Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2021

Episode 8

SEAN MCDONALD: And I said, will do me a favour. Get in your car, start your car right now and drive to the hospital, park your car and go to the emergency room and say, I'm having a breakdown.

TIM BOUSQUET: Glen is under house arrest in British Columbia and having a nervous breakdown. His lawyer, Sean McDonald, instructs him over the phone to leave the house and drive to the hospital.

SEAN MCDONALD: And I said, do you have any medication you need? And he said, yes. I said put in your pocket and take it with you. So he did that. And I managed to call him half an hour later, and he was in the waiting room of the emergency room in the town that he was in. And they immediately brought him into psychiatric care. He was admitted and I mean, he had a complete breakdown and they cared for him at this facility for a month. They were kind. I spoke to them almost on a daily basis, but it was a scary point. As far as my friendship relationship with Glen, that was probably the scariest point in the last 14 years for me.

TIM BOUSQUET: Sean MacDonald is so worried about Glen being isolated out in B.C., he petitions the court to bring Glenn back to Nova Scotia to be with his family. Glen's daughter, Amanda, volunteers to act as his surety. He will stay with her and her wife while he remains under house arrest. All in all, it takes the Criminal Conviction Review Group three years to write their final report and put it before the federal minister of justice. They recommend that Glen get a new trial. But Glen still has to wait. The minister of Justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould, has the file for 18 months and takes no action. A national scandal, that has nothing to do with Glen, results in Jody Wilson-Raybould ousted as minister of justice, replaced by David Lametti. Lametti is on the job for only a couple of weeks when he picks up the recommendation and acts on it. Lametti orders a new trial for Glenn after almost 17 years in prison and four and a half years under house arrest, Glenn is about to finally get his day in court. Friday, March 1st, 2019.

VOICE 1: And whereas the minister of justice has determined upon investigation that there are new matters of significance as well as relevant and reliable information. That was not disclosed to Mr. Glen Assoun during his criminal proceedings. And whereas as a result of the investigation, the minister of justice is satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to conclude that a miscarriage of justice likely occurred. I hereby direct a new trial for Mr. Glen Asssoun before the Nova Scotia Supreme Court on the charge of second degree murder.

VOICE 2: Miss Lewis, perhaps if you would kindly read the indictment and Mr. Assoun if you would please stand. Thank you.

VOICE 3: These same charges that you [unintelligible] in the county of Halifax, Nova Scotia document second degree murder on Brenda Way. [Unintelligible] criminal code, Mr. Assoun [unintelligible].

VOICE 4: Not guilty.

VOICE 5: All right, Mr. Scott, over to you.

VOICE 6: Thank you. Justice Chapman, the crown cannot begin to imagine the profound emotions that the Way family must be feeling in these circumstances. But we deeply empathise with what we understandably would perceive as disappointment that there is no closure for that family in relation to the murder of their daughter and sister. But our role as the crown is to assess the strength of the current Crown case as a consequence of the minister's decision that was released yesterday, and the Crown offers no evidence to the court to dismiss the matter for want of prosecution.

VOICE 5: All right. And with that, I hereby dismiss the Crown's case against you, Glenn Eugene Assoun for want of Prosecution.

VOICE 7: Thank you, sir.

VOICE 5: You're welcome. All right. Mr. Campbell, did you wish to say anything?

TIM BOUSQUET: Phil Campbell is a lawyer for Innocence Canada who represents Glen.

SOUNDCLIP

PHIL: It is a tale of enormous suffering and we hope, fervently hope, that the community that Halifax will welcome him back, embrace him as an innocent man. He needs to hear that. He needs to feel it. He deserves it. And finally, for another day, perhaps, there are issues of accountability, relevant and reliable information that was not disclosed to Mr. Glen Assoun during his criminal proceedings. Behind that phrase lies sad and, to some degree, shocking story in the telling of which there will eventually be an acute public interest. And there is also a public interest, given the record that now exists, the evidence that has accumulated and been placed before the minister in attempting, still, these many years later, to identify who did kill Brenda Way. We believe that to be an achievable goal and one that the pursuit of which will serve the public interest.

