Uncover - S7 "Dead Wrong" E8: Still Waiting

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

What now? Bousquet reviews the original police investigation, talks with Glen and his family, and wonders: What does justice look like? Will anyone be held accountable? And what other innocent person might be in prison? For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/uncover-season-7-dead-wrong-transcripts-listen-1.5612940

This is a very strange and frustrating story. To have your family member stolen and murdered, then missing. I'm Connie Walker and this is Missing and Murdered, Finding Cleo. It's such a mystery, such an impossible task. Please, help us find her. Finding Cleo. If you'd like to hear more, you can find the full season wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast.

And I said, will you do me a favour? Get in your car, start your car right now, and drive to the hospital. Park your car and go to the emergency room and say, I'm having a breakdown. Glenn is under house arrest in British Columbia and having a nervous breakdown. His lawyer, Sean McDonald, instructs him over the phone to leave the house and drive to the hospital. And I said, do you have any medication you need? And he said, yes. I said, put it in your pocket and take it with you. So he did that. And I managed to call him half an hour later. And he was in the waiting room of the emergency room in the town that he was in. And they immediately brought him into psychiatric care.

He was admitted, and he had a complete breakdown. And they cared for him at this facility for a month. They were kind. I spoke to them almost on a daily basis. But it was a scary point. As far as my friendship and relationship with Glenn, that was probably the scariest point in the last 14 years for me. Sean McDonald is so worried about Glenn being isolated out in B.C., he petitions the court to bring Glenn back to Nova Scotia to be with his family.

Glenn's daughter, Amanda, volunteers to act as his surety. He will stay with her and her wife while he remains under house arrest. All in all, it takes the Criminal Conviction Review Group three years to write their final report and put it before the Federal Minister of Justice. They recommend that Glenn get a new trial. But Glenn still has to wait. The Minister of Justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould, has the file for 18 months and takes no action.

A national scandal that has nothing to do with Glenn results in Jody Wilson-Raybould ousted as Minister of Justice, replaced by David Lamedi. Lamedi is on the job for only a couple of weeks when he picks up the recommendation and acts on it. Lamedi orders a new trial for Glenn. After almost 17 years in prison and four and a half years under house arrest,

Glenn is about to finally get his day in court. Friday, March 1st, 2019. And whereas the Minister of Justice has determined upon investigation that there are new matters of significance, as well as relevant and reliable information that was not disclosed to Mr. Glenn Assoon during his criminal proceedings, and whereas as a result of the investigation the Minister of Justice is satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to conclude that a miscarriage of justice likely occurred. I hereby direct a new trial for Mr. Glenn Assume before the Nova Scotia Supreme Court on the charge of second-degree murder. Ms. Lewis, perhaps if you would kindly read the indictment, and Mr. Assume, if you would please stand. Thank you. read the indictment. And Mr.

Assoon, if you would please stand. Thank you. You stand charged that you, Ed Borneer Dartmouth, in the county of Halifax, Columbus, Nova Scotia, did commit second-degree murder on the person of Brenda Leanne Way, contrary to Section 235, Subsection 1

of the Criminal Code. Mr. Assoon, how do you plead? Not guilty. All right. Mr. Scott, over to you. Thank you, Justice Chipman. The Crown cannot begin to imagine the profound emotions that the Wave family must be feeling in these circumstances, but we deeply empathize with what we understandably would perceive as disappointment that there is no closure for that family in relation to the murder of their daughter and sister.

But our role as the Crown is to assess the strength of the current Crown case as a consequence of the Minister's decision that was released yesterday. And the Crown offers no evidence and invites the Court to dismiss the matter for want of prosecution. All right, and with that I hereby dismiss the Crown's case against you, Glenn Eugene Assun, for want of prosecution. Thank you, sir. You're welcome.

