Wrongfully convicted B.C. man seeks damages after 27 years behind bars
Wrongfully convicted B.C. man seeks damages after 27 years behind bars
The wrongful conviction of a British Columbia man who spent nearly three decades behind bars hinged on a flawed police investigation and Crown prosecutors who were willing to go to extremes to prove they'd found their man, a court has heard. Ivan Henry's lawyer John Laxton was in B.C. Supreme Court on Monday to argue that his client deserves compensation after he was mistakenly convicted in 1983 of 10 counts of sexual assault and spent 27 years in prison. It took more than a quarter century and upwards of 40 applications filed by Henry and his daughters before the B.C. Court of Appeal ultimately quashed the convictions in 2010.
It has been suggested that Henry simply fell through the cracks of an imperfect system...He didn't fall through the cracks. He was pushed.
Ivan Henry's lawyer John Laxton
Reading a piece of correspondence between two Crown lawyers from 1982, Laxton said one of the prosecutors wrote that "the accused is so obvious," before insisting that if "one girl" could successfully identify Henry they would be able to link the remaining cases together against him. Laxton also presented sections of a handwritten letter from one of the complainants sent to the private address of a police officer involved in the investigation, revealing what he described as an inappropriate relationship. Henry's wrongful-conviction lawsuit names the federal government, the province of B.C. and the City of Vancouver. The courts initially prevented Henry from holding prosecutors liable for negligence following his acquittal. But the Supreme Court of Canada overturned that decision earlier this year.
This is the first time a victim of such an egregious wrong has found it necessary to bring his claim for compensation to court. It will be a precedent that should never have had to be necessary.
