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515: #252 Jason Flom with Allan Woodhouse and Brian Anderson · Wrongful Conviction Podcasts

• 00:00:02 Speaker 1: On Tuesday, July seventeenth, nineteen seventy three, a local chef and father of two, Ting Fong Chan, walked home from his night shift in Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada at around six am. His body was found beaten and stabbed death near a construction site. An eyewitness saw the assailants through the darkness and described the group as four or five men with long hair. The police asked if the assailants may have been indigenous. The eyewitness couldn't say either way without a definitive answer, investigators began campassing the local indigenous population, and a man named Adam Woodhouse told them about a recent gathering at his home attended by Clarence and Russell Woodhouse as well as their cousin Brian Anderson. However, this gathering happened on Thursday night, not on Monday into Tuesday, the night of the crime. Despite the confusion over the date, as well as the uncertainty over the assailants ethnicity, Clarence and Russell Woodhouse, Brian Anderson, as well as their younger friend Allan Woodhouse underwent a series of coercive and in some cases, violent interrogations, resulting in four false confessions written in a language in which none of them were entirely fluent. The trial consisted of the presentation of these alleged confessions against four matching recantations, as well as alibi witnesses and accusations of police misconduct and brutality. Fifty years later, Brian Anderson and Alan Woodhouse share their harrowing story and the struggle to clear their names. This is wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to wrongful Conviction. This is an episode it's going to take everyone who listens on a journey, not just far away because this took place in the Great White North, but also to a place of disbelief for how the system, in this case, the system in Canada, can do what it does to innocent civilians. Let me introduce our guests and then we'll explain more about the case. With us, we have two wrongfully convicted men. First of all, Brian Anderson, Welcome to wrongful Conviction. I'm sorry you're here under the services, but I'm happy you're here. Thank you and with us as well as Alan Woodhouse. So grateful for you being here as well. 00:02:26 Speaker 2: Thank you very much for having me here today. 00:02:29 Speaker 1: And joining us. Is an incredible woman named bob and Sody. Bobbin is the attorney of record for these men. She was the legal director at Innocence Canada at the time that she got involved with this case, and she's currently got one of the most amazing and interesting jobs, I think in the entire world of criminal justice. She is the intake director at the Innocence Project of New York. So Bobin, Welcome to Wrongful Conviction. 00:02:55 Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having us, Jason. 00:02:57 Speaker 4: So. 00:03:00 Speaker 1: Bobn I almost feel like I want to let you set the stage here. I mean, this case is so nuts. It involves lies from people in positions of power, false confessions. At least one of the men didn't even speak the language of the confession that he was signing, that he didn't even know was a confession, Jason. 00:03:17 Speaker 3: For me, this was one of the first cases I worked on in my role as legal director at Innocence Canada, and it's one of those cases that right off the batch you know that something isn't right. 00:03:28 Speaker 1: You know. 00:03:28 Speaker 3: My co counsel, Jerome Kennedy has always put it best. We started off knowing that this was a nineteen seventy three case. It involved the Winnipeg Police service, four young Indigenous men and George Dangerfield. And as far as innocence Canada was concerned, that is a recipe for wrongful conviction. 00:03:48 Speaker 1: And George Dangerfield just what a name for a guy who has the dubious distinction of being the Crown prosecutor who is responsible for the most wrongful convictions in Canadian history. And he was unfortunately the top prosecutor in Manitoba, Canada for thirty years. And just to paint a picture of the guys who ended up getting caught in this nightmare, Brian Anderson, who's with us today at seventh grade education and no knowledge of the criminal legal system. He grew up on the Fairford Indian Reserve between Lake Manitoba and Lake Saint Mark, about two hundred and thirty kilometers or one hundred and forty three miles north of Winnipeg. The eldest had ten children. At eighteen, he moved to Winnipeg to work and live with his grandparents. And his first language was not English. He barely spoke English at all. His first language was Ojibwe Salto. And he had no criminal record whatsoever. This is important, that's important to know. But it turned out not to matter in this case. So Brian, tell me about your life growing up. Did you have a happy childhood? Yes? 00:04:45 Speaker 4: I did? I think I did. 00:04:49 Speaker 5: You don't know anything about life at that age. 00:04:52 Speaker 1: So right, you're a kid, I mean, let's face it. As a teenager you just said yeah, exactly, figuring it out just like anybody else. And Alan, what about for you? You lived on the Fairport Indian Reserve as well, with English as a second language. You had a ninth grade education there. You were seventeen years old, but also with no criminal record, and moved to Winnipeg two months before this awful crime happened. So Alan, what was your life like growing up in those times? 