All right, Mr. Campbell, did you wish to say anything? Phil Campbell is a lawyer for Innocence Canada who represents Glenn. It is a tale of enormous suffering, and we hope, fervently hope, that the community, that Halifax, will welcome him back, embrace him as an innocent man. He needs to hear that, he needs to feel it, he deserves it.

And finally, for another day perhaps, there are issues of accountability. Relevant and reliable information that was not disclosed to Mr. Glenn as soon during his criminal proceedings. Behind that phrase lies a sad and to some degree shocking story in the telling of which there will eventually be an acute public interest. And there is also a public interest, given the record that now exists, the evidence that is accumulated and placed before the minister, in attempting still, these many years later, to identify who did kill Brenda Way. We believe that to be an achievable goal and one that the pursuit of which will serve the public interest. This is indeed a momentous day in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia.

Mr. Assoon, today is, I hope, I know, a joyous occasion for you, your family, your friends. However, the court is very much aware that the same cannot be said for the last 21 years of your life. Glenn Eugene Assoon, during all of this time, you steadfastly maintained your innocence. And with the support of your lawyers, your friends, and your family, you kept the faith.

With remarkable dignity, you are to be commended for your courage and your resilience. Glenn Eugene Assume, you are a free man. I sincerely wish you every success as you begin what I hope will be a positive chapter in your lifetime. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. It's over. It's over. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you.

It's over. It's over. I'm not serious. It's over, right? Really? Yep. I'm going to clean it in. I'm going to quit it, man.

It's a good Friday. Oh, my God. I can't think straight right now. I certainly would like to thank my lawyers for all the hard work that they did on my case. I can never thank them enough. You don't have to. You don't have to. So how's this Friday call?

It's a Friday in steroids. I'm Tim Bousquet, and this is Uncover Dead Wrong. Episode 8. Still Waiting. It was a feeling of euphoria that I've never, never, ever experienced in my whole life a feeling of awe. I can't, I can't, I don't have the education to use the right terminology to express the gratitude and the

just the overwhelming joy of being a free man. Like I felt free at that moment. I felt free. I remember my daughter there, Tanya. I just remember her holding her hand. And Amanda, my daughter. Glenn, my son. some of my grandkids.

Jesus. I can't put it into words. I can't. It was a pretty exciting day. It was a day I know he was waiting for for a long time, and we were all waiting for. It was kind of a weird day. It almost felt like there was two Glens being exonerated

because of the things that I've endured and went through. I spoke with two of Glenn's children, Glenn Jr. and Tanya, about their reaction to their father's exoneration and what they've been through over the years. I never ever thought he was guilty. He's my father. I know him inside and out. And I know he loved Brenda, right? There wasn't a second I thought he was guilty. None of us did. We always knew he was innocent. Yeah, we've always, always stood by

him. And I think that's what kept him going. And everybody had that hope and faith. I think that that really helped him pull through those years he spent in prison because he knew he had his kids there for him and my mom was there for him. I just want people to know how much my dad has suffered and how much his kids have suffered and how much we're still suffering today and how much this has affected our mental health. We never had the opportunity to have our own identities at a young age. Basically, it was taken away from us. We have to find ways to heal from this and move on with our lives. You know, like Tanya said, he did the time on the inside. I did the time on the outside.

Glenn is soon on the inside. Glenn is soon on the outside. And everything that I've dealt with over the years. I've lost friends. I've lost jobs. I can't get places to live. You know, my name is still marked. Whether it's exonerated or not.

Glenn Jr. and his father were very close before Glenn was sent to prison. I mean, I'm still trying to bond with him and just live normal like father and son. And it's very difficult because I guess I would say he's not all in his head. He's in his own little room in his head. So we went fishing one day. Where'd you go? We went on Eastern Passage. I said, well, okay, well the mackerel should be running next week. I said, we'll go out and we'll go fishing.

