A listening to has been set for 2 New Brunswick males whose 1984 convictions for the killing of a person in Saint John have been quashed Friday by the federal justice minister.
The co-president of Innocence Canada, a company that works with the wrongfully convicted, says Robert Mailman and Walter Gillespie are scheduled to seem within the Court of King’s Bench in Saint John on Jan. 4.
Ron Dalton says he hopes Crown prosecutors will say in the course of the listening to that there’s not sufficient proof to assist a new trial, and the fees in opposition to Mailman and Gillespie will probably be endlessly dismissed.
Arif Virani introduced Friday that he was ordering a new trial for Mailman and Gillespie, who have been convicted of second-degree homicide within the Nov. 30, 1983 slaying of George Gilman Leeman.
Virani mentioned in a news launch that he had discovered an affordable foundation to conclude a miscarriage of justice occurred within the males’s convictions.
Dalton says attorneys with Innocence Canada will characterize the boys in the course of the listening to, including that he suspects it was scheduled so rapidly as a result of Mailman is terminally sick.
“I really don’t think there is anything there for the Crown to proceed on,” Dalton mentioned in an interview. “No one anticipates them going ahead with a trial 40 years after the fact for an individual who has a terminal diagnosis and a second who is 80 years old.”
Dalton says he spoke with Mailman as we speak and although he’s sick, his spirits are significantly larger since Virani’s announcement.
“It’s the first time in 40 years that he went to bed and he’s not a convicted murderer,” Dalton mentioned of Mailman’s night time on Friday. “He’s already working on comments he would like to make on the courthouse steps when this is over.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Dec. 23, 2023.