00:05:19 Speaker 2: From what you can remember, Well, my childhost is pretty rugged, so to speak, of eight brothers and two sisters, as I was a lot of people. Brian's younger brother I have and I used to be my handout buddy. We're up at the same age. Ban were a bit of wolder, so he hung out with you a wolder crowd. The only reason I was in Winnipeg is because to look for work. There's no work in a reserve, of course, because I was over sixteen, so I just moved to Winnipeg about a couple of months when I got arrested. 00:05:49 Speaker 1: Right and before you were arrested, the police picked up Clarence Woodhouse, followed by Russell Woodhouse, then you Alan Woodhouse, and lastly Brian Anderson. And the whole thing started with a statement from Woodhouse. First of all, that's a lot of woodhouses. So just to keep things straight for our audience. From what I gather, Woodhouse must be a common name, Brian, Are any of you guys related? 00:06:11 Speaker 5: Yes, I am. They are my cousins, which is the Woodhouses. Clarence and Russell, we had the same grandfather. We knew each other right from the little kids. 00:06:20 Speaker 2: I'm not related to idiotom actually not even Adam Mudos. 00:06:24 Speaker 1: So Clarence and Russell were related to you, Brian. But Adam and Allen aren't related to any of you guys, right, yes, so the crime itself. July seventeenth, nineteen seventy three, forty zho men in ting Pong Chan was beaten and stabbed to death near a downtown construction site in Manitoba, which is Winnipeg. Mister Chan was a father of two and a chef at a restaurant called The Beachcomber. He was walking home from the night shift and his body was found at six am on the seventeenth. So then comes this ridiculous quote unquote investigation. 00:06:57 Speaker 3: For the first couple of days after Chan's body was found, no investigation occurred. Essentially, they were doing a scan of the neighborhood and they came across a witness named Daisy Towel and Daisy, what's interesting about her is she didn't really see much at all. What she claims to have seen under the light of a lamppost in the middle of the night without her glasses, and she indicated that she had very poor vision was the outline of four or five individuals that had long hair, And when the officers put it to her whether she thought they were indigenous, she said, well, yes, they could be. And you know, the important point here is this was the seventies, and so I'm presuming a lot of people had long hair. 00:07:43 Speaker 1: I have fond memories of that era. I mean, long hair, great music, and this witness could have easily and vaguely stuck me into this group as well. I mean I fit that much at the description. That's the only description they had. So it's important to note that the police offered this blurry cited eyewitness the suggestion that the assailants were Indigenous, not the other way around. And Alan, I know you eventually became a jail house lawyer. Does it strike you as business as usual for the police in that era with in doubt, just take an indigenous guy, right, just start targeting Indigenous people. 00:08:18 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean I think goes wrong right away. It's Native people even in the reserve. You know, something happened outside the reserves. There's better community out there, right there's there's been Native people. There'd be police driving around looking for so and sorry though, that's the reality of it. 00:08:34 Speaker 3: Unfortunately, the police ended up canvassing the neighborhood on the lookout essentially for young Indigenous men. And that's how a few days later they came upon Adam Woodhouse's house and spoke to him. They also spoke to his common law partner and his common law partner's daughter. And what I will say is English wasn't even the first language of these witnesses. So Adam was also someone who was struggling to understand this context, wasn't provided an interpreter, and was participating and so when they spoke to Adam on July twenty second, he said, well, yes, on the night of the murderer, I had a group of young Indigenous men with me, including Brian Anderson, Clarence Woodhouse and Russell Woodhouse. And he distinctly didn't mention Alan. And what's interesting about the fact that he said that is almost immediately following his common law partner and his common law partner's daughter said yes, these young men were at our house, but that actually occurred Thursday and not on the night in question. And the reason that's interesting is a lot of the information that Adam was recalling from the evening actually related to things that happened on Thursday. So, for example, he referenced receiving his check he usually receives that on a Thursday night. He referenced using that check in order to buy beer again as a result of what happened on Thursday night. But essentially, the police, ignoring what you know his common law partner and her daughter said, decided to venture out. And this is when this web began to weave, and within twenty four hours they managed to get you alleged confessions from Clarence Woodhouse, Russell Woodhouse, Allan Woodhouse and Brian Anderson. 