So I went out and I bought a fishing rod. I had called him a couple of days later and I said, are we still going fishing? And he's, so he's like, I really don't feel good. Not really feeling good. He's like, I really don't feel good, not really feeling good. And I said, all right. He said, but I did promise you we were going to go, so I'll just go and I'll watch you, right? I said, all right. So I got my stuff ready and we went out.

And he was just like really quiet and stuff. I could tell he was just in his own little world. And I was trying to interact with him, trying to enjoy that hour or so out together. And it got me really depressed that he just wasn't saying nothing. He was just staring out the water. And it was a little hard to cope with. So I got up, not upset with him, just upset with the situation. And I just packed her up and went home.

Was it too much for him? It was too much for the both of us, I think. Yeah. My hope for my dad is to find that sense of happiness again and just be his self. For personal reasons, Glenn's youngest daughter, Amanda, did not want to participate in this podcast. But she did tell us it was okay to share this part of her story, as told by Glenn's lawyer,

Sean McDonald. Amanda is the daughter who took Glenn in when he was transferred from B.C. back to Nova Scotia. I have a question that will not surprise you. Can you recount for us Amanda's experience? Absolutely. Amanda is an exceptional human being. As a child, she wanted to be a police officer. You know, I mean, a lot of kids want to be different things,

but Amanda was one of those kids that was single-minded, focused. That's what she wanted to be as a child. And she loved her dad. We were trying to get Glenn from BC to Nova Scotia to change his bail. At that time, Amanda had, at that point, successfully been admitted into the police academy she had graduated with distinction she had been given the award for her graduating class in ethics and policing again with distinction she had finished on the job training with the Halifax police where

where she was a standout she got exemplary performance reviews across the board and then had been given an offer by the Halifax Police of employment. And unfortunately, within, I think, 48 hours, I think, before she was supposed to actually report for work for her very first day as a police officer, they wrote her a letter saying, we rescind our offer. You haven't been candid with us about your offer to let your dad live with you. And they destroyed her dreams in one letter. Amanda said there was a Halifax police liaison on the bail request, so she believed that they were fully aware that her dad was going to live with her.

She did consider launching a complaint with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, but she worried it might affect her chances of getting hired by another police force. Amanda really struggled after that. I'm happy to report, though, that in June of 2020, Amanda started a new job as a police officer in the town of Truro, Nova Scotia. With their father now free, Tanya and Glenn Jr. give me their final thoughts.

So at the end of it, there is two people that I want to look in the face. One's Dave McDonald for ruining my life, ruining my father's life, ruining my family's life. And the other person is Mike McGray. I want to gas the car up and put myself on his visiting list. And I want to go see him and I want to tell him what a piece of shit he is and why he let an innocent man rot in prison for something that he did.

I think that all this that happened, I think that it's completely corrupted, obviously. And I think that, you know, the people that did this, it has to come out. Everything has to come forward. And people need to be held accountable for what happened to him and his family. And I just can't even believe that something like this could happen to the extent that it did. They're even saying that this is going to go down in Canadian history.

is going to go down in Canadian history. Throughout my reporting on Glenn and Brenda's story, I had to fight each step of the way to get information. We took on the court system to get the report released that uncovered the destruction of evidence and nondisclosure. And then I had to take on another fight to get the evidence from the 1999 trial. This is information that is normally kept with the courts and should be accessible to the public. But like everything else with this story, it wasn't.

It was being held by the Halifax police. It was being held by the Halifax police. On November 7th, 2019, I was finally told I was going to get access. So here we are at the police headquarters on Goddijan Street in Halifax, right across the street from Citadel Hill. There's the clock tower right over there. And I'm heading in to supposedly get the evidence I've been promised. I'm still a little leery about this. I've been trying to get this evidence since 2015.

