For nearly forty-five years, John Salmon has tried to push the burden of his conviction for killing his common-law wife, a crime he has always insisted he didn’t commit, to the back of his mind.

Rather than dwell on the frustration and the stigma, Salmon, 75, has tried to keep busy, first pulling double shifts in the prison kitchen, then pouring himself into his job as a welder after his release.

“If you work all the time, you don’t think about stuff,” he says.

But recently, Salmon has allowed hope to creep in.

A decade after he approached the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted for help with his case, the Crown has agreed that Salmon should be absolved of killing Maxine Ditchfield on the basis of fresh medical evidence, which shows she died of a stroke caused by a fall.

A Toronto Court of Appeal is expected to exonerate him on Monday.

“It’s exhilarating,” said Salmon, now a grandfather living in Coldwater, Ont. “The legal system is flawed. Back then it was really flawed. But I believe now, since they got all these new forensics, it’s going to be a lot better.”

Reports from four medical experts, including a neuropathologist retained by the Crown, arrived at a unanimous conclusion. Rather than being killed by a forceful blow to the head, as the Crown’s expert had argued at trial in 1971, Ditchfield, they found, died from a fall — an explanation that aligns closely with what Salmon himself has always said.

“He told the truth about Maxine’s death on the day it occurred and for the 45 years since then has tenaciously maintained his innocence,” Salmon’s lawyers, James Lockyer and Marie Henein, wrote in their submissions to the court. “Modern medical science confirms the account of Maxine’s death he gave to his family, the doctor, the police and the jury in 1971.”

The Crown agreed in its submissions that the fresh evidence in the case is “unquestionably admissible,” and removes “the very foundation for a circumstantial case against (Salmon).” So convincing is the evidence, that had it been proffered initially, it “would not just have affected the verdict, it would have eliminated the basis for a criminal prosecution,” the Crown said.

Clay Powell, who prosecuted Salmon in 1971 and has previously expressed doubt about whether he killed Ditchfield, said last week he was pleased to learn of the latest developments in the case.

“I’m sorry he had to go through all this,” said Powell, who is now a defence lawyer in London, Ont. “I hope the Court of Appeal does the right thing. I’m sure he suffered terribly, and I’m sorry for that.”

Maxine Ditchfield, a 30-year-old mother of three, died in a Woodstock hospital on Tuesday, September 22, 1970, a few days after a night of heavy drinking with Salmon and some friends. She had dozens of bruises on her face, head and body.

The couple, who first met in 1967, started drinking on Saturday at Ditchfield’s Woodstock house before moving on to a bar and, later, to the home of Mary and Donald Claydon, while Ditchfield’s children slept inside.

The Claydons testified that Ditchfield and Salmon argued a little in the garage, where the adults were drinking, but that the spats weren’t particularly loud or prolonged. Both Salmon and Donald Claydon said that Ditchfield fell off her chair in the kitchen at one point.

At trial, the Crown called Ditchfield’s 9-year-old son, Michael, who testified that he heard Salmon and his mother “screaming” outside, and that he had seen him hit her outside on the grass as well as in the kitchen, knocking her to the floor.

But Lockyer and Henein questioned the validity of Michael’s testimony in their submissions, maintaining that the boy could not have seen the kitchen from where he was sleeping.

The couple returned home with the children at around 4:30 a.m. on Sunday. When they awoke later that day, Salmon noticed Ditchfield’s black eye, and thought she may have fallen on the concrete steps on her way inside, his lawyers said in their submissions. Salmon testified at trial that she fell numerous times — off the toilet, hitting her head on either the sink or the tub, as well as out of the bed.

Her condition continued to deteriorate. Salmon summoned a doctor on Monday evening, when he was unable to rouse her. She died in hospital the next morning.

The opinion of the Oxford County regional pathologist who performed the autopsy was crucial to the Crown’s theory that Salmon had assaulted Ditchfield. Dr. Michael Dietrich found that she died from swelling of the brain. In his opinion, the bruising behind her eye, over her ear and on the top of her head were likely caused by a “terrific” blow or blows from a fist, foot or “very firm shoe.”