00:10:25 Speaker 1: Wow, so no, I mean they didn't even pretend to do a real investigation, just the assumption by the police that the assailants were indigenous. And Adam Woodhouse told them about gathering at his home with Clarence Russell and Brian, nothing about a murder or any conspiracy to commit murder or any criminal activity at all. And it even turned out to be the wrong night entirely. Monday into Tuesday was when it happened. This was Thursday, but that didn't matter. And now the interrogations and false confessions began in a language you guys didn't even. 00:10:59 Speaker 3: Under I think a really important part of this is understanding the sequence of the confessions, just to understand how they utilized classic red technique despite the fact that everything pointed against them. So yes, all four confessions, and this is important, all four of the confessions that these boys are alleged to have made start off with the exact same sentence. All four of them say, on Monday night, I was and when I read that, I knew that something was amiss. We have four men who are alleged to have written these confessions in separate rooms, separate circumstances, varying understanding of English, and yet all of their statements start the exact same way. And so that's when I delved into the actual sequence, like how did they obtain them? And what I saw was classic retechnique. 00:11:52 Speaker 1: You know. 00:11:53 Speaker 3: They started off with Clarence. They took him to the scene, brought him back to the station, They asked him to mark up the body and where it was that he had attacked, you know, ting fong Chen, immediately assuming that he was the person responsible. Ultimately, this allegedly led to his confession. And what's interesting about the confession is it's a partial confession and the only person that's mentioned in it is Russell. Then they go to Russell and they go look at this confession that Clarence gave you. And what's interesting about that is that Russell didn't even have enough of an understanding of the English language to be able to read the confession that Clarence apparently made. So they brought Clarence into the room with Russell to read to his brother this confession he's alleged to have made. And so Russell apparently makes the confession same thing on Monday night, I was, and so not only does he now mention Clarence himself, but he also references Alan, and so that is how Alan is brought into the story, and so then Alan is arrested. He is also shown the confession that now Clarence has made and subsequently Russell have made. And what's interesting about Alan is he was subjected to physical abuse because he refused to make this confession. 00:13:16 Speaker 2: That night, in that particular, when I got picked up, you know, there was a knock on the door, and there's two people standing there in suits. I guess you call them planes closed. 00:13:23 Speaker 4: Now. 00:13:24 Speaker 2: He asked me what my name was, So I told them who I was. So I said, sorry, grand them my wrist. You're the one we're looking for it. So I said, way wait, I said, what's going on? I want to talk to you. I went downstairs with and Mark carr on downstairs and they took me to the police station. We were the police. I asked him what its this about it? He said murder? I said murder. I said, maybe they had found a dead body and they wanted me to go and recognize some of the body or see what I mean. When we got to the police station and they said Okay, where were you on Tuesday night? So I tood, not hoom. Who else was there? There's nobody there. It's just me. My mother and I lived there, just had that little apartment, and my mother well she went out a lot, she drank a lot. But anyway, so I told him I was at home and they said, oh, there's nobody there, said, I know, you weren't there. You were at Adams Woodha Streets. I said, no, I wasn't there. I was there on Thursday. Yeah. They went back and forth for a while and they got angrier and angrier, and they started getting physical. I mean they were really rough. I mean they were they're hitting me. I mean, I was all bloody. So after four hours they rode up the statement, told me to sign it and then you can go, said, So I signed it, I said, After they signed, their hand covered me ultimately. 00:14:37 Speaker 3: Again. Interesting, his confession starts off with on Monday night I was and the variation there was. Now this confession includes Clarence, it includes Russell, it includes Alan, and there is the first reference to Brian Anderson. And so then they go to Brian and they speak to him, and they take Brian to the scene. They show him alleged weapons that were utilized, you know, and they show him the confessions of the other three points. Like on Monday night, I. 00:15:08 Speaker 5: Was on the twenty third, I got picked up for murder. Like I wasn't even a suspect. I was charged already. They got me to sign a piece of paper, which I did, and I didn't know that was the confession that supposedly I had made. 00:15:25 Speaker 1: The idea that you were signing a piece of paper in a language you didn't speak with nobody there to guide you or help you or advise you. I read somewhere that you had thought that it might have been just something related to your possessions that they were keeping on storage for you while they arrested you. Is that accurate. 