Saint John, New Brunswick:
Two men, Walter Gillespie, 80 years old, and Robert Mailman, 76 and dying of cancer, were finally acquitted of a murder they did not commit after 40 years. Get that: 40 years. That’s how long it took the so-called New Brunswick criminal justice system to look into a case that was marred from the very beginning by lack of evidence. Gillespie and Mailman had supposedly killed a fifty-five year old plumber named George Leeman and burned his corpse. Leeman, at the time, owed money to gangsters, but the police and prosecutors chose low hanging fruit to get their convictions.
Innocence Canada, who should be congratulated, got them a new trial. At the hearing, the Crown Prosecutor, Karen Lee could not even offer evidence. What a disgrace! An indictment of the system. They’re the ones who should be imprisoned for kidnapping and forcible confinement. Of course the victim’s family has now been robbed of closure, the killer went free.
Consider that Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay have now been in prison for 30 years, because of collusion between the RCMP and the Bellevue police. There is NO evidence linking them to the crime of killing the Rafay family in 1994 in Bellevue, Washington, yet the prosecutors were able to persuade a jury that false confessions given to the RCMP (in a Mr. Big sting) were viable. The real culprit in the Rafay/Burns case is Judge Charles Martel who allowed that evidence into an American courtroom despite the illegality of such sting operations in the United States. There’s a reason that stings are illegal: the evidence gathered is unreliable and is also in violation of the 5th Amendment.
One day, somebody will be apologizing for the crime that has been committed against two innocent men, and no one will suffer the consequences except the men whose lives have been stolen. I am sick and tired of arrogant judges and police and prosecutors who think that convictions take precedence over truth. There are thousands of wrongful convictions out there that will never be overturned.