(Court of Appeal for Ontario) The appellant had been convicted of murder of his 4 year old niece and served 12 years in prison. His conviction was based on expert evidence that the autopsy indicated that the young girl had been sexually abused and suffocated. Subsequent medical evidence totally discredited the evidence given at the trial, so that it became clear that there was no reliable pathological evidence either of sexual abuse or of homicidal asphyxia of the child. The case was referred to the Court of Appeal on terms that it should treat it as an appeal on fresh evidence. In a passage which merits citation in full, the Court explained why it would not be proper for it in these circumstances to make a declaration that the appellant was in fact innocent: ‘The fresh evidence shows that the appellant’s conviction was the result of a rush to judgment based on flawed scientific opinion. With the entering of an acquittal, the appellant’s legal innocence has been re-established. The fresh evidence is compelling in demonstrating that no crime was committed against Valin Johnson and that the appellant did not commit any crime. For that reason an acquittal is the proper result.
There are not in Canadian law two kinds of acquittals: those based on the Crown having failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt and those where the accused has been shown to be factually innocent. We adopt the comments of the former Chief Justice of Canada in The Lamer Commission of Inquiry Pertaining to the Cases of: Ronald Dalton, Gregory Parsons, Randy Druken, Annex 3, pp. 342: ‘[A] criminal trial does not address ‘factual innocence’. The criminal trial is to determine whether the Crown has proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. If so, the accused is guilty. If not, the accused is found not guilty. There is no finding of factual innocence since it would not fall within the ambit or purpose of criminal law.’
Just as the criminal trial is not a vehicle for declarations of factual innocence, so an appeal court, which obtains its jurisdiction from statute, has no jurisdiction to make a formal legal declaration of factual innocence. The fact that we are hearing this case as a Reference under section 696.3(3)(a)(ii) of the Criminal Code does not expand that jurisdiction. The terms of the Reference to this court are clear: we are hearing this case ‘as if it were an appeal’. While we are entitled to express our reasons for the result in clear and strong terms, as we have done, we cannot make a formal legal declaration of the appellant’s factual innocence.
In addition to the jurisdictional issue, there are important policy reasons for not, in effect, recognizing a third verdict, other than ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’, of ‘factually innocent’. The most compelling, and, in our view, conclusive reason is the impact it would have on other persons found not guilty by criminal courts. As Professor Kent Roach observed in a report he prepared for the Commission of Inquiry into Certain Aspects of the Trial and Conviction of James Driskell, ‘there is a genuine concern that determinations and declarations of wrongful convictions could degrade the meaning of the not guilty verdict’ (p 39). To recognize a third verdict in the criminal trial process would, in effect, create two classes of people: those found to be factually innocent and those who benefited from the presumption of innocence and the high standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.’
O’Connor, Rosenberg, Sharpe JJS
2007 ONCA 720, 87 OR (3d) 425, 231 OAC 64, 50 CR (6th) 265, 228 CCC (3d) 505, 76 WCB (2d) 637, [2007] OJ No 3978 (QL)
Canlii
Canada
Cited by:
Cited – Adams, Regina (on The Application of) v Secretary of State for Justice SC 11-May-2011
The three claimants had each been convicted of murders and served time. Their convictions had been reversed eventually, and they now appealed against the refusal of compensation for imprisonment, saying that there had been a miscarriage of justice. . .
Cited – Hallam, Regina (on The Application of) v Secretary of State for Justice SC 30-Jan-2019
These appeals concern the statutory provisions governing the eligibility for compensation of persons convicted of a criminal offence where their conviction is subsequently quashed (or they are pardoned) because of the impact of fresh evidence. It . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Criminal Practice
Updated: 31 December 2021; Ref: scu.439723