JUSTICE: This is indeed a momentous day in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. Mr. Assoun, today is my hope, I know, a joyous occasion for you.

GLEN ASSOUN: Yes, sir.

JUSTICE: Your family, your friends. However, the court is very much aware that the same cannot be said for the last 21 years of your life. Glenn Eugena Assoun, during all of this time, you steadfastly maintained your innocence. And with the support of your lawyers, your friends and your family, you kept the faith with remarkable dignity. You are to be commended for your courage and your resilience. Glen Eugene Assoun you are a free man. I sincerely wish you every success as you begin what I hope will be a positive chapter in your lifetime.

GLEN ASSOUN: Thank you very much, sir.

JUSTICE: Thank you.

VOICE: It's over. It's over.

[Music]

[Sound: Crying]

GLEN ASSOUN: Yeah?

VOICE: Yeah. You're a free man. An acquitted man.

[Sound: Crying]

VOICE: It's a good Friday.

GLEN ASSOUN: My God.

[Music]

GLEN ASSOUN: I can't think straight right now. I we would like to thank my lawyers for all the hard work they did on my case. I can never thank them enough.

VOICE: You don't have to. You don't have to. So how's this Friday call?

GLEN ASSOUN: It's a Friday on steroids.

[Laughter]

TIM BOUSQUET: I’m Tim Bousquet and this is Uncover: Dead Wrong, Episode 8, Still Waiting.

[Music]

GLEN ASSOUN: It was a feeling of euphoria that I've never, never, ever experienced in my whole life. A feeling of awe. I can't. I can't. I don't have the education to use the right terminology to express the gratitude and the.. Just the overwhelming joy of being a free man. Like, I felt free at that moment, I felt free. I remember my daughter there, Tanya. I just remember holding her hand. And Amanda, my daughter, Glen, my son. My grandkids. Jesus. I, I, I can't put it into words. I can't.

[Music]

SEAN MCDONALD: It was it was a pretty exciting day. It was a day I know he was. He was waiting for a long time. We were all waiting for. It was kind of a weird gaff. And it almost felt like that. There was too Glen's being exonerated. The things that I've endured and went through.

TIM BOUSQUET: I spoke with two of Glen's children, Glen Junior and Tanya, about their reaction to their father's exoneration and what they've been through over the years.

GLEN JR.: I never, ever thought he was guilty. I- He's my father. I know him inside and out. And I know he loved Brenda. Right. There wasn't a second I thought he was guilty. None of us did. We always know he was innocent.

TANYA: Yeah, we've always, always stood by him, and I think that's what kept him going. And everybody had that hope and say, I think that that really helped him pull through all those years he spent in prison because he knew he had his kids there for him. And my mom was there for him. I just want people to know how much my dad has suffered and how much his kids have suffered and how much we're still suffering today and how much this has affected our mental health. We never had the opportunity to have our own identities at a young age. Basically, it was taken away from us. We have to find ways to heal from this and move on with our lives.

GLEN JR.: You know, like Tanya said, he did the time on the inside. I did the time on the outside. Glen Assoun on the inside. Glen Assoun on the outside. And everything that I've dealt with over the years, I've lost friends. I've, I've lost jobs. I can't get places to live. You know, my name is still marked whether it's exonerated or not.

TIM BOUSQUET: Glen Junior and his father were very close before Glen was sent to prison.

GLEN JR.: I mean, I'm still trying to bond with him and just live normal like father and son and it's very difficult because I guess I would say he's not all in his head. He's in his own little room in his head. So we went fishing one day.

TIM BOUSQUET: Where did you go?

