Suspicion - It could happen to you

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

Kevin Donovan’s conversation with Canada’s Dean of lawyers who advocates for the wrongfully convicted. James Lockyer talks about the new federal plan that could one day free Chris Sheriffe.

Suspicion, Season 4, is brought to you by Havelock Metal, quality metal roofing and siding. This is a very special moment of any of our events is when the wrongly convicted are introduced. Being led by Rory Destin-Clare. I'm standing in a large room in downtown Toronto, a group of men and women are being piped in. They have one thing in common. Each was convicted of a crime they didn't commit.

They served years, decades in prison. One by one, they take their place in front of an audience of family members, lawyers, and friends, their advocates, who never gave up pleading their innocence. This is an annual event held by Innocence Canada. Since 1993, they've helped exonerate 30 people. In most cases, it was a murder conviction. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. There was a bar, snacks, name tags on people milling around like any cocktail party.

The exonerated, as they are called, I couldn't take my eyes off of them. Some had a hollow, haunted look. Others you'd pass on the street and not have a clue. All in all, I founded a lively, moving, hopeful event. James Lockyer, one of the best known lawyers in Canada, is a founding member. And it really has two purposes. To try and uncover wrongful convictions that have already occurred. to prevent them happening in the future as much as we can. To help you understand more about the case of Chris Sheriff,

we're doing a number of bonus episodes expanding themes in the series. Today, it could happen to you when the justice system gets it wrong. when the justice system gets it wrong. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan. And this is Season 4 of Suspicion. Murder on Mount Olive. Do you want to start by the classic introduction? Who you are, what's your name? James Lockheer. I'm a director of Innocence Canada.

Being a lawyer a couple of years? A couple of years. How many? Forty-eight. You're trying to age me? Not at all. James Lockyer is 76, born in England, moved to Canada in the early 1970s. The first thing you notice is this incredible shock of curls.

My paper referred to at once as an unreal cascade of silver. He's a maverick lawyer known for litigating some of Canada's biggest wrongful conviction cases, and is one of the reasons Canada now has the Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission, also called the David and Joyce Milgard Law. Its name honors the advocacy of David Milgard and his mother. David served 23 years in prison for the murder of Nurse Gail Miller, a crime he didn't commit. Lockyer says wrongful convictions, they're more common than you'd think. You're quoted in a story on a talk you gave some years ago that you estimate 3% of people

doing time for murder didn't do the crime. Is that true? Well, it's guesswork. I mean, I may well have said that. I might say 2% another day, but I think probably 3% is not a bad figure. The criminal justice system is a human system, so it's fallible. In the David Milgaard case, it turned out that a friend of his was a police informant who received $2,000 for giving false evidence.

There were other mistakes by police, and the real killer, a serial rapist, was not convicted until long after David was released. Lockyer said, in any criminal case, there are so many things that can go wrong. Just think about how much has to go right to get it right. From the pathologist saying it's a murder in the first place. A lot of cases we've done weren't murders at all to the police investigation, which can focus on the wrong person, to the use of unbelievable witnesses, to mistaken identification, to overzealous crowns, poor defense counsel, biased trial judge, a biased jury.

I ask him, is there a common thread to the people found to be wrongfully convicted? I think probably the most common thread is who they are. They are generally going to be low income, if not very low income. They are more likely to be members of Visible One already, more likely men, but we've had plenty of women too. We'll be right back. Whether it's for your house, cottage or building, make your next roof last with Havelock Metal. Havelock Metal has been specializing in steel roofing, siding, trim, and accessories for over 30 years.

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People in prison reach out and say, "'Please, can you look at my case? To be considered, the person has to have exhausted the normal appeal process. The first step at Innocence Canada is a review of court judgments and trial transcripts. Then they talked to the lawyer who represented the individual at trial. Consult trial counsel for some ideas, because usually trial counsel are willing to help, not always, but usually they are. Sometimes they worry that their reputations are at stake.

If it looks like a case they want to take on, the next step is a personal visit. Ultimately, I'll go and see the person in the penitentiary. And when you sit down for an interview with a person who is in a life sentence, do you look for anything in what they're saying to you? You look at everything in what they're saying to you. You look at their demeanor towards you, their approach. I always remember one chap, I went to see Clayton Johnson. Clayton was a carpenter and high school industrial arts teacher

who was convicted in 1993 of murdering his wife. A bad police investigation, bad forensics, and he served five years before with the help of Innocence Canada, he was released. It turns out, it wasn't a murder at all. His wife had tripped and fallen down the stairs while Clayton was at work. He's no longer with us. I'm afraid he died a few years ago, but I'd already convinced myself, satisfied myself, that he was innocent of the murder of his wife.

He'd been convicted of her first degree murder. And I went to see him after a couple of years working on the case. I saw him in Renuse Penitentiary out in New Brunswick. And we sat and he was a middle-aged man and a very Christian man, actually. He was a strong Pentecostal. I'm not particularly religious myself. We chatted and talked and everything was very ordinary. And then I remember I said to him, I always remember the scene, I said, Clayton, you're still this strong Pentecostal. How on earth can you believe in a God who's put you through what he's put you through? And he just burst into tears.