00:15:42 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:15:42 Speaker 5: What they do is they make you empty your pockets and that they put stuff aside and you have to sign for them. And that's what I thought it was. That's how crooked they were, you know, they didn't care just because they had these witnesses they were calling them. That's where they based all this stuff from. 00:16:01 Speaker 3: And so at the end of the day, as a result of this sort of linear sequential experience, now all four boys are alleged to have participated. The statements that start very much the same build on each other. So first you have just Clarence, then you have Clarence and Russell, then you have Clarence Russell and Alan, and finally the final statement Clarence Russell, Alan and Brian have participated. And so essentially you have each of the young men pointing the finger at each other and weaving this web for the. 00:16:34 Speaker 1: Police actually feels a little bit like a Canadian version of New York City's own horror show known as The Central Park Five, currently known as Exonerated five because they use some of the same techniques differently, but you know, using everybody against each other and the physical abuse. And it's very important for our audience to know that in twenty nine percent of the DNA exonerations, the person who was proven with absolute certainty scientific certainty to be innocent confessed to the crime they didn't commit. Just like in this case, Bobin, what about physical or forensic evidence? Did they collect any, did they examine it? Was there any? Did they even make a show out of trying to solve this case? 00:17:23 Speaker 3: So that is where this case gets interesting, Jason. They actually did collect a lot of forensic evidence. The Winnipeg Police Service collected fiber analysis here microscopy, So there was three hairs that were grasped in Ting Fong Chan's hands. They had fingerprints, they collected clothing, they undertook presumptive blood tests, there was a series of knives that were collected, and essentially they used a number of different you know, and I used air quote sciences, sciences that have since been dubbed junk science to these things. But what's amazing about this case is Brian Anderson, Alan Woodhouse and the other two co accused were excluded from all of them. So they engaged in this efforts to try and get something beyond the confession undertaking these sciences, again air quotes, that have contributed to a number of wrongful convictions, but in this instance, remarkably, these four men were excluded. 00:18:27 Speaker 1: So even when they were using these super subjective, absolute junk sciences that are very useful for when you want to conjure up corroborating evidence for a false confession or a misidentification or a jail house snitch testimony, even when they tried to cheat, they failed, where so many other unscrupulous prosecutors and law enforcement officials have succeeded time and time again. So I mean, I'm sure that there are a number of people in the audience scratching their heads as I'm doing right now and saying, wait, I thought she said they were excluded. 00:19:03 Speaker 3: That's the weirdest thing about this case. So in every other case I've ever worked on, there's something more. You know, there might be harmark cross that was performed, there may be fiber analysis that matches. There might be you know, a smudge, fingerprint, or some kind of presumpted blood. But this, this is that case that the only thing that ties these individuals to the case are these confessions they're alleged to have made. All of the air quotes. Science that they tried to utilize excluded them, but. 00:19:38 Speaker 1: They marched right ahead as if it included them, right exactly. It just keeps piling up, right, So we have the blind witness, right, we have the false confessions that might as well have been written in Chinese or Greek Portuguese because you didn't know what the hell you were signing, And the physical and forensic evidence collected does match. So it's already the pile of sculpatory evidence and factors is growing and growing. But also you had an alibi. It wasn't like you were by yourself that night, right. 00:20:11 Speaker 5: That's right now, staying at my grandfather at the time, that's where I was. And Clarence and Russell that was their residence too. 00:20:19 Speaker 2: Yes, I was at home and my mother can confirm that the aster where I was on the guy got killed. She said I was at home when she got home, but then she said she was drunk. There's the bars closed about twelve o'clock. Then she walked from the main street to Isabel Street. The that's about fifteen minute to twenty minute walk, so that would be about two o'clock when I was at home, because she said I was complaining to her about her becoming home late, because you know, I had to get up in the morning. Were there, So I don't I be walking at two o'clock in the morning and waking me up, And that's how she remembered. 