Greater than a 12 months after the Saint John, N.B., police chief introduced a evaluate of his officers’ conduct within the case of two males wrongfully convicted of homicide, there isn’t a signal of the promised report.
On Jan. 12, 2024, Chief Robert Bruce stated he had ordered a “complete evaluate” of the investigation that resulted in Robert Mailman and Walter Gillespie serving lengthy jail sentences for a 1983 homicide they didn’t commit.
The evaluate was introduced eight days after New Brunswick Courtroom of King’s Bench Chief Justice Tracey DeWare exonerated the lads and stated that they had been victims of a miscarriage of justice. Earlier, federal Justice Minister Arif Virani had ordered a brand new trial citing proof that known as into query “the general equity” of their prosecution.
Bruce stated he had commissioned Allen Farrah, a retired senior RCMP officer, to “perform an impartial evaluate solely centered on the investigation” by the Saint John police. Farrah is the proprietor and sole worker of the investigative consulting agency Clear-Path Options, Inc., based mostly in Hanwell, N.B.
“Given the circumstances and out of a way of obligation and accountability, I’ll conduct a complete evaluate of the involvement of the Saint John police on this matter,” Bruce stated on the time.
Nonetheless, a 12 months later the police power is just not saying when the evaluate can be accomplished. Spokesman Workers Sgt. Matt Weir stated final week he has no timeline for when the findings can be made public. Reached by e-mail, Farrah stated he wouldn’t be commenting on the Mailman-Gillespie evaluate and directed questions again to Saint John police.
In December, newly elected Liberal Premier Susan Holt puzzled what had occurred to the Saint John police’s investigation.
“The place is the report? Is it full? What have been their findings?” she requested. “As a result of definitely (Gillespie and Mailman’s) expertise having been wrongfully convicted, and for that lengthy, actually, it will be devastating. We don’t need anyone else to need to expertise that. So we have to study from the occasions we’ve acquired it mistaken.”
Innocence Canada, which led the authorized struggle to exonerate the 2 males, introduced a written submission to the court docket final January alleging that the convictions had been the results of “police tunnel imaginative and prescient, non-disclosure of essential proof, recantations by the 2 key Crown witnesses,” in addition to a disregard for the lads’s sturdy alibis.
The court docket doc famous that Saint John police had given a complete of $1,800 — along with resort and relocation prices — to a 16-year-old who testified in 1984 that he had witnessed the homicide of George Leeman in Saint John. The funds weren’t disclosed in the course of the trial. The witness, John Loeman Jr., later recanted his story to his personal lawyer, to a journalist, in two letters and to a federal Justice Division lawyer trying into Mailman and Gillespie’s case in 1998.
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“This case was a shame,” James Lockyer, founding director of Innocence Canada, informed reporters outdoors the courthouse final 12 months after the 2 males have been acquitted. “It was merely a case the place the ends justify the means from the police perspective.”
In February, Mailman and Gillespie reached an undisclosed settlement with the New Brunswick authorities. Lower than two months later, Gillespie died on the age of 80.
New Brunswick’s Division of Justice and Public Security stated final week that the federal government wouldn’t be commenting additional on the case. “The province and Mr. Mailman and Mr. Gillespie got here to an amicable decision and settlement final 12 months,” spokesman Allan Dearing stated in an e-mail. He referred questions concerning the evaluate to the police power and to the civilian board that oversees the power.
In an interview Monday, Lockyer stated it’s uncommon for police departments to evaluate their very own conduct by hiring a former police officer. An investigation right into a wrongful conviction is normally finished via a public inquiry or by the federal government, he stated, not by the police division alleged to be at fault.
“(Innocence Canada) don’t have an entire lot of religion within the course of, to say the least,” he stated.
Mailman believes he and Gillespie have been focused for prosecution as a result of the 2 buddies had beforehand had brushes with the regulation and the police merely wished them off the road. “If the shoe don’t match, then they’ll stretch it and make it match,” he stated in an interview final month.
He lamented the brief time it took for them to be arrested and convicted in contrast with their decades-long struggle to show their innocence and regain their freedom. Mailman spent 18 years in jail and Gillespie served 21 years.
Mailman, who’s 76 and has terminal liver most cancers, thinks he’ll die with out seeing the outcomes of the evaluate or receiving an apology from the police.
“They will’t, and so they gained’t, given that in the event that they do, then they’ve acquired to confess that they have been mistaken. And so they’re going to need to admit that they knew all of it alongside. They don’t wish to do this,” he stated.
“But when they’re not held accountable and the reality doesn’t come out, then the following miscarriage of justice is simply across the nook. It’s going to occur once more.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Jan. 17, 2025.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
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