GLEN JR.: We went on the Eastern Passage. I said, well, OK, well the mackerel should be running next week. We'll go fishing. So I went out and I bought a fishing rod. I had called them a couple of days later and I said, are we still going fishing? And he's- so he's like, I really don't feel good. Not really feeling good. And I said, All right. He said, But I did promise you we were going to go. So I'll just go and I'll watch. Right. I said, All right. So I've got my staff ready and we went out and, and he was just like really quiet and stuff. I could tell he was just in his own little world. And I was trying to interact with him, trying to enjoy that hour or so together and got me really depressed. He just wasn't saying enough. Just staring at the water. And it was a little hard to cope with. So I got up, not upset with him, just upset with the situation, and I just packed up and went home.

TIM BOUSQUET: It was too much for you.

GLEN JR.: It was too much for the both of us, I think.

TIM BOUSQUET: Yeah.

GLEN JR.: My hope for my dad is to find that sense of happiness again and just be yourself.

TIM BOUSQUET: For personal reasons, Glen's youngest daughter, Amanda, did not want to participate in this podcast, but she did tell us it was OK to share this part of her story, as told by Glen's lawyer, Sean McDonald. Amanda is the daughter who took Glen in when he was transferred from B.C. back to Nova Scotia.

TIM BOUSQUET: [To Sean] I have a question that will not surprise you. Can you recount for us Amanda's experience?

SEAN MCDONALD: Absolutely. Amanda is an exceptional human being. As a child, she wanted to be a police officer. You know, I mean, a lot of kids want to be different things but Amanda was one of those kids that was single minded focus. That's what she wanted to be as a child. And she loved her dad. We were trying to get Glen from B.C. to Nova Scotia on to change his bail. At that time, Amanda had at that point successfully been admitted into the police academy. She had graduated with distinction. She had been given the award for her graduating class in ethics and policing, again with distinction. She had finished on the job training with Halifax police where she was a standout. She got exemplary performance reviews across the board and then had been given an offer by the Halifax Police of Employment. And unfortunately, within I think 48 hours, I think before she was supposed to actually report for work for a very first day as a police officer, they wrote her a letter saying, we rescind our offer. You haven't been candid with us about your offer to let your dad live with you. And they destroyed her dreams, in one letter.

TIM BOUSQUET: Amanda said there was a Halifax police liaison on the bail request, so she believed that they were fully aware that her dad was going to live with her. She did consider launching a complaint with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, but she worried it might affect her chances of getting hired by another police force. Amanda really struggled after that. I'm happy to report, though, that in June of 2020, Amanda started a new job as a police officer in the town of Truro, Nova Scotia. With their father now free, Tanya and Glen Junior give me their final thoughts.

GLEN JR.: So at the end of it, there is two people that I want to look on the face. One's, Dave McDonnel. For ruining my life, ruining my father's life, ruining my family's life. And the other person is Mike McGray. I want to gas the car up and put myself on his visiting list. And I want to go see him. And I want to tell him what a piece of crap he is, and why he let an innocent man rot in prison for something that he did.

[Music]

TANYA: I think that, all this that happened, I think that it completely corrupted, obviously. And I think that, you know, the people that did this, it has to come out and everything has to come forward and people need to be held accountable for what happened to him and his family. And I just can't believe that something like this could happen to the extent that it did. They're even saying that this is going to go down in Canadian history.

TIM BOUSQUET: Throughout my reporting on Glen and Brenda's story, I had to fight each step of the way to get information. We took on the court system to get the report released that uncovered the destruction of evidence and non-disclosure. And then I had to take on another fight to get the evidence from the 1999 trial. This is information that is normally kept with the courts and should be accessible to the public. But like everything else with this story, it wasn't. It was being held by the Halifax police. On November 7th 2019, I was finally told I was going to get access.

[Music]

TIM BOUSQUET: So here we are at the police headquarters on [unintelligible] Street in Halifax or across the street from Citadel Hill, and I'm heading in to supposedly get the evidence I've been promised. I'm still a little leery about this. I've been trying to get this evidence since 2015. They first said it was sealed by a court order and it won't be released until the judicial review was finished. That was done in March of 2019. Even then, they said they couldn't give it to me. I had to file a Freedom of Information request. I did that and they said, sure, we're not going to contest it. But it still took two months to get a response to my Freedom of Information request, and they denied it. So I went back to my lawyer. We've been fighting this back and forth for, gosh, six, seven months now. And finally, they said today I could come down here to the police station and pick up the evidence. We'll see. Hi, Jennifer.