They first said it was sealed by a court order and it wouldn't be released until the judicial review was finished. That was done in March of 2019. Even then, they said they couldn't give it to me. I had to file a freedom of information request I did that and they said sure we're not going to contest it but it still took two months to get a response to my freedom of information request and they denied it so I went back to my lawyer we've been fighting this back and forth for gosh six, seven months

now and finally they said today I could come down here to the police station and pick up the evidence. We'll see. Hi Jennifer. Very good. Thank you for doing this. The police liaison gives me a thumbnail drive that contains all the written documents and the video evidence that made up the case against Glenn. This is the only physical exhibit that's not included on the USB. Right, of course.

More documents. Can't put a knife on a USB. There's a PDF photo of the knife in there as well. Right. Can't put a knife on a USB. And there's a PDF photo of the knife in there as well. Right. I particularly wanted to see the end of it. The tip?

Yeah, the missing tip. This is about, what is that, maybe a four-inch blade, three-inch blade? Probably like three inches. With a tip missing. I'm surprised how small this knife is. This knife fascinates me. Great, thank you again. Thank you very much.

Just one more time, make sure I have everything. Great. Thanks again. Thank you very much. Good to see you. Nice to meet you as well. See you soon. See you, Jennifer.

Bye-bye so it looks like i got everything i requested i was really surprised to see the knife it was almost like a kitchen paring knife i had in my head that it was going to be like a foot long knife with a big whole blade. It's something, you know, I would have problems peeling my carrots with. It's that small. Here in Nova Scotia, there is a very well-known wrongful conviction. Donald Marshall Jr., a Mi'kmaq man and son of a Grand Chief, spent 11 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Ten years before Glenn was convicted, a federal commission looked at the Marshall case. It spoke clearly to the role that racism played in Marshall's conviction.

role that racism played in Marshall's conviction. The commission asked if the criminal justice system is inherently biased against visible minorities, but also against the poor or people like Glenn. It was a scathing report on the entire Nova Scotia justice system. It cited unprofessionalism and incompetence at every level. The commission's purpose was not just to try to find out what happened to Marshall, but to try to ensure that something like this would never happen again in Nova Scotia. in Nova Scotia? Well, it happened to Glenn. It happened to another man named Clayton Johnson. And there are two more cases

of potential wrongful convictions that I'm currently looking into. One of which was investigated by Constable Dave McDonald. Innocence groups have documented the main causes of wrongful convictions. Glenn's case had almost all of them. Jailhouse snitches

who are promised reduced sentences in return for their testimony. Junk science, like the knife I saw at the police station. Poor legal representation. Glenn was his own lawyer. Police misconduct, like when Dave Moore's evidence was destroyed. And witness misidentification.

Roberta naming Glenn, and not Michael McRae, as her attacker. naming Glenn and not Michael McRae as her attacker. There's one final cause of wrongful convictions I want to talk about. Tunnel vision. Tunnel vision is when police investigators are so focused on one suspect or one theory of the case, they can't step back and consider other alternatives. And the alternative in this case was that Michael McRae, and not Glen Assoon, killed Brenda Way. Two years before Brenda's death, Halifax police named McRae as a suspect in a murder. That was on the same day the murdered body of a 17-year-old girl named Shelly Connors was discovered in Halifax. The same year Brenda

was killed, he was named as a suspect in a missing persons case. A few months after that, McRae tried, unsuccessfully, to kill himself. His address was listed in the police records. It was in North Dartmouth. Brenda Way was murdered five months later. five months later. So before Brenda was murdered, police thought of Michael McGray as a possible killer and knew that he lived in the neighborhood

where Brenda was killed. But he wasn't named as a suspect in Brenda's murder. We can't prove a counterfactual, but if McGray had been arrested and jailed for Brenda's murder, Glenn Assoon would never have been charged. And McRae would not have shown up in Moncton in 1998 to kill again. Joan and Nina Hicks might still be alive today. There's a tragic postscript to this story. In 2003, McRae had written a letter to a prison psychiatrist

saying they had an uncontrollable urge to kill again and he'd probably kill someone in prison. Despite that warning, in 2010, McRae was transferred from the maximum security prison in Renus to a medium security prison in BC. There, he had a cellmate, a guy named Jeremy Phillips, who was serving six years for assault. And one night, just as he said he would, Michael McRae strangled his cellmate with a bed sheet, killing him. McRae has since been moved back to a maximum security prison. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell.

