A Toronto man who spent 15 months in jail for a violent robbery he did not commit has been acquitted by Ontario’s highest court, a “miscarriage of justice” corrected by exculpatory voice messages he had repeatedly brought to the attention of police and his own lawyers.

For more than five years, Lance Richardson has maintained his innocence over the August 2014 robbery of a man and woman by two masked assailants near Yorkdale subway station.

Richardson was one of two men arrested on a slew of charges, including robbery and assault causing bodily harm, but he told police from the outset they had the wrong guy — and that he could prove it.

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Richardson insisted he had a series of voice messages from acquaintances that both proved he was not present during the robbery and directly implicated another man, identified as “Toti,” as the second robber.

“We ... were up at Yorkdale (sound) We got off. Mans like ‘yo, we could probably make five bills,’” Toti tells Richardson in a transcript of a message recorded in the smartphone app Voxer on Aug. 22, 2014, one day after the robbery.

Despite listening to the messages, investigating officer Const. Julia Hung “found them to be unhelpful to her investigation,” according to a short ruling released by Ontario’s Court of Appeal on Tuesday.

The other man convicted in the robbery, Anthony Birch, had told police he’d been with Richardson on the night of the robbery, according to court filings.

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The day after his arrest, one of the victims picked Richardson out of a photo lineup. The victim later testified at trial that he was “75 per cent sure” Richardson was one of the robbers, “if not more,” according to a factum submitted to court by Jeff Carolin, who was Richardson’s appeal lawyer alongside Nicolas Rouleau.

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The female victim did not select Richardson as one of the assailants in the photo lineup.

According to Carolin’s factum, Hung proceeded to charge Richardson after concluding his mug shot bore resemblances to the descriptions provided by the victims. One had estimated the robbers were between five-foot-eight and five-foot-nine; Richardson is six-foot-three, six inches taller.

Richardson was convicted in June 2017 on six counts, including robbery, assault causing bodily harm and threatening to cause death, and was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. In total, he served 10 months in jail before going to trial and five more behind bars before he was granted bail pending his appeal.

Throughout, Richardson maintained he was innocent. In a factum outlining the details of the case, Carolin raised concerns about the police investigation, including why Hung “inexplicably” did not seize Richardson’s phone as evidence.

“His conviction amounts to a miscarriage of justice,” Carolin wrote.

Crown prosecutor Linda Shin agreed the convictions were a “miscarriage of justice” and invited the Court of Appeal panel of Justices David Brown, Grant Huscroft and Gary Trotter to enter acquittals.

“These messages are relevant, credible and could reasonably have been expected to affect the result at trial when considered with the other trial evidence,” Shin wrote in her factum.

Richardson, who is currently in custody awaiting trial on an unrelated matter, could not be reached Wednesday. Carolin declined to comment for this story.

Toronto police spokesperson Meaghan Gray said the Court of Appeal’s ruling will be reviewed by the force’s professional standards unit.

In an email, Hung said she cannot comment on the “case any further than what is in the court documents and transcripts.”

At trial, Hung testified that what she heard in the recordings wasn’t sufficient to be considered evidence worth seizing, according a summary of her evidence in Carolin’s factum.

“I — I could understand what was being said. What I couldn’t determine was who was actually on the recording,” Hung testified at trial, according to Carolin’s factum.

Shin took issue with Carolin’s characterization of the police investigation, saying it was unclear whether Hung heard all of the 70 messages later determined to be relevant to the case as the officer testified that Richardson had played her a recording that was only about a 90 seconds long.

Shin also noted that Richardson’s phone and the recorded messages “were available to the defence throughout these proceedings ... as evidenced by the fact that counsel on this appeal retrieved all of the recorded messages.”

“Between the time some of the Voxer messages were played for officers on the day of the appellant’s arrest, and the time the entire series of messages was provided to the respondent after this appeal was launched, none of the messages were ever played for or provided to the police or crown,” Shin wrote.

Shin also said Hung did attempt to identify “Toti” — the man who implicated himself in the recordings — including through police databases and checks with police in outside jurisdictions. To date, he has not been arrested.

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According to Carolin’s factum, Richardson also repeatedly attempted to communicate the importance of the messages to his lawyers, Patrick McCool and Brian Irvine. McCool, who has since retired, could not be reached for comment Wednesday and Irvine declined to comment.

Richardson had authorized his lawyers to send his phone to a computer forensics expert before the trial.

“Unfortunately, the instructions to the expert from counsel focused on whether there was any exculpatory GPS evidence on the phone,” alongside additional instructions stating there might be voice messages that could assist in Richardson’s defence, Carolin’s factum reads.

The computer expert did not find relevant GPS data, but did tell Richardson’s lawyer that there was GPS data embedded in Voxer messages.

“This was a clear demonstration that Voxer information was still available on the appellant’s phone. Trial counsel did not follow up on this,” Carolin’s factum states.