News

1. Glen Assoun deserves immediate compensation

From the court documents released Friday related to the Assoun case, I’ve come to understand three broad themes:

Shoddy police investigation

First, the police investigation into Brenda Way’s murder was shoddy, in that potential suspects were not properly investigated. These suspects include Avery Greenough, a violent man with a history of rape and attacking sex workers who lived in Dartmouth, and Michael McGray, a serial killer who lived on Jackson Road, about 100 meters from the murder site.

By 1999, McGray was sitting in prison in Renous, New Brunswick, charged with six murders. He had told friends, family, and prisoner officials that he was responsible for 11 more murders, including that of a sex worker in Nova Scotia. Halifax police briefly considered McGray a suspect in the Brenda Way murder, and so sent Cst. Steve Maxwell to Renous to talk to McGray. Maxwell simply asked McGray if he killed Brenda Way; McGray said he didn’t, and so far as the documents relate, that was the end of it. They took the word of a serial killer.

At the same time, however, police were not taking the word of Glen Assoun, who always maintained his innocence.

So far, we’re not talking about any police misconduct, but rather simple incompetence.

Convicting Assoun

Police and prosecutorial misconduct comes into play in developing the case against Assoun. To say witnesses were leaned on is to put it mildly. Here are just three examples (there are others):

“Roberta,” a sex worker who was brutally attacked by a man who claimed to have killed Brenda Way, is a confusing story. It was she who contacted police to say she believed it was Assoun who attacked her. But when she wavered, she was hassled and cajoled by investigators — repeatedly picked up for minor infractions — until she agreed to testify. Then, police put her up in the Marriott Casino hotel, with the full knowledge that she was using drugs and turning tricks out of her hotel room while she was awaiting her court appearance. Had that situation been told to the court, Roberta’s testimony surely would not have been allowed.

(There were other problems with Roberta’s testimony I won’t go into depth about here, but the physical description of the man who attacked her fits McGray, and not Assoun.)

Then there’s David Carvery, a jailhouse snitch who said Assoun had confessed to murdering Way while the two were incarcerated together in the Halifax Correctional Facility. In return for his testimony, Carvery’s sentence on his own drug charges was reduced from a potential five years in prison to an actual five months’ served. But on the witness stand, Carvery said he received two years’ imprisonment, a flat-out lie. Crown prosecutors knew Carvery was lying to the court, but said nothing.

Another witness was Corey Tuma, an alcoholic. Police told Tuma that Assoun was a “cold-blooded killer,” and so Tuma changed his testimony to place Way and Assoun into a timeline that made Assoun killing Way plausible. Police put Tuma up in a hotel, too, and the night and early morning before he testified he got so blitzed drunk that Tuma now says he has no idea what he said on the stand the next day.

RCMP destroys evidence

There are two intertwining timelines involved here. The first timeline is RCMP Constable Dave Moore’s building suspicion that McGray, not Assoun, killed Brenda Way. As he followed his hunches, Moore inputed data into an RCMP database and collected hundreds of documents and other evidence kept in several cardboard boxes in his office. Then he pressed his concerns up the chain of command, telling his superiors that “Glen Assoun is innocent.” They mostly ignored him, one officer telling him he was wasting his time as the court had already convicted Assoun.

The second timeline concerns Newfoundland lawyer Jerome Kennedy, who had taken up Assoun’s appeal. With the help of his investigator, a retired RCMP cop named Fred Fitzsimmons, Kennedy learned that there was a computer profile of McGray as a potential suspect for the Way murder, so he asked police and crown prosecutors for that computer profile.

In early 2004 Moore went on vacation, and on his return discovered that he was transferred out of his position, that the entries he had made into the computer system about McGray had been deleted, and that his boxes of evidence had been destroyed. I’m still working through the documents to pen down cause and effect, but it at least appears that the evidence was destroyed because Kennedy was asking for it. In any event, the information Kennedy requested wasn’t provided to Kennedy because it didn’t exist. As such, Kennedy couldn’t tell the appellant court that there was a strong alternative suspect for the murder that police had ignored, and so Assoun’s appeal was denied. Assoun spent another nine years in prison.

Kennedy was clear about this yesterday, when he told Canadian Press reporter Michael Tutton that “There is no doubt in my mind that if this information had been disclosed, Glen’s appeal would have been successful.”