JENNIFER: How are you doing, Time?

TIM BOUSQUET: Very good. Thank you for doing this.

TIM BOUSQUET: The police liaison gives me a thumbnail drive that contains all the written documents and the video evidence that made up the case against Glen.

JENNIFER: This is the only physical exhibit that's not included on the evidence.

TIM BOUSQUET: Right. Of course, you can't put a knife on it.

JENNIFER: There's a video photo of the knife in there as well.

TIM BOUSQUET: Right. I particularly wanted to see the end of it.

JENNIFER: The tip?

TIM BOUSQUET: The missing tip. This is about who, maybe a four inch blade, three inch blades.

JENNIFER: Maybe like three inches I would say.

TIM BOUSQUET: With a tip missing. I'm surprised how small this knife is. This knife fascinates me. Great. Thank you again.

JENNIFER: Thank you very much.

TIM BOUSQUET: And just one more time. Make sure you have everything. Thanks again.

JENNIFER: Thank you very much for chatting. Take care. Good luck.

FEMALE VOICE: Thank you, Jennifer. Goodbye.

TIM BOUSQUET: See you soon.

TIM BOUSQUET: So it looks like I got everything I requested. I was really surprised to see the knife. It was almost like a kitchen paring knife. I had in my head that it was going to be like a foot long knife with a big hole blade. It's something, you know, I would have problems peeling my carrots with. It's that small. Here in Nova Scotia, there is a very well known wrongful conviction. Donald Marshall Junior, a Miqmaq, man and son of a grand chief, spent eleven years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Ten years before Glen was convicted, a federal commission looked at the Marshall case. It spoke clearly to the role that racism played in Marshall's conviction. The commission asked if the criminal justice system is inherently biased against visible minorities, but also against the poor or people like Glen. It was a scathing report on the entire Nova Scotia justice system. It cited unprofessionalism and incompetence at every level. The commission's purpose was not just to try to find out what happened to Marshall, but to try to ensure that something like this would never happen again in Nova Scotia. Well, it happened to Glen. It happened to another man named Clayton Johnson. And there are two more cases of potential wrongful convictions that I'm currently looking into. One of which was investigated by Constable Dave McDonald. Innocence groups have documented the main causes of wrongful convictions. Glen's case had almost all of them. Jailhouse snitches who are promised reduced sentences in return for their testimony. Junk science like the knife I saw at the police station. Poor legal representation. Glen was his own lawyer. Police misconduct, like when Dave Moore's evidence was destroyed. And witness misidentification, Roberta naming Glen and not Michael McGray as her attacker. There's one final cause of wrongful convictions I want to talk about: tunnel vision, tunnel vision is when police investigators are so focussed on one suspect or one theory of the case, they can't step back and consider other alternatives. And the alternative in this case was that Michael McGray and not Glen Assoun killed, Brenda Way. Two years before Brenda's death, Halifax police named McGray as a suspect in a murder. That was on the same day the murdered body of a 17 year old girl named Shelley Connors was discovered in Halifax. The same year Brenda was killed. He was named as a suspect in a missing persons case. A few months after that, McGray tried unsuccessfully to kill himself. His address was listed in the police records. It was in north Dartmouth. Brenda Way was murdered five months later. So before Brenda was murdered, police thought of Michael McGray as a possible killer and knew that he lived in the neighbourhood where Brenda was killed. But he wasn't named as a suspect in Brenda's murder. We can't prove a counterfactual, but if McGray had been arrested and jailed for Brenda's murder, Glen Assoun would never have been charged and McGray would not have shown up in Monkton in 1998 to kill again. Joan and Nina Hicks might still be alive today.