I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Lost in the discussion about justice for as soon is the lack of justice for Brenda Way's family. I'm 30 years old now. I haven't seen my mother since I was seven. And it breaks my heart that I never got to know her. As for Assoon, he says he suffered multiple heart attacks in prison and now has mental health issues. His lawyers say he should be compensated.

What price do you put on a man's life? Because in my opinion, there's not enough money to compensate for the injustice that I suffered. There's no word yet on any possible settlement for or soon, but let's take a look at compensation some people have received in other cases of wrongful imprisonment. David Milgard got $10 million in 2000 for the 23 years he served. Stephen Truscott received $6.5 million in 2008 for his 10 years behind bars.

Now that Glenn has been exonerated, there are still outstanding questions. One is about compensation. I talked with Sean McDonald about this. I want to see Glenn get closure. I mean, he deserves closure. He's been through enough. I want to see him compensated. I mean, all of the major victims of miscarriage of justice in Canadian history have had closure. As of the writing of this podcast, the Nova Scotia government has given Glenn an interim sum of money to help with living expenses until they decide if they will compensate him or not. Until they decide if they will compensate him or not.

At a press conference in June 2020, I asked the Nova Scotia Minister of Justice, Mark Fury, if Glenn could expect compensation soon. Next we'll go to Tim Bousquet from the Halifax Examiner. Go ahead, Tim. Minister, it's been 15 months since Glenn Assoon has been exonerated. He's in poor health, has had multiple heart attacks, a mental health crisis, and yet he's received no apology and no final compensation. I'm beginning to wonder if maybe the delay is in itself yet another injustice to him. Can you give us an update as to when we can expect something? Again, I'm not putting any timelines on any of the matters I'm responsible for. You can appreciate that, given the present circumstances.

But we continue to have discussions with federal justice as well as Mr. Assoon's legal counsel. Those are matters that we'll keep within the realms of those discussions and advance the best interests of Mr. Assoon. So Glenn Assoon waits. There are no indications that anything else about Glenn's case is being looked at by anyone. So far as I know, Michael McGray isn't being investigated for the murder of Brenda Way. There's no word about police reviews or if there will be charges laid against any police officers for destroying evidence and failing to disclose. There have been no admissions of possible wrongdoing. I have heard nothing about an inquiry.

So where are the players now? Justice Suzanne Hood retired in 2018. The next year, she was appointed the chair of Nova Scotia's Criminal Code Review Board. The prosecutors in Glenn's case were Dan McGrory and Rob Federley. Their job as Crown prosecutors is not to seek a conviction, but to find justice. But they accepted the case that Dave McDonald presented them, including the witnesses who were all connected. They also would have been aware of all the evidence Glenn was unable to get into trial, including the list of other suspects. I asked Phil Campbell his opinion

of the Crown's conduct in Glenn's case. He gave the example of the Crown's suggestion that Glenn had flown from B.C. to Nova Scotia, attacked Roberta, and immediately flew back. That was appalling. You don't throw this kind of massive stink bomb into the courtroom and then say, OK, now, you know, can you wave away the smell or should it stick to you?

And that's pretty much what they did here. And, you know, it would only have taken elementary inquiries to figure out whether this was true or not. But you read that record, and I've read it again and again, and you don't get the sense that they want to know whether it's true. They want the implication to stick with an inquiry, and I have a lot of problems with that. I'd have problems with that if it was done with a representative

accused with all kinds of resources to hire investigators and subpoena airline records, but against Glenn Assoon? Both Crown prosecutors went on to have successful careers. McRury is now a provincial judge in Nova Scotia. Federally, went on to become a prosecutor for the Canadian military. And what of the Halifax police?

