Don't represent yourself in big court cases Man spends 23 years in jail because he had a bad lawyer: himself. -------------- The 63-year-old Vancouver man was convicted in 1983 of three counts of rape and seven other sexual offences but maintained his innocence throughout his more than two decades in prison...... Henry's convictions related to the rapes of several women that occurred between May 1981 and June 1982 in three Vancouver neighbourhoods. On Wednesday the appeal court ruling quashed all the convictions and granted him an acquittal on all 10 counts. The appeal court said the trial judge erred by instructing jurors they could find Henry guilty because of his reluctance to participate in a police lineup in 1982 and that the instructions on the proper identification of a perpetrator were inadequate. Henry represented himself at the original trial. It also ruled the charges should have been divided into separate trials and a mistrial should have been declared when the Crown abandoned an application for jury instruction. The court ruled any of the errors would require a new trial if considered alone but that evidence against Henry as a whole was incapable of proving the element of identification on any of the 10 counts, and thus the verdicts were unreasonable.

well he's an idiot and he probably is guilty. why would he be accussed of multiple different crimes?

because the prosecutors could only "make a case" by throwing in everything... like how taxes are thrown in to sweeten the case... but then i throw in the FUCK YOU card and fuck them over. :)

then why would he be so reluctant to participate in a line up?

if we start with the premise that he didn't participate in the lineup because he's guilty wouldn't that also mean that he knows if a victim sees his face they will recognize him? So unless the cops never got a single clear mug shot of him to show victims, why didn't any victims ever say he was the rapist? More likely he was: A. drunk B. high on drugs C. anger management problems and not seeing the up side to following police instructions. Looks like he did learn the down side.

anything is possible but it's unlikely

they must have seen him in court and said it was him

if multiple victims said it was him 1. I would agree he did it. 2. I doubt the court would have released him. My bet is no victim said it was him at all but a lot of evidence that had nothing to do with him was used against him and since he was his own lawyer he got railroaded easily.

if it wasn't him wouldn't the women have come forward and said "it's not him who raped me"? i guess i'm not seeing the full story.

TLDR tbh but i'm still replying

maybe after the guy was convicted the prosecutors and cops were too busy patting themselves on the back to take phone s from the victims? Just guessing... but the court does say they have a better suspect in mind now. Hmmm.

its ed appeals (in the US at least) so if there is evidence that doesn't pertain the appellate courts will correct that... but that's the U.S. just like how the NSA/CIA got fucked in the ass with the torture shit. :) makes a great precedent to reference

I guess his lawyer sucked :-)

it's rare very rare