[Music]

TIM BOUSQUET: There's a tragic postscript to the story. In 2003, McGray had written a letter to a prison psychiatrist saying they had an uncontrollable urge to kill again and he'd probably kill someone in prison. Despite that warning, in 2010, McGray was transferred from the maximum security prison in rare news to a medium security prison in B.C.. There he had a cellmate, a guy named Jeremy Phillips, who is serving six years for assault. And one night, just as he said he would. Michael McGray strangled his cellmate with a bed sheet, killing him. McGray has since been moved back to a maximum security prison.

[Music]

COMMENTATOR: Lost in the discussion about justice for Assoun is the lack of justice for Brenda Way's family.

BRENDA'S SON: I'm 30 years old now. I haven't seen my mother since I was seven. And it breaks my heart that I never got to know her.

COMMENTATOR: As for Assoun, he says he suffered multiple heart attacks in prison and now has mental health issues. His lawyers say, you know, he should be compensated.

GLEN ASSOUN: What price do you put on a man's life? Because, you know, in my opinion, there's not enough money to compensate for the injustice that I suffered.

TIM BOUSQUET: There's no word yet on any possible settlement for Assoun. But let's take a look at compensation some people have received in other cases of wrongful imprisonment. David Melgar got 10 million dollars in 2000 for the 23 years he served. Steven Truscott received six and a half million in 2008 for his 10 years behind bars. Now that Glen has been exonerated, there are still outstanding questions. One is about compensation. I talk with Sean MacDonald about this.

SEAN MCDONALD: I want to see Glen get closure. I mean, he deserves closure. He's been through enough. I want to see him compensated. I mean, all of the major victims of miscarriage of justice in Canadian history have had closure.

TIM BOUSQUET: As of the writing of this podcast, the Nova Scotia government has given Glen an interim sum of money to help with living expenses until they decide if they will compensate him or not. At a press conference in June 2020, I asked the Nova Scotia Minister of Justice, Mark Furey, if Glen could expect compensation soon.

TV ANCHOR: Next, we'll go to Tim Bousquet from the Halifax Examiner. Go ahead, Tim.

TIM BOUSQUET: Minister, it's been fifteen months since then. As soon as an exonerated is in poor health, has had multiple heart attacks and mental health crisis. And yet he's received no apology and no final compensation. I'm beginning to wonder if maybe the delay is in itself yet another injustice to him. Can you give us an update as to when we can expect something?

MARK FUREY: Again, I'm not putting any timelines on any of the matters I'm responsible for. You can appreciate that, given the present circumstances. But we continue to have discussions with a federal justice as well as Mr. Assoun's legal counsel. Those are matters that we'll keep within the realms of those discussions and in advance the best interests of Mr. Assoun.

TIM BOUSQUET: So, Glen Assoun waits. There are no indications that anything else about Glen's case is being looked at by anyone. So far as I know, Michael McGray isn't being investigated for the murder of Brenda Way. There's no word about police reviews or if there will be charges laid against any police officers for destroying evidence and failing to disclose. There have been no admissions of possible wrongdoing. I have heard nothing about an enquiry. So where are the players now? Justice Suzanne Hood retired in 2018. The next year, she was appointed the chair of Nova Scotia's Criminal Code Review Board. The prosecutors in Glen's case were Dan McGrory and Rob Federly. Their job as crown prosecutors is not to seek a conviction, but to find justice. But they accepted the case that Dave McDonald presented them, including the witnesses who were all connected. They also would have been aware of all the evidence Glen was unable to get into trial, including the list of other suspects. I ask Phil Campbell his opinion of the Crown's conduct in Glen's case, he gave the example of the Crown suggestion that Glen had flown from B.C. to Nova Scotia, attacked Roberta and immediately flew back.

PHIL CAMBELL: That was appalling. You don't throw this kind of massive stink bomb into the courtroom and then say, OK, now, you know, can you wave away the smell or should it stick to you? And that's pretty much what they did here. And, you know, it would only have taken elementary enquiries to figure out whether this was true or not. But you read that record and I've read it again and again. And you don't get the sense that they're that they want to know whether it's true. They want the implication to stick with the enquiry. And I have a lot of problems with that. I'd have problems with that if it was done with a representative accused with all kinds of resources to hire investigators and subpoena airline records. But against Glen Assoun.