Here's Phil Campbell. There were police tactics in the initial investigation that I consider indefensible and even abusive. Even abusive? Dave McDonald, the lead investigator, retired soon after this case. The chief of police, Frank Beasley, has also retired. Halifax police officer Ken Bradley still works as a cop. I would argue there should be a review of Halifax police behavior throughout Glenn's case. But that seems unlikely, if only because the department is so politically connected. The premier of Nova Scotia is Stephen McNeil, a man who comes from a family steeped in policing. The current deputy chief of police in Halifax is Robin McNeil, the premier's

brother. Along serving former deputy was Chris McNeil, another brother of the premier. There are at least six cops in the department with a direct family relationship. So I question whether the premier will seriously investigate police handling of Glenn's case. I have reached out numerous times to Premier McNeil. He won't talk about it. Then there's the RCMP's destruction of Dave Moore's evidence in the Viclass unit. Again, here's Glenn's lawyer, Phil Campbell. I strongly believe that we have not had a coherent, logical, or even honest account of what happened with the evidence destruction

and the nondisclosure regarding it, not only from a public standpoint or even a criminal investigative standpoint should we find out about this, we should find out about it from a simple managerial standpoint. How can RCMP senior management not want to know how the things that happened in this case came to be. If you were running any kind of enterprise, private or public, and something went wrong on this scale, you would have to find out how it happened. And that hasn't taken place yet. The current Justice Minister, Mark Fury, had a 32-year career as an RCMP officer in Nova Scotia.

He was the district commander in Lunenburg on the South Shore before retiring and entering politics. Given the RCMP's destruction of evidence, when Glenn was exonerated, questions immediately arose as to whether Fury had a conflict of interest in dealing with Glenn's case. Fury sought the advice of Nova Scotia's conflict commissioner, a retired judge named Joseph Kennedy, also from the South Shore. Kennedy ruled that there was no conflict. Simply having been a member of the RCMP at relevant times does not create a real conflict, he wrote. create a real conflict, he wrote. To date, there have been no independent national or provincial investigations into the acts committed by the RCMP.

And since there has been no public look into their actions, there is no way to know the real motivations behind the destruction of such important evidence. And what about Dave Moore, the retired RCMP constable who worked for years on gathering that evidence? He believes that they were either covering up the Halifax police investigation or that they disliked him so much they wanted to destroy his work. Glen Assoon was just collateral damage. Maybe it was both. We may never know. And Glen Assoon waits.

Now talk to me, everybody. Oh, come on. waits. Included in the evidence that I was provided at the Halifax Police Department is a video of Brenda. Brenda is sitting at a table playing with children. She's a small woman, not much bigger than the kids. But she's in command.

She's making faces at the kids, distorting her nose and eyes with her hands, being goofy. The kids squeal with delight. Brenda smiles. It's a nice scene. with delight. Brenda smiles. It's a nice scene. The camera operator roams around the room and then comes back to Brenda, calls out her name. She doesn't say a word, but flips off the camera, the middle finger of each hand framing her deadpan face. She's Pitbull again. Feisty. Someone that knew her told me that Brenda would not want to be remembered as a victim,

but as a survivor. In October 2019, producer Janice Evans and I traveled to Toronto for a dinner hosted by Innocence Canada. Glenn was exonerated seven months previously. Okay, so Tim, what's going on here tonight? Well, first of all, we found this place, eh? Jeez, like two maritime hicks in the big city. This is Wrongful Conviction Night. I was here last year for dinner. It's basically just a chance for everyone to

meet the exonerees and kind of celebrate the whole Innocence Canada movement. And I think you'll find it's quite moving. It's likely that you'll see a lot of tears and a lot of celebration and a lot of, I don't know, it'll be unexpected whatever happens. And Glenn will be here? Yeah, yeah, he said he'd be here. All right, let's go in. Here. Oh, geez, it's full of room.