But according to the fresh evidence, her death was not a homicide. As one of the experts consulted, Dr. David Ramsay, a neuropathologist at the University of Western Ontario, explained, the bruising shows what’s called a “countercoup contusion,” which results “from a fall, not a blow.” Another of the experts, Dr. Peter Markesteyn, a forensic pathologist in Winnipeg, described the brain injuries as “classic indicators of a fall.”

The head trauma, they concluded, caused a blood clot in her brain, which led to the stroke that prompted her death. It was a complex case that should have been scrutinized more closely at the time, the Crown’s expert, Dr. William Halliday, a neuropathologist at the Hospital for Sick Children, concluded. However, he said, “I don’t know who in Ontario, in 1970, could have offered such a review.”

Salmon was released on parole in 1974, after serving three years of his 10-year sentence.

He met his current wife, Margaret, in 1979, after his son and her daughter got together. She says he has always been “very honest” with her about his past.

“I didn’t judge him,” she says. “I took him for who he was when I met him.”

Not everyone has been so kind. He has quit hockey teams, and stopped attending karate classes because of harassment he suffered after teammates learned of his conviction.

Salmon says he “didn’t want to waste his time” being angry or feeling sorry for himself. But Margaret said she could always “tell when he was getting upset about something.”

“He’d just go off by himself . . . because it was something he had to deal with,” she said. “Nobody could deal with it for him.”

In an affidavit filed in court during his current appeal, Salmon said he carries “the shame of a crime I did not commit with me every day.”

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His is a quiet defiance, which has manifested in its own way.

With a chuckle, he explains how, when it occurred to him that the court could be “waiting for me to die, or something,” before clearing his name, he “started exercising, so I could outlast them.”

Despite the reassurance of his lawyers that he will be exonerated, Salmon is waiting until Monday to celebrate. He hasn’t yet told the bulk of his family.

“I’ll call them after,” he says.

John Salmon’s long battle to clear his name

1970: Maxine Ditchfield dies in a Woodstock hospital. John Salmon, her common-law husband, is charged with her murder.

1971: A jury finds Salmon guilty of manslaughter. He is sentenced to 10 years in prison.

1972: An Ontario Court of Appeal dismisses Salmon’s appeal. Salmon had argued that the trial judge should not have allowed Ditchfield’s young son to testify and should not have admitted pictures of the victim, which inflamed the minds of the jurors. He does not seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

1974: Salmon is released on parole.

2010: The Association in the Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC), which has been working for several years on Salmon’s case, secures an expert report from Dr. David Ramsay, a neuropathologist at the University of Western Ontario. Ramsay re-examines the evidence and concludes that her injuries were the result of a fall.

2011: AIDWYC receives a report from a second expert, Dr. Michael Shkrum, a forensic pathologist at University Hospital in London, Ont., who concludes that “there is no pathological evidence to support the claim that (Ditchfield) was a victim of an assault.”

2011: A third expert, Dr. Peter Markesteyn, a forensic pathologist in Winnipeg, finds that Ditchfield “died of a stroke and not as the result of a ‘massive blow’ to the top of the head.”

2011: Salmon applies to the Department of Justice for a ministerial review of his conviction.

2012: The department’s Criminal Conviction Review Group determines “there may be a reasonable basis to conclude that a miscarriage of justice likely occurred,” and moves the application to the “investigative stage.”

2012: Salmon asks the review to be suspended so he can seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court grants a 40-year extension of time application and orders that the case be remanded to the Court of Appeal so that fresh evidence can be considered.

2013: The Crown commissions a fourth medical expert, Dr. William Halliday, a neuropathologist at the Hospital for Sick Children, to review the case. Halliday also concludes that Ditchfield’s injuries were caused by a fall. He says the stroke she suffered would have “contributed to her clumsiness, her propensity to fall and ultimately, her widespread bruising.”

2015: The Crown recommends that Salmon’s conviction be overturned.

—Rachel Mendleson

Correction – June 22, 2015: This article was edited from a previous version that misspelled Maxine Ditchfield’s surname.