TIM BOUSQUET: Both crown prosecutors went on to have successful careers. McGrory is now a provincial judge in Nova Scotia. Federally went on to become a prosecutor for the Canadian military. And what of the Halifax police? Here's Phil Campbell.

PHIL CAMPBELL: There were police tactics in the initial investigation that I consider indefensible and even abusive.

TIM BOUSQUET: Dave McDonald, the lead investigator, retired soon after this case. The chief of police, Frank Beasley, has also retired. Halifax police officer Ken Bradley still works as a cop. I would argue there should be a review of Halifax police behaviour throughout Glen's case. But that seems unlikely, if only because the department is so politically connected. The premier of Nova Scotia is Stephen McNeil, a man who comes from a family steeped in policing. The Current deputy chief of police in Halifax is Robin McNeill, the premier's brother. A long serving former deputy, was Chris McNeill. Another brother of the premier. There are at least six cops in the department with a direct family relationship. So I question whether the premier will seriously investigate police handling of Glen's case. I have reached out numerous times to Premier McNeill. He won't talk about it. Then there's the RCMP. Destruction of Dave Moore's evidence in the [unintelligible] class here. Again, here's Glen's lawyer, Phil Campbell.

PHIL CAMPBELL: I strongly believe that we have not had a coherent, logical or even honest account of what happened with the evidence, destruction and the nondisclosure regarding it, not only from a public standpoint or even a criminal investigative standpoint. Should we find out about this? We should find out about it from a simple managerial standpoint. How can RCMP senior management not want to know how the things that happened in this case came to be? If you were running any kind of enterprise, private or public, and something went wrong on this scale, you would have to find out how it happened. And that hasn't taken place here.

TIM BOUSQUET: The current justice minister, Mark Furey, had a 32 year career as an RCMP officer in Nova Scotia. He was the district commander in Lunenburg on the South Shore before retiring and entering politics. Given the RCMP is destruction of evidence, when Glen was exonerated, questions immediately arose as to whether Furey had a conflict of interest in dealing with Glen's case. Furey sought the advice of Nova Scotia as conflict commissioner, a retired judge named Joseph Kennedy, also from the South Shore. Kennedy ruled that there was no conflict. Simply having been a member of the RCMP at relevant times does not create a real conflict. He wrote: To date, there have been no independent national or provincial investigations into the acts committed by the RCMP. And since there has been no public look into their actions, there is no way to know the real motivations behind the destruction of such important evidence. And what about Dave Moore, the retired RCMP constable who worked for years on gathering that evidence? He believes that they were either covering up the Halifax police investigation or that they disliked him so much, they wanted to destroy his work. Glen Assoun was just collateral damage. Maybe it was both. We may never know. And Glen Assoun waits.

[Music]

[Indistinct chatter]

TIM BOUSQUET: Included in the evidence that I was provided at the Halifax Police Department, there's a video of Brenda. Brenda is sitting at a table playing with children. She's a small woman, not much bigger than the kids, but she's in command. She's making faces at the kids, distorting her nose and eyes with her hands, being goofy. The kids squeal with delight. Brenda smiles. It's a nice scene. The camera operator roams around the room and then comes back to Brenda, calls out her name.

VOICE: Go ahead, Brenda.

TIM BOUSQUET: She doesn't say a word, but flips off the camera, the middle finger of each hand framing her deadpan face. She's pitbull, again, feisty. Someone that knew her told me that Brenda would not want to be remembered as a victim. But as a survivor. In October, 2019 producer Janice Evans and I travelled to Toronto for a dinner hosted by innocence Canada. Glen was exonerated seven months previously.

[Background chatter]

GLEN ASSOUN: Listen, I was talking to Wilfred [unintelligible]'s son. They hung him for something he didn't do.

TIM BOUSQUET: Oh, and he's here now. His son is here?

GLEN ASSOUN: His son is here now. They did the same thing with them as they did with me. They tried to hide the disclosure. And I said, you need to get a hold of a good reporter who wants to dig a little bit. I said, I happen to know one. Do you want to talk to him? Come with me right now.