00:20:55 Speaker 1: So you guys both underwent preliminary hearings. Alan you were discharged November nineteen seventy three after the preliminary hearing based on the finding that the statement to police was involuntary and thereby inadmissible and you were discharged, but you were mentioned in the other statements, and then they were still able to put you on trial and they had you bumped up from juvenile court into adult court. It just keeps getting worse to stand trial along with Brian and your other two co defendants. 00:21:24 Speaker 2: Right, that's right. 00:21:26 Speaker 1: So now we get to the trial, and you got George Dangerfield. We talked about the notorious prosecutor. This trial took place February eighteenth through March fifth. Now, obviously you've studied it in detail, Bob, and tell us about this trial. 00:21:41 Speaker 3: The only thing here is the confessions the trial. Jidge actually says that, and I'm going to read you a quote from his instructions to the jury. The whole case basically against these accused, each of them, rests on his own statement, and that sort of summarizes the trial. The entire length of the trial focused on these statements, and it was essentially a competition on who was telling the truth. You know, you had these supposedly upstanding officers that were presenting this case vouching for the fact that these individuals had confessed to them. And on the opposite side, you had four young indigenous men who were sort of villipied. They didn't speak English, they weren't provided with interpreters, and essentially it was their word against the police. 00:22:29 Speaker 1: The word of the same police officers who had beaten Allen, who was a child. They literally beat him to extract the statement that was then, of course, later presented against him at trial. 00:22:41 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well that's the only thing. That's the only thing they had. I said, Oh yeah, you came out and you confessed it, of question, that's what the police said. They didn't stand time with the beating, they unied it. Of course, even the statement wasn't true. For instance, the statement said that I had started this person in the stomach a couple of times, but there was no stab wounds in the stomach at all. 00:23:03 Speaker 1: It's a classic hallmark of a false confession when the details of the statement don't match the physical evidence. And there were also the alibi witnesses. But in reading about the trial, it really made me sort of throw want to throw up in my mouth to read that Brian's grandfather was never even called to testify to his alibi. It's insane. But then this part I don't know struck me in a different sort of sickening type of way, which is that Alan, your mother was called the trial, which was appropriate, but from what I understand, the jury didn't hear her full explanation because the judge freaking interrupted her during a pivotal moment of questioning and then sent her home without allowing her to answer the question like what planet are we on? This is madness? 00:23:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, well today, I don't know why the judge was sort of hostile toward her. Yeah, because you don't understand what's going on here? Go sit down, Yeah, let's say and sat down. It seems to me he just didn't want to hear her say anything. I don't know why. Maybe he didn't want to hear the truth. He didn't want to hear any evidence contrary to what they believed. 00:24:17 Speaker 1: I mean, as a parent, I think anyone who's listening, who is a parent, father, mother, whatever, would feel a sense of outrage that this is the mother with her son's life at stake, and the judge is basically treating her as if her life her son's life. 00:24:35 Speaker 3: No, none of it matters, honestly, Jason, it was the moment that our read the sentencing decision. I want to read this passage to you. So these are the comments of the trial judge. She says, this is not a jungle where we live. It is not a wild's land. We are not subduing this land from anybody. We are not still taking it from wild people in this community. We want to be able to come and go freely, whether the lights are on in the streets or whether they are out, whether the police are patrolling the roads or whether they aren't. And you know, Jason, extemporaneous comments about jungles and wildness not only add nothing useful to the trial process, but they conjure up stereotypes that can only do unfair damage to indigenous person Standing trial. 