MIDLAND – Like the health-care system, the criminal-justice system has the power to mend all types of injuries; when things go wrong, however, both have the potential to inflict terrible harm.

That was the underlying message of a speech renowned defence lawyer James Lockyer delivered Jan. 22 during the Mayors’ Day In Support of Physician Recruitment.
Lockyer, a criminal lawyer for 32 years, is best known for his work since 1993 with the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. He has championed the cases of such high-profile clients as Steven Truscott, David Milgaard and Guy Paul Morin.

At Midland’s Brooklea Golf and Country Club during a physician recruitment breakfast and lunch, he spoke about a lesser-known case involving Anthony Hanemaayer, who spent 17 months in jail for a 1987 assault that was actually committed by notorious murderer Paul Bernardo.

“He was never the same,” Lockyer said of Hanemaayer. “There’s no doubt, having met him many times, he’s a damaged man.”

Such damage is an unfortunate consequence of a justice system that sometimes puts too much stock in one person’s eyewitness testimony, said the curly-locked lawyer.
In Hanemaayer’s case, the word of the victim’s mother was all the Crown needed to pursue him. Convinced he was looking at up to eight years behind bars, Hanemaayer pleaded guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence.

Lockyer provided no answers about how the justice system could be improved, choosing rather to highlight the dangers of the status quo.

Referring to Steven Truscott – the teenager was famously convicted of murder in 1959 and sentenced to die, only to spend a decade in jail before being exonerated – Lockyer said this case alone is sufficient argument for why Canada should never reinstate the death penalty.

Though few people are pushing for a return of capital punishment, the issue of compensation for the wrongfully convicted is one that has made headlines in recent weeks. Hanemaayer, in fact, was one of those denied redress for the justice system’s error.

Attorney General Chris Bentley explained it was “not appropriate” to compensate Hanemaayer because an acquittal alone is insufficient to demonstrate a person is entitled to damages.

Lockyer argued that rationale doesn’t hold up under the most basic tests of fairness: “If we unleash the criminal-justice system on someone, if we pick on an innocent individual … it seems to me very obvious they should be compensated.”