Editorial: Justice delayed, denied, and manufactured

You’re a teenager, and you’ve been arrested because you’re suspected of killing someone.

And now you’re being interviewed by the police. Except you don’t speak English fluently. The interview goes badly for you. Very badly. You’re beaten by police and end up signing a statement about what you’ve allegedly said in your interview, and, oddly, the statement is written in fluent English, something you could not have done.

It’s used against you in court: you tell the court the statement, which has you confessing to the crime, was coerced and is false. Police testify you’re lying.

And somehow, a statement you’re unlikely to have written ends up sending you to jail. For years.

It sounds far-fetched — staggering, even. And yet.

This week Clarence Woodhouse, the third of four men from the Pinaymootang First Nation, was acquitted of murder. Allan (A.J.) Woodhouse and Brian Anderson were acquitted last year. Clarence’s brother, Russell Woodhouse, died in 2011.

The four were newly arrived from Pinaymootang and mostly spoke Ojibwa when they were charged with murdering restaurant worker Ting Fong Chan. All of them were in their teens and early twenties in 1973, when the murder occurred. After being charged, they supposedly signed statements confessing to the crime.

In court, the accused men testified that the so-called confessions were the result of beatings. But the court didn’t believe their testimony. All were convicted. Clarence Woodhouse ended up spending 12 years in jail.

Lawyers with Innocence Canada made the point that the men could not have written the statements.

“Clarence Woodhouse is alleged to have given a statement to police that is in good English; that is written in sentences … None of the men had interpreters,” during their interrogations, Innocence Canada lawyer Jerome Kennedy said. Not only that: Kennedy pointed out that “When Clarence Woodhouse testified at trial … he didn’t understand the language.”

“Wrongfully convicted” sounds remarkably antiseptic, compared to “framed.”

But framed is what they were.

That is what makes this case so concerning.

Not just that the men were wrongly convicted and spent years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, but that officers of the Winnipeg Police Service took an active role in manufacturing the evidence that led to their conviction.

The WPS response to requests for comment on the latest acquittal was equally antiseptic: “The Winnipeg Police Service has worked diligently in the past five decades to ensure its practices have evolved. Videotaping suspect and witness statements for major and serious crimes is now commonplace, the identification process now includes dedicated forensic investigators, advancements have been made in the collection of accurate evidence, and all police personnel are required to undergo mandatory bias-free and culturally based education and training.”

The WPS also says it understands the toll taken on those who have been wrongfully convicted, as well as on their families, and the families of victims.

It’s true that it is 50 years later, and that police methods and technology have changed. But that does precious little for the pain and suffering undergone by innocent Indigenous men put in jail.

And one last thought.

Given the number of people involved in gathering false evidence against the four — the fact that statements were manufactured and police testified under oath to their veracity — it’s hard to believe that this sort of behaviour and clear racism wasn’t a regular occurrence in the Winnipeg police force in the 1970s and perhaps beyond. And not only the police force — in the justice system as a whole.

That means there are almost certainly others who went to jail for crimes they did not commit.

That there are others still who have died without ever having their names cleared.

And that there were, and perhaps are, people sworn to uphold the justice system who were smugly satisfied — perhaps even celebrated — having that happen.

– Winnipeg Free Press