion's case. Phillion's former defence lawyer, Arthur Cogan, said that Phillion's original confession to the crime was a desperate bid to protect his gay lover from other charges.

The Court of Appeal struck down Phillion's conviction in March 2009 and ordered a new trial, although it stopped short of a full acquittal.

Thomas Sophonow

Winnipeg police announced in June 2000 that evidence had cleared Thomas Sophonow in the killing of doughnut-shop clerk Barbara Stoppel.

Authorities said they had a new suspect in the 1981 murder for which Sophonow was tried three times and spent nearly four years behind bars. The Manitoba Court of Appeal acquitted him in 1985.

The Manitoba government released a report in 2001 by retired Supreme Court judge Peter Cory with 43 recommendations.

Cory said Sophonow should receive $2.6 million in government compensation (50 per cent from the City of Winnipeg, 40 per cent from the Manitoba government and 10 per cent from the federal government) for his wrongful murder conviction.

Steven Truscott

In 1959, Truscott was sentenced to be hanged at age 14 for a schoolmate's murder, becoming Canada's youngest death-row inmate.

After the original conviction, he spent four months in the shadow of the gallows until his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Paroled in 1969, Truscott disappeared into an anonymous existence in a southern Ontario city.

On Aug. 28, 2007 - 48 years later - the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously overturned Truscott's conviction and acquitted him, declaring the case "a miscarriage of justice" that "must be quashed."

The judges went on to say, however, that "the court is not satisfied that the appellant has been able to demonstrate his factual innocence."

In July 2008, the Ontario government announced it would pay Truscott $6.5 million in compensation for his ordeal.

Kyle Unger

In June 1990, Brigitte Grenier died near Roseisle, Man., where she was attending an outdoor rock concert. The 16-year-old was beaten, strangled and sexually mutilated.

Kyle Unger and another man, Timothy Houlahan, were convicted of first-degree murder in connection with her death in 1992. Houlahan was released on bail after the Manitoba Court of Appeal overturned his conviction in 1994, and he committed suicide later that year.

Unger's initial appeal, meanwhile, was rejected and his application for a Supreme Court of Canada appeal was denied. But in 2004, 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. He was granted bail in November 2005.

Then in March 2009, federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced that a new trial had been ordered. Unger's lawyer said at the time that police and prosecutors kept evidence from the defence during the original trial and used a jailhouse informant who was not credible.

The Manitoba Crown ultimately decided that it did not have enough evidence for a retrial. In October 2009, a Manitoba court acquitted Unger and he walked away a free man.

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

Erin Walsh

It took a jury just one hour to find Walsh guilty of the 1975 second-degree murder of Melvin (Chi Chi) Peters in Saint John, N.B. The prosecution saw it as an open-and-shut case, and Walsh received a life sentence with no parole before 10 years.

Walsh's appeals to the New Brunswick Court of Appeal were dismissed in July and November 1982. In December 2006, however, his lawyers sought a review of the murder conviction from the federal government after new evidence came to light.

The evidence, obtained by Walsh as part of a 2005 access-to-information request, included reports of jailhouse conversations that suggested someone else shot Peters.

In February 2008, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson ordered a review of the murder conviction, suggesting a miscarriage of justice likely occurred.

A month later, the New Brunswick Court of Appeal acquitted Walsh of the crime and overturned his conviction. Walsh, a native of Ontario who had maintained his innocence for more than 32 years, was dying of colon cancer and wanted his name cleared.

Walsh died at his home in Kingston, Ont., on Oct. 14, 2010. He was 62.

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Canada's wrongful convictions | CBC News

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They languished behind bars for years, wrongfully jailed for crimes they did not commit. But the high-profile ordeals of Donald Marshall Jr., David Milgaard and others have put a spotlight on what has been called the fallibility of Canadian justice.

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The community of Queensville, Ont., has a dark shadow hanging over its history.

Nine-year-old Christine Jessop went missing on Oct. 3, 1984 and her remains were discovered three months later in a rural part of Durham Region.

Christine's mother, Janet Jessop, is still looking for her daughter's killer.

"I want to find him and that's my goal," Jessop said.

"Where is the person that did it? We are talking [32] years later. She'd be 41 or 42 now. Where is he? That's the question I have. The second question I have is, why?"

Janet said there was nothing peculiar about the day her daughter went missing.

Christine was supposed to be at home after a short bus ride from school while her mother and older brother were out running errands.

"I had told her not to leave the house if I wasn't home. If she got home from school and I wasn't home, don't leave the house and just stay with Freckles (the family's dog) and she'd be fine," Jessop said.

Police said the nine-year-old had plans to meet up with a friend later that evening at nearby park, but Christine never showed up.

She was last seen purchasing a pack of gum from a convenience store down the road from her home.
WATCH: Extended interview with Janet Jessop, Christine Jessop's mother.
"I called all her friends to see if [she] had gone with them. We went down to the playground and checked that out. We went around the neighbourhood," Jessop said.

"We looked everywhere and finally we thought, 'OK, we better call the police. Something is wrong.'"

On New Year's Eve 1984, Christine's body was found more than 50 kilometres away from her Queensville home.

The nine-year-old was raped and murdered.

"As soon as we saw our minister and police walk up the driveway, we knew," Jessop said.

"You can't fathom it. You can't unless you've gone through it. There's just no way you can understand your feelings."

Toronto Police Service homicide unit Det. Sgt. Stacy Gallant said it's likely Christine was transported by vehicle to Durham Region.

"No one wants to see a young child taken and murdered and not found for an extended period of time. It's difficult for society," he said.

"It's difficult for the community."

Police identified Christine's neighbour, Guy Paul Morin, as a person of interest and he was convicted in the nine-year-old's death.

However, advancements in DNA testing lead to Morin's exoneration in 1995. He served 18 months in jail.

"DNA was located and it was found not to be that of the person that was ultimately convicted for this murder," Gallant said.

Toronto police took carriage of the case after Morin was cleared.

To date, Christine's murderer has never been found and police are still searching for the person responsible.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the police homicide unit at 416-808-7400, homicide@torontopolice.on.ca or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477.
Watch Global News at 5:30 & 6 p.m. ET Thursdays for our weekly Cold Case Files series.

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Cold Case Files: 32 years later, Ontario mother still searching for daughter's killer

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The community of Queensville, Ont., has a dark shadow hanging over its history. Nine-year-old Christine Jessop went missing on Oct. 3, 1984 and her remains were discovered three months later in a rural part of Durham Region. Christine's mother, Janet Jessop, is still looking for her daughter's killer.

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This shows how the Criminal System has failed this man , he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for a crime he did not commit. This is relevant to the case because it shows Morin being arrested.

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This is a relevant picture to the case of Guy-Paul Morin because it shows pictures of the main people involved in this case and also their titles.
Left: Prosecutor - Leo McGuigan
Middle: Guy- Paul Morin
Right: Criminal Lawyer - Clayton Ruby

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This picture outlines the importance of "Innocent until proven Guilty" due to not having all the pertinent facts evidence of this case and innocent almost spent the rest of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit.