Innocence Canada, formerly known as the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted is a full-time, non-profit organization in Canada investigating cases of potential wrongful convictions. It is independent of government or universities. This organization plays an important role in our justice system. It advocates for people who may have been wrongfully convicted, yet, cannot afford a lawyer to challenge the process that caused him or her to be wrongfully convicted.
While our system of Justice can rightly be recognized as having strengths in discovering and punishing persons guilty of crime, it also has an unenviable record of making mistakes and punishing persons who were innocent of the crime or crimes alleged against them.
A major factor in the many cases that have since been determined to be incorrect is that their wrongful convictions were based on eyewitness identification. This has had a serious impact on the validity of our criminal trials. Judges are now forced to tell juries, and, to instruct themselves that they must be very cautious when relying on eyewitness testimony to find anyone guilty of any criminal offence.
The sad truth is that eyewitness identification may seem to be more reliable than it is, because it has often been provided by a credible, even convincing, witness who honestly, but mistakenly, believes that he or she have accurately identified the culprit. Our legal history, however, shows that there is little connection that exists between the great confidence of a witness and the correctness of his or her identification and the accuracy of their identification.
The above is the an excerpt of Patrick J Ducharme’s book, Canadian Criminal Procedure, available at Amazon or in bulk through MedicaLegal Publishing along with Criminal Trial Strategies.
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