00:25:24 Speaker 1: March fifth, nineteen seventy four, Brian Allen and Clarence were found guilty of murder and sentence to life in prison, and Russell was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years. So, Brian and Alan, what was that like when that fury came in and sends you to prison for the rest of your life. 00:25:45 Speaker 2: Oh, I was shock coming. I was just spitless. It's sort of I don't I don't get it. I never thought of killing anyone in my life ever. 00:25:54 Speaker 5: I have to just take what was coming to me because like a I guess you like a sheep and a slaughter house or whatever, like you know this, do whatever they want you have. 00:26:04 Speaker 4: You have nothing. 00:26:20 Speaker 5: Once the door loss behind you, you're in that little cell by yourself, and then that's all you do, you think. I didn't know how to take it to begin with a thing, and I thought, wows just do away with myself, kill myself. 00:26:38 Speaker 1: And then. 00:26:40 Speaker 5: After thinking about that, I thought, hey, I can't be doing this. I'll be helping those buckers. That's what they're trying to do to me, you try to kill me. Then I promised myself that I would keep going and I'm still here. 00:26:59 Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it helped me a lot of owned out totally alone because there was Brian, There's Clarence and Russell, So yeah, I had some some kind of support. 00:27:09 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:27:10 Speaker 2: When I got to personally, I never realized how many Native people they were there. There's just full of Native people there was. There was hardly any white people there at all. It seems I seemed like a big giant reserve. When I joined the organization. Now in the Native Brotherhood, I was quite active in prison politics. I was present for the Brotherhood a few times. And not only that, I became a Jellhouse lawyers of all things. Yes, so that kept me occupied. I got pretty good in learn learning the system. There was a time there I thought, well, now, I don't know where this idea came from. I thought, you can serve your time where you can let the Times review. I think, yeah, I started adopted our philosophy. 00:27:52 Speaker 5: Pick up books or what I would try and distract your mind. That kind of kept me sane, Like you know, I didn't. I didn't go insane at all. I went to school as well, trying to learn something, like you know, try and educate myself, to try and learn English. At least I could try and speak for myself because my lawyer wouldn't speak for me. 00:28:12 Speaker 2: I finished my high school in prison. I took some courses here, like auto mechanics took I took electrician and I work as electrician every time I'm out. I thought schooling would be the best way to get out as soon as possible as Enforstnately, they didn't turn it that away, because I spent seventeen years in prison before I got a full parole. 00:28:38 Speaker 1: That's right, Alan, Despite both of you spending your time so well behind the walls. As you both just described, you were not granted parole until nineteen ninety, while Brian was initially denied parl nineteen eighty because the par Wark concluded that Brian had a quote unquote obsession to prove his innocence. I mean, of course, but they said that that could potentially result in his violating release conditions. Like what, okay, what are we through the looking glass here? I mean, you can't win in that situation. An innocent man not deserving a parole. It's just totally asked backwards. But there was a man that I read about who was a fierce advocate for you, Brian. And that guy's name was Dick Skelding. 00:29:23 Speaker 5: He was a school teacher. And then I asked him to help me write a letter to my lawyer. He helped me out and then he says, oh, I'll send him a letter to He said, after that the lawyer, I had tried to get him fired because he's trying to help me. And then he was pissed off at that. He said there's something going on here. He said, something wrong. You're like a lawyer like that, he's supposed to be helping and he's against you. And then he says, would you take a light detector? He said, so, I said okay, and then I passed it, of course, and then after that he contacted the CTV News and then they came in interviewed me over there. 00:30:06 Speaker 1: Unfortunately, he died in nineteen eighty two, but you carried on, and as you mentioned, the CTV did its story on your case, Brian called the Anderson Confession. And you know, sometimes pressure breaks pipes. So you were ultimately released on full parole in nineteen eighty three, ten years after your arrest. But then Alan, you spent seventeen years in prison before being granted parole on May twenty third, nineteen ninety. 