A former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada has been asked to solve one of the great mysteries of the nation's judicial system -- why so many wrongful-murder convictions have occurred in Newfoundland.
Antonio Lamer has been given almost two years to delve into the wrongful convictions of Gregory Parsons, Ronald Dalton and Randy Druken.
"[Former] chief justice Lamer has the highest credentials," Newfoundland Justice Minister Kelvin Parsons said in the surprise announcement yesterday.
"I have every confidence he will complete a thorough and comprehensive inquiry."
Mr. Lamer said in an interview that he will be on the alert for broad patterns of error that betray systemic problems.
"When you have three cases, then maybe you are starting to get a picture of something," he said.
"Or, maybe it was just three individual boo-boos. If there has been a systemic failure, I will flag it and make recommendations to correct it."
Mr. Lamer said that while the cases are new to him, he hopes to hear testimony from a broad range of those people involved. "I must admit, I didn't know about them [the cases]," he said. "I'm told they were the subject of great interest in Newfoundland."
Jerome Kennedy -- a defence lawyer involved in all three cases -- said an inquiry into the stunning rate of miscarriages is long overdue, considering that Newfoundland has a population of 500,000 and an annual homicide rate of less than a dozen.
"The fact they have gone outside the province is certainly what we wanted," he said. However, Mr. Kennedy said he will remain "cautiously optimistic" until he hears how extensive the parameters of the inquiry will be.
If set up properly, he said, the inquiry will find ample evidence of police tunnel vision, overzealous prosecution and a reliance on flimsy evidence and unsavoury jailhouse informants. Some of the police and prosecutors were involved in two or all three of the cases, Mr. Kennedy said.
He said Mr. Lamer will also discover an startling anomaly: In each of the cases, the Newfoundland Court of Appeal found sufficient error to order a new trial.
"When we get to the appellate-court stage, the system appears to have worked incredibly," Mr. Kennedy said. "An inquiry should also look at the positives."
Mr. Parsons was convicted of the 1991 murder of his mother, Catherine Carroll. The evidence centred on superficially damning hearsay as well as the lyrics of a song Mr. Parsons once wrote, which included the words: "Kill your parents."
Mr. Parsons was exonerated in 1998 on the basis of DNA tests. Last month, a former friend of the Parsons family was convicted of the killing.
Mr. Druken was convicted in 1995 of killing his girlfriend, Brenda Marie Young. After five years behind bars, he was exonerated after DNA tests found that a cigarette that burned a hole at the murder scene was not his. A jailhouse informant who testified against Mr. Druken later admitted he had lied.
Mr. Dalton was convicted in 1988 of strangling his wife to death. He served nine years before being freed after forensic evidence showed the victim had choked to death on a piece of food.
His charge remains in legal limbo because of a stay of proceedings. However, activists in the wrongful-conviction movement believe it is merely a matter of time before he is exonerated.