He'd gone from, he went from straight ordinary demeanor to being utterly tearful. And I found that really impressive. I'm not quite sure why he was crying, but he just burst into tears and I just, I thought my God, that's an innocent man I'm looking at. In my investigation of the Chris Sheriff case, I've formed a similar opinion from talking to him, bolstered by my year-long probe, which turned up so many problems in

the case. I tell Lockyer about that, how Chris maintains his innocence and has rebuffed opportunities along the way to admit he was involved. I ask, isn't that what all inmates say, that they're innocent? No, it's a complete myth that all people in jail claim they're innocent. On the contrary, virtually everyone in jail acknowledges their guilt. They may not want to acknowledge the full extent of it if it involves a particularly heinous crime, say a sex crime on a kid or something like that.

It turns out, repeatedly saying you didn't do it counts for something, at least in this veteran lawyer's view. When someone of obviously sound mind sticks to their claim of innocence for as long as Christopher Sharif does, as you say, that has to impress you. Of course it does. We'll be right back. I grew up in the renovation business. If I wasn't a reporter, I would have been a builder.

And I know quality is key. So whether it's for your house, cottage, or building, make your next roof last with Havelock Metal. Havelock Metal has been specializing in steel roofing, siding, trim, and accessories for over 30 years. Visit HavelockMetal.com to request your quote today. Lockyer was involved at one stage in the Chris Sheriff case a decade ago. His office tried to appeal the lower court finding of guilt to the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court denied the application. No reasons given.

But in this new federal system Canada is creating, the process is seen by many lawyers as more transparent, more fair. Lockyer says it will be a game changer. When I interviewed him, it was just about to be passed into law. And the creation of that commission is going to be a sea change for the wrongly convicted. It's going to be a sea change for the whole criminal justice system. It's going to create a new back end for the criminal justice system, and it's going to amount to an acknowledgement that the criminal justice system can get it wrong.

Now, the federal government has to set up the infrastructure, appoint the commissioners who will review the applications. Each commissioner has to have some experience in the field of wrongful convictions. Lockyer says there's going to be a lot of applications. I would expect in the first year, they'd probably get as many as 200, wouldn't surprise me. Would Chris Sheriff have a chance? Oh yeah, he does.

You know, there's a bit of a misunderstanding about wrongful convictions. Lockyer says the misunderstanding relates to our appeal system. He said people, including the media, like to say, oh, person X was convicted and that conviction was upheld by the appeals court. He says that makes people think the person must be guilty. But Lockyer says the appeal courts are only as good as the information that came out at trial. Our appeal system doesn't look at innocence or guilt. Our appeal system looks at were there mistakes in the way the trial judge conducted the trial.

They don't start from a premise of, well, we look at this case and it doesn't really look right to us. It looks to us like this chap may have been innocent or this lady may have been innocent. They don't do that at all. They look at it and say, were there errors in what the trial judge did? And often the errors that they find seem almost irrelevant to the conviction, but they can lead to the conviction being overturned. The new system will look at the whole case. Witnesses, judge, jury, everything. The smell test. Did the system get it wrong?

Is there an innocent person behind bars? One of the best known early successes of Innocence Canada was the Stephen Truscott case. When he was 14, back in 1959, Truscott was charged with the murder of his classmate, Lynn Harper. It would take him 50 years to be exonerated. During that time, he was sentenced to death by hanging, a sentence which was commuted to life imprisonment. He was eventually paroled, changed his name, married, had three children.

Years later, under the old federal review system, he was exonerated. Lockyer was part of that legal team. They found fresh evidence and mistakes in the case, including a failure by the Crown Attorney's Office to disclose key information to the court. In 2007, Steven Truscott was formally acquitted of the murder, and the Ontario government paid him $6.5 million in compensation. I tell Locke here, I'd seen a t-shirt at the Innocence Canada event that struck a chord.

The slogan was frightening. It could happen to you. Yeah, as I'm sitting here talking to you, I'm actually thinking the t-shirt might be even more powerful. It said it could happen to me. If it could happen to you, I'm less concerned than if it could happen to me. Exactly. So maybe that should be the slogan.

The Innocence Project has helped exonerate 30 people so far. Other groups in Canada and around the world have had success in other cases. Lockyer has seen it happen in real time. So what's the reaction when the individual gets the news? It's just a huge burden off them. You can sense it. They go from being quiet and depressed usually, or appearing depressed, appearing not joyful, to it suddenly brings out the joyfulness in them.

It's wonderful to behold. James Lockyer has been at this for a long time. It strikes me that there must be emotions at play, powerful emotions, when someone like him gets to the truth about a miscarriage of justice. The job of a police officer in the police officer's mind is to catch the bad guys. The prosecutor is going to prosecute. Do you get angry when you look back at these cases and say, geez, why is this evidence concealed?

Or why did you go down this tunnel? Do you get mad? I tell you what, I get angry at the lack of accountability for those people. I suppose I do, but I've got all sorts of other emotions. I mean, the primary emotion is, my God, looks like this person is innocent because of this undisclosed evidence. James, thanks for coming in. Pleasure. Thank you for listening to Murder on Mount Olive. The 10 episode series and these bonus episodes, that's not the end of the story.

There will be a narrative version of our investigation in the Toronto Star and more stories to come. If you have comments or wish to reach me on another story, please email me at kdonovan at the star dot ca. Murder on Mount Olive was written and narrated by me, Kevin Donovan. He was produced by Angelyn Francis and Sean Pattendon. Our executive producer is JP Fozo. Additional production by Kelsey Wilson, Matt Hearn and Tanya Pereira. Sound and theme music by Sean Pattendon.