00:30:31 Speaker 2: Well, they wanted me to admit that kill somebody, and I just couldn't bring miss out to tell you I got I didn't kill anybody. Finally, I think this sort of said they weren't going to get me to say that killed somebody. I think one of the members said, you know, he said, we can't base our decisi't based on what you say. We have to base just isn't based on the fact that you were convicted. Even if you were in and they granted me a parole I think in March, and then I said, okay, you can get on me twenty three, nineteen ninety. So I went to the halfway house, you know, which is just another prison. So I stayed there another six months. So sir, it's a gradual release. You know, you don't just walk over there. Yeah. There some parole officers ra attitude. You're trying to find excuses to send you back to prison. The current one is actually pretty good right now. So it's actually very good completely the elevance. Oh, I've had really bad parole officers. I've been suspended a few times. I hardly got out on habeas corpus. Three times my parole officers revoked my parole. I had to take him to court to reinstace my parole. Take me three times, and they finally I told him that the next time I caught him on hebis corpus, I will be filing civil suit. So far there left me alone. But like today, I could be suspended right now. You know, I can't be in chill tomorrow. That's just the way it. 00:31:57 Speaker 1: Is, Brian. For you for was revolt to suspend it and regranted numerous time. We've talked about this before, you and I about sort of the prison outside of the prison, right. 00:32:07 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:32:07 Speaker 5: Well, I had such a racist parole officer because of him, I went back and forth. He told me he was an ex cop. He was really after me like any little thing. Even when he used to come visit me. He put his phone or whatever tape recorder aside. He said, well, I'm going to turn this off first so it don't get interrupted, and he's recording me all this time. You know, I could see that. And then he had said, well, like you know, what we say and what the courts say are two different things. Don't bet on it. He told me, like, you know, like you're going to go back, like he made a decision already. I was going to get revoked, revoked my parole. I was glad to get rid of him. Finally they gave me another one, which is a woman after that, and then she was nice to me, and I never then it went back after that. I'm still with it today. Like you know, I have I have like a chain, like a lease. I can only go so far, like as a radius. I can't go past eighty kilometers from where I'm at I can get thrown back in jail for that, for being out of the boundary. 00:33:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all these years later. It's so crazy that in Canada they do it much the same way we do here, which is try to make their lives as difficult as possible after their feed whether they're innocent or guilty. Of course, if you're declared actually innocent, then they don't put you on parole here. But I always say we should build ramps for people coming out of prison so they can get back on their feet, join their community, get back with their family, go to school, become contributing members of society. Instead, we put up roadblocks every place we can and put ice in the road and nail so you get tripped up and you go right back to prison. There's forty four hundred different restrictions in America on parole and probation, over forty four hundred, some of them make it virtually impossible for somebody to remain free. And sad to hear that it's the same way in Canada. 00:34:05 Speaker 5: Exactly, Like you know, like what I didn't like about this too, is that like somebody come from another part of the world like you, on the other side of the world, for example, and come and tell me how to live my life in my own country. You know that pisces me off try to control my life, still do I don't like that? 00:34:28 Speaker 4: I should be free? 00:34:46 Speaker 1: So they have yet to declare you both actually listen, all these decades later, while they continue to keep their hooks into you, and as time has passed, the fight to clear your names has remained constant, but the process is maddeningly slow. In fact, the presence of Bob and with us today starts a while back with a legend in the innocence community who has since then passed. 00:35:11 Speaker 5: Hurricane Carter's name came up. I was told to contact Hurricane Carter. They were called Aidwick. Now they're called Innocence Canada. I didn't know anything about Innocence Canada. There was the four cases that came up, people that were convicted from George Landerfield. Their cases were looked after. They've been dealt with already, and I believe my case was ahead of them, but I haven't been looked at it all. 00:35:40 Speaker 1: So, Bobin, when did you and Jerome Kennedy get involved and take us right up to the present to where the case is at right now? 00:35:47 Speaker 3: Jerome and I became involved in twenty seventeen, and that was when Innocence Canada was going under a bit of a shift. So what Jerome Kennedy did was review every single file that was on our roster and evaluate it. I think it was days into me starting my role as legal director, we started working on this case and so almost instantly, over the course of the next maybe year year and a half, we were pouring over every document, calling every institution, trying to put together this file and figure out a way in because I think the struggle in this case was they were so obviously innocent. The only thing here was the confession, and we just couldn't figure out why it was they were convicted. And so we submitted Brian's case at the beginning of twenty nineteen to an organization known as the CCRG, So that's the Criminal Convictions Review Group and essentially that is the sub department of our Ministry of Justice. And