Just one day after exonerating a First Nations man for a wrongful murder conviction in 1974, the chief justice of Manitoba’s Court of King’s Bench said explanations and apologies are necssessary for judicial reconciliation.
“We can’t gain the trust,” said Glenn Joyal of the Indigenous community believing in the justice system, “if we can’t ourselves address where we fell short.”
On Oct. 3, Joyal acquitted Clarence Woodhouse of the murder of Winnipeg restaurant worker Ting Fong Chan based on a written confession entirely in English. Woodhouse could only speak Saulteaux.
Joyal said Woodhouse, of Pinaymootang First Nation north of Winnipeg, should not have been convicted 50 years ago due to systemic racism; the police officers were White, as was the jury.
Two other First Nations men were also acquitted of the same crime last year. Their lawyers at Innocence Canada are seeking to quash a co-accused’s conviction posthumously.
“We have to provide a system that can be trusted, that can be validated – and one of the ways we have to do that is when we see cases that can be identifiably called or described as involving systemic discrimination,” he said in a wide-ranging sit-down interview with APTN News.
“We have to call it out, we have to address it, and we have to apologize for it.”
Joyal called the Woodhouse situation “tragic”.
He said as a judge he often has to compartmentalize what he hears in court.
“I hear horrible cases, particularly in the criminal realm, that involve human suffering,” he said, noting it’s part of his responsibility to move from case to case without letting what he hears overtake or “envelope” him.
“I am not insensitive but I can do that,” Joyal added.
Most times, however, he finds “cases of wrongful conviction and miscarriages of justice much more difficult to sort of compartmentalize, not because they are worse but they are so unique.”
Joyal acknowledged there will be deficiencies from time to time as there are “imperfect human beings.”
But when there are “high stakes”, he said the system can’t afford to make mistakes.
“So, when it happens because of bad identity, a lack of disclosure, the way the case might have been prosecuted, the way the case might have been adjudicated and judged, that’s not a good thing,” he said.
“Along with all the other deficiencies in the system, this presence of system discrimination, it’s tragic at a different level.”
Joyal presided over the high-profile trial this summer of serial killer Jeremy Skibicki, who was convicted of murdering First Nations women Rebecca Contois, Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran and the yet-to-be identified Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe (Buffalo Woman).
“Skibicki is such a unique situation,” said Joyal, “in the sense that it really was, for so many people, emblematic of everything that the missing and murdered women and girls inquiry was all about, so, in some respects, it was a metaphor for all of that.”
“So, we really had a responsibility, I think obviously, to ensure the accused in that case had a fair trial; we certainly tried to do that and I think we succeeded.
“But,” Joyal noted, “we also had a responsibility to ensure that the deeply felt trauma by all the victims’ families, but also the larger community – Indigenous and non-Indigenous – (was acknowledged) because this was deeply felt by many, many Manitobans.”
Joyal also touched on changes he’s implemented since becoming Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench in 2011, including establishing a Truth Reconciliation Access Committee (TRAC) with seven judges and five Indigenous community members to help educate judges about First Nations, Métis and Inuit culture, legal traditions, customs and lived experiences.
Full Interview | Manitoba Justice Glenn Joyal sits down with APTN News
