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Wrongfully Convicted Anthony Hanemaayer 

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Wrongfully Convicted Anthony Hanemaayer 

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This was the final appeal case for Anthony Hanemaayer. After being accused of breaking and entering, and committing an assault and assault while threatening to use a weapon, the innocent Anthony Hanemaayer

was acquitted for this crimes that he did not commit.

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Man accused in sex attack to be acquitted

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Man accused in sex attack to be acquitted

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The day before the court appeal, stating the evidence of innocences of Anthony Hanemaayer.

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The Ontario Crown yesterday conceded that a London, Ont., labourer was wrongfully convicted of a 1987 knifepoint sex attack that was actually committed by serial killer Paul Bernardo.

In a written submission to the Ontario Court of Appeal, Crown counsel Howard Leibovich conceded that Anthony Hanemaayer, 40, was the victim of a witness misidentification.

"Fresh evidence demonstrates that Bernardo committed the offence, not the appellant," Mr. Leibovich said in a legal brief filed yesterday. "The fresh evidence points to only one conclusion - Paul Bernardo committed this attack."

His admission renders it a foregone conclusion that when Mr. Hanemaayer's appeal is heard tomorrow, he will be acquitted.

The Hanemaayer case is destined to occupy a prominent place in the annals of wrongful convictions and questionable police work.

Convicted based on a single piece of evidence - a lineup of 12 photos that was shown to the victim's mother - Mr. Hanemaayer became so intimidated after hearing the woman's forceful trial testimony that he hurriedly seized a plea offer from the Crown.

In return for pleading guilty to breaking and entering and assault, Mr. Hanemaayer was given a sentence of two years less a day - well under the six-year penitentiary term his lawyer had warned him would likely be in the offing.

There were no developments in the case until 2006, when Mr. Bernardo admitted breaking into the basement of the Scarborough home where the girl lived. He recounted straddling the girl on her waterbed shortly before dawn, when her mother arrived in the doorway to investigate a noise. The mother later testified that she and the assailant stared at one another for a full 45 seconds before he suddenly leapt up, "raised his arms up in the air and roared at me like a lion."

In a telling aside yesterday, Mr. Leibovich ended his account of the attack by stating: "The mother was not wearing her glasses that night."

Mr. Hanemaayer became the prime suspect within a week of the attack, when the victim's mother, acting on a hunch, approached a construction company that was doing work near her home. She gave a description of the attacker - young, brown hair, baby face, piercing eyes, small ears - to an office worker at the company.

The employee suggested that it might fit Mr. Hanemaayer.

The girl's mother forwarded the information to the police. After investigators had obtained a photograph of Mr. Hanemaayer, the mother selected it from a photo lineup.

Upon learning of the Bernardo confession earlier this year, lawyers for the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted took up Mr. Hanemaayer's cause.

Mr. Leibovich noted yesterday that Mr. Bernardo displayed detailed knowledge of the location and layout of the victim's home, her age and physical description, and his encounter with her mother.

The Crown lawyer also said that Mr. Bernardo returned to the home a year later to steal a personalized licence plate - a key item of evidence that went a long way toward corroborating his confession.

"There is absolutely no evidence of any collusion between the appellant and Bernardo that could otherwise describe the striking similarities in the offence that Bernardo stated that he committed and the attack that took place..." Mr. Leibovich said.

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Man accused in sex attack to be acquitted

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The Ontario Crown yesterday conceded that a London, Ont., labourer was wrongfully convicted of a 1987 knifepoint sex attack that was actually committed by serial killer Paul Bernardo. In a written submission to the Ontario Court of Appeal, Crown counsel Howard Leibovich conceded that Anthony Hanemaayer, 40, was the victim of a witness misidentification.

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Attorney General Chris Bentley said financial compensation only applied to "rare, unusual cases" and wasn't appropriate for Anthony Hanemaayer.

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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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James Lockyer talking about Anthony Hanemaayer's case and how the case ended.

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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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A summary of the case of Anthony Hanemaayer and how his eyewitness mistaken him for the guilty.

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Could this happen to you? If so, what would you do? In Anthony Hanemaayer's case, it did happen to him. An eyewitness, sure of what she had seen, the police being lead on by the eye witness.

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Paul Bernardo's confession which lead to the innocence of Anthony Hanemaayer.

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Justice Is Given to Anthony Hanemaaye was acquitted at the Ontario Court of Appeal. 20 years later, with the help of James Lockyer and the AIDWC. Mr. Hanemaayer will no longer living as a guilty man.

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With 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.