in Canada, what this process involves is us filing what is known as a Section ninety six point one application, and the Ministry on their website provides you about three pages in order to be able to make a person's claim of innocence. But ultimately Brian and Allen's combined applications ended up being three hundred pages of us noting everything we had found, and was accompanied by I think almost five or six banker's boxes of evidence we had collected over the years what had initially only started off with the four confessions. So presently Brian's was filed in twenty nineteen. The CCRG actually approached us and asked us to file Allen's in twenty twenty, and so we filed his application in February, sort of as a supplement to the two. And now it's still before the CCRG being considered and it's a long process. We've been waiting for a while and we're really hoping that the Minister makes a decision soon. 00:37:57 Speaker 1: Yeah. It really just pisses me off how easy it is to throw a few good men's lives away, but then to of course to undo that dirty work, is it? You know, Well, now we know it's a fifty year uphill struggle with Baker's boxes of material that takes years to a mass and of course many more years to get in front of anybody who's in a position to do anything about it. 00:38:25 Speaker 3: That's the thing about wrongful convictions. It is so easy to convict someone and here we are fifty years later, still trying to undo it. You know, I started on it twenty seventeen. It is now twenty twenty two, just to get an idea of how long this process takes. And I am just on the tail end of Alan and Brian's efforts to sort of undo what happened to them. 00:38:52 Speaker 1: And if any of our listeners want to support your efforts, is there a website that can go to. 00:38:56 Speaker 3: So the ask for us is supporting organizations like an Since Canada, we have so little resources, and to Brian's point, it takes us years to even get to the point that we have enough resources to be able to review and evaluate a case. And in the absence of us doing so, there is no one else. There is no one else that is doing this work. And so people like Brian are forced to wait in the queue until we have enough resources ability to reach that file. And this is a human being that is waiting for us, that is waiting for us to review their case. And so all I'd ask, you know, the pitch to the audience would be to support your local wrongful conviction organization. Make sure that you're able to contribute to them in that way. And when there are policy matters that are coming up or opportunities to support, please do, please. 00:39:49 Speaker 1: Do, amen, So keep your ear to the ground. People support your local innocence organizations as well as larger ones like Innocence Canada. I mean the money go a long way with Innocence Canada, believe me, and we'll have their site linked in the bio. So now we come, of course, to my favorite part of the show. Closing Arguments is the section of the show where first of all, I thank you all of you for being here and sharing this unreal story. I'm gonna turn my microphone off, kick back in my chair with my headphones on, if I close my eyes and just zone in on whatever else you want to share. Bobin, please start us off, and then I'll leave it up to you to hand the mic off to whoever you want to have go next, and then the other guy will take us off into the sunset. 00:40:37 Speaker 3: The only thing I will say is, for almost fifty years, Brian and Alan have maintained their innocence. They have spent the majority of their life marked as murderers, and yet every day, both of them wake up, continue to fight to clear their name. And you know, as Jason mentioned in one of the parole reports that I read, they talk about Brian's session with his innocence, and in both Brian and Allen's case, their obsession with proving their innocence has never wavered. Their story is one of enduring strength, determination, and perseverance. 00:41:14 Speaker 5: Yes, well, I got to keep crying. I can't give up. I need but I need help. I there's nothing I can. 00:41:21 Speaker 4: Do by myself. 00:41:24 Speaker 5: Whoever's out there we can help, will even better. 00:41:28 Speaker 4: That's what I need. 00:41:30 Speaker 2: Oh, thank you very much for having me here. There was a great privilege to be here. I would like the audience and all that. You know, we always think about justice, but justice has to come soon. I can't just steal happen and then nothing, nothing happens. So we have to make a decision. This review has to come to an end at some point. I just wish they'd make a decision quickly because just think also are stressful, the fact that this is hanging over you. Well, when am I getting out? You know why? Am I getting out? Day in and day out? You know it? Just where's the oat? Psychologically dreaming. Please be aware of that there's a lot of injustice in this world, and it's people, and we always think it'll never happen to me, but it does happen. I certainly never told you what happened to me. 00:42:30 Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flahm. Ravel Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one