TIM BOUSQUET: Okay. I should have brought my cards.

[Background chatter]

TIM BOUSQUET: We also ran into Glen's daughter, Tanya Assoun.

TANYA: This is my third time coming to the event. So I've been lucky to have the opportunity to attend. I'm lucky to be here. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't miss it, you know... Having the opportunities. It's pretty good. Right. So I'm glad I'm here.

TIM BOUSQUET: And now the main event, the introduction of the various exonerees culminating with Glen Assoun.

VOICE: I'm going to introduce Glen Assoun and Glenn Assoun is, I've been all over the news, so I don't really have to say very much about Glen and his journey. He was at our AGM. His 17 year incarceration and the painful and stressful journey. His bail on hand. I'm not going to say too much, but I wanted to give a round of applause for his courage and his...

[Applause]

GLEN ASSOUN: Well, it's an enormous privilege to be here tonight. I had a rough role, and I want to thank my lawyers, Sean McDonnell, Phil Campbell, James Lockyer, my three lawyers who saved my life. I can't, I can't say how grateful I am. I'm just, I'm just overwhelmed. I'm very privileged to be here. And better days ahead.

[Applause]

GLEN ASSOUN: Forgot one person. It's Jerome [unintelligible] from New Foundland. He worked on my case for a long time and now you sent my case to Adrian, I'm so grateful to Jerome.

[Applause]

VOICE: [Unintelligible] Sean McDonald who wants to give a very special presentation to Glen Assoun.

SEAN CAMPBELL: Thanks, Wayne. On September the 29th 1999, they came for Glen when he was wrongly convicted of second degree murder in Halifax, Nova Scotia. And since then, I've had the great personal pleasure of playing some part and trying to help overturn that conviction. Now we watched Glen suffer. I was on this case for 13 years and I literally watched him suffer every day, most of which was from a federal penitentiary until March the 1st, 2019, when Glen and I and Phil sat in a courtroom in Halifax and heard a judge finally pronounce him not guilty. And since that day, Glen still suffers. But we've talked many times about that moment, that magical moment, how it felt for Glen. 20 years of toil and suffering to feel that moment and how good it felt in that moment. So I wanted to try and remind Glen and preserve that moment for him for the rest of his life. So I had a picture of Phil and I and Glen the day of his exoneration, framed and together with the original indictment that made him lose his life, together with the attorney general of Canada's reasons for his decision, for overturning his conviction. My buddy. I want you to have this and I want you to look at it every day. And I want you to always, always remember that magical moment when times get rough because I love you and we all love you.

[Applause]

TIM BOUSQUET: Dead Wrong is written and produced by Janice Evans. Nancy Hunter and me, Tim Bousquet, Sound Design by Evan Kelly. Shamhan Bhuiyan provided transcripts. Our digital producer is Emily Cannell. Emily Munshou is our fact checker. Evan Aagaard is our video producer. Chris Oche is our story editor. The senior producer of CBC podcast is Tanya Springer and our executive producer is Arif Noorani. Leslie Merklinger is the senior director of audio innovation. Special thanks to Dave Downie, Tina Pettaway, Fabiola Carletti, Cecil Fernandes, Andrew Norton, Ben Shannon, Phil Leung, Amanda Cox, Sarah Melton, Peter Finlay, Johanna Leung, Jennifer Stairs, Sean Bearball, Mike Trentchard, Andrew Leitao, CBC Halifax, The CBC Reference Library, Michael Belliet, Lisa Gannett. Also thanks to everyone who participated and allowed access to their stories. And an extra special thank you to the subscribers of the Hallifax examiner, who have made my work possible all these years. For discussion, posts, pictures from the case and more, find us on Facebook and Twitter @UncoverCBC. We're also on Instagram @CBCPodcasts. Four more CBC original podcasts go to cbc.ca/originalpodcasts.

TRANSCRIPT: UNCOVER: DEAD WRONG - EP. 8

Social Sharing