Innocence Canada describes it as the end of a 40-year journey for two men wrongfully convicted of a 1983 murder in Saint John.
An independent review looking at how the Saint John Police Force handled the George Leeman murder investigation was released on Friday.
Police said “tunnel vision” was the main reason why Robert Mailman and Walter Gillespie spent years in prison for a crime they did not commit.
Ron Dalton with Innocence Canada, a non-profit organization that helped to overturn their convictions, said he is not surprised by the report’s finding.
“That’s basically the basis that we went to the [justice] minister on and asked him to overturn the convictions, order a new trial and then they were subsequently acquitted when the Crown presented no evidence,” Dalton, the organization’s co-president, told our newsroom.
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The body of George Leeman was found by a jogger in a wooded area of Saint John’s Rockwood Park on Nov. 30, 1983.
Mailman and Gillespie were sentenced to life in prison without parole eligibility for at least 18 years after being convicted of second-degree murder.
Both men had their appeals to the New Brunswick Court of Appeal dismissed in 1998, and Gillespie was denied leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1994.
Gillespie served 21 years of his sentence before being granted parole while Mailman served 18 years.
Canada’s justice minister ordered a new trial in late 2023 and the Court of King’s Bench found the two men not guilty of second-degree murder in January 2024.
While the independent review found that their wrongful conviction would have been less likely today, Dalton said tunnel vision continues to be a leading cause of wrongful convictions across the country.
“We know that there’s all kinds of mistakes made and it’s natural that humans make mistakes. The best we can hope for though, is to get better at catching them and correcting them,” he added.
“It should not take 40 years for Mr. Mailman and Mr. Gillespie to have their convictions overturned. And because it took 40 years, it means that Mr. Leeman, the victim’s family, will never have justice for their murdered family member.”
Gillespie died in April 2024, just a few months after he was finally found not guilty, while Mailman is terminally ill.
