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Episode 91: Talking Wrongful Convictions

More Themes – Aug 2024

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Episode 91: Talking Wrongful Convictions
Broadcast Date: August 22, 2024

 

SUMMARY

Stephen Bindman, Visiting Professor and Executive in Residence at the uOttawa Faculty of Law, welcomes Professor Kent Roach, one of Canada’s most prolific scholars and writers in the area of criminal law and wrongful convictions. In this episode, they discuss Professor Roach’s book “Wrongfully Convicted,” exploring how he became involved in studying wrongful convictions and why this work is so important.

 

 

Wrongfully Convicted (Updated and Expanded Edition)
Guilty Pleas, Imagined Crimes, and What Canada Must Do to Safeguard Justice
By Kent Roach

 

 

 

Guest

  • Kent Roach, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

Host

  • Stephen Bindman, Visiting Professor and Executive in residence, Faculty of Law – Common Law Section, University of Ottawa

 

BIOGRAPHIES

  • Kent Roach, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

Kent Roach is Professor of Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He is a former law clerk to Justice Bertha Wilson of the Supreme Court of Canada. Professor Roach has been editor-in-chief of the Criminal Law Quarterly since 1998. In 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2013, he was one of four academics awarded a Trudeau Fellowship in recognition of his research and social contributions. In 2015, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2016, named (with Craig Forcese) one of the top 25 influential lawyers in Canada (change-maker category) by Canadian Lawyer. He was awarded the Molson Prize for the social sciences and humanities in 2017.

He is the author of Constitutional Remedies in Canada (winner of the Owen best law book Prize); Due Process and Victims’ Rights (short listed for the Donner Prize for public policy), The Supreme Court on Trial (same); (with Robert J. Sharpe) Brian Dickson: A Judge’s Journey (winner of the Dafoe Prize) and The 9/11 Effect: Comparative Counter-Terrorism (winner of the Mundell Medal); (with Craig Forcese) False Security: The Radicalization of Canadian Anti-Terrorism (winner of the Canadian Law and Society Association best book prize); Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice: The Gerald Stanley/Colten Boushie Case (short listed for the Shaughnessy Cohen prize for political writing); Remedies for Human Rights Violations: A Two-Track Approach to Supra-national and National Law (runner up for Canadian Council on International law book prize for 2020-21) and Canadian Policing: Why and How it Must Change (finalist for the 2022 Balsillie Prize for Public Policy and the 2023 Donner Prize for Public Policy.) He is also the author of the Criminal Law and Charter volumes in Irwin Law’s essentials of Canadian law series. His next book Wrongfully Convicted: Guilty Pleas, Imagined Crimes and What Canada Must Do To Safeguard Justice will be published by Simon and Schuster in 2023. He is the co-editor of 13 collections of essays including Comparative Counter-Terrorism published by Cambridge University Press in 2015 and 3 casebooks He has also written over 275 articles and chapters published in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as in Canada.

Professor Roach has served as research director for the Goudge Inquiry into Pediatric Forensic Patholology, for the Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182, for the Independent Civilian Review of Toronto Police Missing Persons Investigations and for the public consultations resulting in A Miscarriage of Justice Commission report. He served as volume lead for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Report on the Legacy of Residential Schools He was a member of the research advisory committees for the inquiry into the rendition of Maher Arar, the Ipperwash Inquiry into the killing of Dudley George and the Commission into the 2022 Public Order Emergency. He has been a member of Canadian Council of Academies expert panels on policing and subsequently on Indigenous policing. He is also co-founder of the Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions at https://www.wrongfulconvictions.ca/

Professor Roach has won awards for his pro bono work and contributions to civil liberties. He has represented Aboriginal and civil liberties groups in many interventions before the courts, including Gladue, Wells, Ipeelee and Anderson on sentencing Indigenous offenders, Latimer on mandatory minimum sentences, Stillman, Dunedin Construction, Ward, Conseil Francophone and G v. Ontario on Charter remedies, Golden on strip searches, Khawaja on the definition of terrorism, Williams and Chouhan on jury selection and Corbiere and Sauve on voting rights.

 

  • Stephen Bindman, Visiting Professor and Executive in residence, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa

Stephen Bindman is currently a Visiting Professor and Executive in Residence at the Faculty. He recently retired after a 25-year career as Senior Advisor in the Policy Sector of the Department of Justice Canada, specializing in wrongful convictions. He co-teaches courses on Preventing Wrongful Convictions and the Supreme Court of Canada as an institution. He coordinated the production of the Report on the Prevention of Miscarriages of Justice, released in January 2005 by Federal-Provincial-Territorial Ministers Responsible for Justice, the 2011 follow-up The Path to Justice: Preventing Wrongful Convictions and the 2018 Innocence at Stake: The Need for Continued Vigilance to Prevent Wrongful Convictions in Canada. He co-chaired the Federal/Provincial/Territorial Heads of Prosecutions Subcommittee on the Prevention of Wrongful Convictions. Between 2012 and 2014, he served as Special Advisor to the Commissioner of the Elliot Lake Inquiry, which investigated the collapse of a mall in Northern Ontario. In 2003, he completed a four-year term as lay bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada. Until November 1998, he was national legal affairs correspondent for Southam News based in Ottawa. He reported regularly on the Supreme Court of Canada, the Federal Court, Justice Department and the legal system for more than 30 newspapers across Canada. He contributed to numerous legal publications and appeared regularly on TV and radio as a legal commentator. He is a former president of the 1,300-member Canadian Association of Journalists and has been a governor of the National Newspaper Awards and Canadian Journalism Foundation. He graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa with joint honors in journalism and law in 1983. In 1988 he was awarded a Southam Fellowship and studied law and criminology at the University of Toronto and in 1995 was awarded a fellowship from Yale Law School to study for a Master’s in Legal Studies. Unfortunately he still owes Yale two papers. 

 

Related Documentation

  • Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions at https://www.wrongfulconvictions.ca

  • Wrongfully Convicted (Updated and Expanded Edition)
    Guilty Pleas, Imagined Crimes, and What Canada Must Do to Safeguard Justice
    By Kent Roach

    About The Book
    “Canada’s leading authority” (Kirk Makin, journalist and author) explains Canada’s national tragedy of wrongful convictions, how anyone could be caught up in them, and what we can do to safeguard justice.

    Canada has a serious problem: a significant but unknown number of people have been convicted for crimes they didn’t commit. There are famous cases of wrongful convictions, such as David Milgaard and Donald Marshall, Jr., where the system convicted the wrong person for murder. But there are lesser-known cases: people who feel they have no option but to plead guilty, and people convicted of crimes that were imagined by experts or the police that never, in fact, happened.

    Kent Roach, cofounder of the Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions, award-winning author, and law professor, has dedicated his illustrious career to documenting flaws in our justice system. His work reveals that the burden of wrongful convictions falls disproportionately on the disadvantaged, including Indigenous and racialized people, those with cognitive issues, single mothers, and the poor.

    This original and eye-opening book makes a compelling case for change that governments have so far lacked the courage to implement. Canadians would benefit from better legislative regulation of police and forensic experts and the creation of a permanent and independent federal commission investigate wrongful convictions and their multiple causes. But do we have the political will?

    Roach’s research, and the real-life but hard-to-believe cases outlined here, point to systemic failings in our legal system. Many of the wrongfully convicted are still waiting for the promise of justice. It is an issue that affects all Canadians.

 

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