Alain was wrongfully convicted of drug trafficking in a Thai court after the RCMP purposely harassed and bullied him to be a player in an unauthorized international drug operation entitled Operation: Deception.  After having his death sentence commuted to life in prison, Alain spent 8½ in a disease-infested environment chained to the concrete floor of a Thai institution. Due to a report created by the RCMP Public Complaints Commission, Alain’s case was finally heard by the public. However, the original report was altered by superiors within the PCC, and a sanitized version was released into public domain. Alain is still currently on parole in Canada for his wrongful conviction, as this was exposed and presented in the CTV-W5 Documentary Deception.

Also, we must inform you that unfortunately, Mr. Peter Cory is no longer able to attend WC’09. He expresses his best wishes for the event.

William Mullins-Johnson made waves in the national media in 2005 when he was released from prison after serving 12 years in jail for a murder he did not commit. William was convicted of the 1993 murder of his 4-year old niece based upon the testimony of pathologists who originally believed she was raped and murdered. Another investigation into the child’s death by two leading Ontario pathologists revealed and concluded that Mullins-Johnson’s niece had never been raped or strangled, and actually died of natural causes.

William will be sitting on a panel with Robert Baltovich and Romeo Phillion at WC’09 as they discuss their experiences with injustice and its effects.

ADMISSION INCLUDES

• All day access to Wrongly Convicted ‘09
• Light Breakfast
• Lunch
• Refreshments
• Conference Kit

TICKET PRICING

• General Admission: $25.00
• York U Students: $20.00
• CSY Member Discounted Tickets: $14.00

PURCHASING YOUR TICKET

You can purchase your ticket from:

• CSY Office: 003 McLaughlin College
• WC’09 Table in Vari Link (tabling schedule TBA)
• Online from wronglyconvicted09.org

Questions? Please send us an email.

Peter Cory

Peter Cory was a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada from 1989 to 1999. He is past chairman of the Ontario Civil Liberties Section of the Canadian Bar Association, past president of the County of York Law Association, past National Director of the Canadian Bar Association, and past president of the Advocates’ Society. Justice Cory invaluably contributed to the acquittal of Thomas Sophonow - who had been found guilty of a murder he did not commit.

James Lockyer

James Lockyer is the founding director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) a national organization that advocates for justice. He has been involved in a number of high profile wrongful conviction cases and is most recently known for defending Guelph’s Steven Truscott who was acquitted by the Ontario Court of Appeal in August of the 1959 killing of Lynne Harper.

James Lockyer has been involved in exposing more than ten wrongful convictions in Canada, including the cases of Guy Paul Morin, David Milgaard, Clayton Johnson and Gregory Parsons. Several of these cases have become the subject of public inquiries. Mr. Lockyer has received an honorary doctorate of laws from University of Guelph in February 2007. Before moving into private practice as a criminal lawyer, he taught law at McGill University and the University of Windsor.

Philip Campbell is a partner in Lockyer Campbell Posner. A graduate of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, he was a partner in Copeland Campbell following his 1984 call to the bar and then in the Criminal Division of Sack Goldblatt Mitchell from 2000 to 2003. He and James Lockyer formed Lockyer Campbell in 2003 in order to pursue their ground-breaking work in the reversal of wrongful convictions. Besides his extensive work in that area, Mr Campbell maintains a trial and appellate practice with a focus on serious and complex litigation. He has broad experience in the defence of homicide prosecutions, sexual assault and narcotics cases, and matters with sophisticated constitutional issues. He is presently involved in work on two major white collar fraud prosecutions. He has acted on a number of extradition cases and maintains a special interest in that challenging area of the law. Among the matters in which he has been counsel are R v Clayton Johnson (a Nova Scotia wrongful conviction case which led to exoneration, and compensation, after a first degree murder conviction); Philippines v Pacificador (an extradition request for an alleged political assassination, quashed on constitutional grounds); R v Sauve and Trudel (the successful appeal of murder convictions in Canada’s longest jury trial); R v Lindsay and Bonner (a pending appeal testing the constitutionality of Canada’s new “criminal organization” statute); R v Truscott (a special reference by the Minister of Justice to the Ontario Court of Appeal of a 1959 murder conviction which was quashed by the Court after a lengthy evidentiary hearing and two weeks of legal argument); R v Walsh (a successful Ministerial review of a 33 year old conviction on behalf of a dying man); R v Phillion (an appeal referred to the Ontario Court of Appeal by the Minister of Justice, now on reserve); and R v Mahalingan (a recent Supreme Court of Canada case upholding the application of issue estoppel in Canadian criminal law).. He is experienced in legal work at every judicial level from bail hearings to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Mr Campbell has written and spoken at a wide range of legal conferences and symposia, including the Canadian Bar Association, the National Criminal Law Program, the Law Society of Upper Canada, the annual conference of Superior Court judges and the Criminal Lawyers Association. He has been an instructor at the University of Toronto Centre of Criminology and has lectured at both the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law Schools.

In late August 2008, the Criminology Society York partnered with the Association In Defense of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) to come up with a strategy for raising awareness about this issue to students at York. This collaboration has resulted in the creation WC’09.

Now, under two months away from the conference date, students from the Criminology Society and AIDWYC are hard at work to plan and execute a top notch conference. While there is still a lot of work ahead, I am particularly pleased with everything we have accomplished thus far.

Already, the team behind WC’09 has confirmed some of the top speakers on this issue in the country, including AIDWYC Director, Win Wahrer, Osgoode Innocence Project Director, Alan Young, and members of the wrongly convicted including Robert Baltovich and Romeo Phillion.

As we continue to confirm details, more information will be posted in this blog. I encourage everyone to keep up to date by checking back frequently, or subscribing to our RSS feed.

I look forward to seeing you on March 7th at the conference!

Yours,

Michael Edwards

CSY President