Hey, Glenn, it's full room. Hey, Glenn. How are you? Listen, I was talking to Wilbert Coffin's sons. They hung him for something he didn't do. Oh, and he's here now? His son is here? His son's here now. They did the same thing with them as they did with me.

They tried to hide the disclosure. I said, you need to get a hold of a good reporter who wants to dig a little bit. I said, I happen to know one. Would you want to talk to him? Come with me right now. Okay. I should have brought my cards. We also ran into Glenn's daughter, Tanya Assoon. This is my third time coming to the event, so I've been lucky to have the opportunity to attend. I'm lucky to be here, and I wouldn't miss it if I, you know, having the opportunity is pretty good, right? So I'm glad I'm here.

pretty good, right? So I'm glad I'm here. And now the main event, the introduction of the various exonerees, culminating with Glenn Assoon. I'm going to introduce Glenn Assoon. And Glenn Assoon is, I've been all over the news, so I don't really have to say very much about Glenn and his journey. He was at our AGM, his 17 year incarceration and the painful and stressful journey he's been on and I'm not going to say too much but I wanted to give a round of applause for his courage and his amazing presentation. Well, it's an honor and a privilege to be here tonight. I had a rough road, and I want to thank my lawyers, Sean McDonald, Phil Campbell, and James Locklear, my three lawyers. They saved my life. I can't say how grateful I am.

I'm just overwhelmed, and I'm very privileged to be here. And better days ahead. I forgot one person has drawn Pete Kennedy from Newfoundland. He worked on my on my case for a long time and sent my case to AIDWIC. And I'm so grateful to Jerome. Okay, so I'm going to call Sean McDowell up who wants to, to give a very special presentation to, to Glenna soon. Thanks, Wynne. On September the 29th, 1999, they came for Glenn when he was wrongly convicted of second-degree murder in Halifax, Nova Scotia. And since then, I've had the great personal pleasure of playing some part in trying to help overturn that conviction.

Now, we watched Glenn suffer. I was on this case for 13 years and I literally watched him suffer every day, most of which was from a federal penitentiary. Until March the 1st, 2019, when Glenn and I and Phil sat in a courtroom in Halifax and heard a judge finally pronounce him not guilty. And since that day, Glenn still suffers. But we've talked many times about that moment, that magical moment, how it felt for Glenn, 20 years of toil and suffering, to feel that moment, how good it felt in that moment. So I wanted to try and remind Glenn and preserve that moment for him for the rest of his life. So I had a picture of Phil and I and Glenn the day of his exoneration framed and together with the original indictment that made him lose his life, together with the Attorney

General of Canada's reasons for his decision for overturning his conviction. And I, buddy, I want you to have this and I want you to look at it every day, and I want you to always, always remember that magical moment when times get rough because I love you and we all love you. Thank you. Dead Wrong is written and produced by Janice Evans, Nancy Hunter, and me, Tim Bousquet. Sound design by Evan Kelly. Shamham Booyan provided transcripts.

Our digital producer is Emily Connell. Emily Manchu is our fact checker. Evan Agard is our video producer. Chris Oak is our story editor. The senior producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer. And our executive producer is Arif Noorani. Leslie Merklinger is the Senior Director of Audio Innovation. Special thanks to Dave Downey, Tina Pitaway,

Cecil Fernandez, Andrew Norton, Ben Shannon, Phil Lung, Fabiola Carletti, Amanda Cox, Sarah Melton, Peter Finley, Johanna Lund, Jennifer Stairs, Sean Baraboe, Mike Trenchard, Andrew Lateoo CBC Halifax The CBC Reference Library Michael Bellier and Lisa Gannett Also thanks to everyone who participated and allowed access to their stories. And an extra special thank you to the subscribers of the Halifax Examiner, who have made my work possible all these years.

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