Yesterday, I sent a series of questions to Justice Minister Mark Furey, as follows:

Glen Assoun spent 16 and a half years in prison and another four and a half years under strict parole conditions for the murder of Brenda Way. He steadfastly maintained his innocence, and during that time he suffered two heart attacks and a mental health crisis. Now that Glen Assoun has been fully exonerated for the murder of Brenda Way, and now that the Halifax police, the RCMP, and the Public Prosecution System have been implicated in causing and maintaining the wrongful conviction, will the Justice Department take any action to apologize to and compensate Mr. Assoun? Will some form of immediate compensation be provided, or will Mr. Assoun have to suffer the further indignities of suing the province for compensation? How does the minister, a former RCMP officer, view the evidence that the RCMP improperly deleted and destroyed evidence that would have cleared Mr. Assoun? Will any actions be taken to hold those responsible accountable?

I have yet to receive a response.

Nor has any Halifax councillor — including those on the police commission — made any comment whatsoever about Assoun’s wrongful conviction.

A man’s life was destroyed, having been sent to prison and kept there for a crime he did not commit. Along the way, he suffered two heart attacks and a mental health crisis. He has nothing now, no money, no prospects for employment, and no ability to work even if he could find a job.

There’s a common myth that exonerees get a big pay out, compensation for their lost years. But no, compensation is not automatic. Most exonerees don’t get a cent. Those who do often must go to court and sue the various parties responsible, and if there’s a vigorous defence, a court judgment and actual payment of compensation could take many years. I wish Assoun a long life, but I fear that if the powers-that-be don’t act quickly to make him whole, he could die before he sees any compensation.

I can already see that the various parties — the Halifax police, the RCMP, the provincial Public Prosecution Service — will try to pass the buck between themselves on this: “Oh, we made mistakes, but don’t put this all on us.” There is no obvious institutional desire to do right by Assoun, and a huge desire to delay and hope this whole thing goes away. Left to their own devices, the institutions will force Assoun to go to court.

It’s time for political leadership. It’s time for councillors to admit that the police they oversee did wrong, and to apologize for that wrongdoing to Assoun, along with an acknowledgment that he needs financial compensation. It’s time for the Justice minister to make a statement, and to take action. It’s time for the premier to address a huge injustice that took place in the province he leads.

There are no doubt legal principles and arguments to be made about who’s responsible for what, and it may take years to work through the details. But in the meanwhile, Assoun has nothing, and no immediate recourse. The city and the province should immediately — like now — give Assoun some payment, say a million dollars, to help make his condition more bearable while the details of a complete compensation package are worked out.

A million dollars is the cost of a road-paving project. If our political leaders can’t make that happen, they’re simply being mean-spirited. Not making some compensation available now is a further injustice to Assoun.

2. Robie / Spring Garden developments

“Council has voted in favour of policy changes that would allow development to transform a city block, but it could be more than a year before two projects for the corner of Robie St. and Spring Garden Rd. are officially approved,” reports Zane Woodford for Star Halifax:

The two proposals — from Dexel Developments and a numbered company owned by Peter Rouvalis and Wendell Thomas — would see four towers up to 27 storeys built in the block bounded by Robie St., Spring Garden Rd., Carlton St. and College St. Combined, the buildings would include 650 apartments, 50,000 square feet of commercial space, 60,000 square feet of office space and 700 parking spaces. At a public hearing of Halifax regional council on Monday night, the vast majority of people who spoke were opposed to the two developments. Council voted unanimously in favour of amendments to municipal policy to allow the projects to move ahead to the next stage.

Woodford reports that it will take about a year for a development agreement to be drawn up and approved, after which there will be a traffic and pedestrian nightmare for the next few years during construction.

3. Yarmouth ferry

“Bay Ferries is no longer selling tickets for its service between Yarmouth, N.S., and Bar Harbor, Maine, which was supposed to start earlier this year,” reports Jean Laroche for the CBC:

For the second time this summer, the company is also refunding anyone with an existing reservation. “We feel terrible about this,” company CEO Mark MacDonald told CBC News Monday. “We feel very badly for all the businesses and people that are affected by it, many or most of whom are great friends and great supporters of the ferry service. … MacDonald agreed the latest setback would be a blow to his company’s attempts to establish a viable and affordable service between Nova Scotia and the U.S. “Obviously, it’s not good for the service.” he said. “We’re hoping it becomes a situation of short-term pain for longer-term gain.”