Wrongfully Convicted (Updated and Expanded Edition)

“A needed wake-up call for Canadians about wrongful convictions and what should be done about them.” – BARRY SCHECK, cofounder of the Innocence Project“An extremely readable, panoramic discussion of how the Canadian justice system too often fails, resulting in the innocent being wrongly incarcerated. The nearly one hundred case studies of innocence denied are so compellingly chronicled that it was a task to pull my eyes away from the pages.” – WILLIAM DEVERELL, award-winning author of Stung and Whipped“If you think you can imagine yourself being a free and innocent person one day and then an imprisoned and convicted person the next day, you’re fooling yourself. Read this book and find out about some of the people who’ve suffered this unimaginable fate at the hands of our justice system… . This is a plain-language, blunt, and crucial contribution to our ongoing struggle with this profound problem. Hopefully, it will motivate you to join a chorus of voices advocating for changes that are necessary to both try and prevent wrongful convictions from happening and make it fairer to correct them when they do.” – DAVID ASPER, KC, counsel for David Milgaard“Kent Roach uses his expertise on the causes and remedies for wrongful convictions to illuminate dark corners of the Canadian criminal justice system.” – PETER NEUFELD, cofounder of the Innocence Project“A masterpiece of a wake-up call to all Canadians.” – HARRY LaFORME, Canada’s first Indigenous appellate court judge and former trial judge”[This book] will make you sad, angry, and hopeful. Sad because Roach’s detailed account of individual wrongful conviction cases shows how injustice, often casual, wrecks lives, particularly the lives of those who lack the resources to defend themselves despite their innocence. Angry because the Canadian justice system … permits this state of affairs. Hopeful, for Roach gives wise and practical suggestions for safeguarding and improving justice in Canada. In particular, we should pay attention to Roach’s powerful warning about ‘dirty thinking’ structured by cognitive biases, shortcuts, stereotypes, and confirmation bias, thinking that easily infects and distorts the justice system.” – PHILIP SLAYTON, bestselling author of Lawyers Gone Bad and Mighty Judgement“Breaks new ground in unearthing and analyzing Canada’s chilling history of wrongfully convicting the innocent. Hard-hitting, accessibly written, and meticulously researched, Canada’s leading authority in the field has laid bare a plague of investigative error and governmental buck-passing that continues to this day.” – KIRK MAKIN, award-winning journalist“From Canada’s top scholar in the area of wrongful convictions comes the most comprehensive and insightful analysis we have seen to date. Roach’s book is a call to action that should be required reading for every person working in Canada’s criminal legal system and every person who cares about justice. Roach’s thoroughly researched and thought-provoking work on the topic of wrongful convictions … brings to our attention the many important cases of wrongful conviction in Canada that are largely unknown but demonstrate that we are in dire need of a new system to address wrongful convictions in Canada; we are currently failing the wrongly convicted, and they are languishing in our prisons. This book will become required reading for the students and lawyers that work with the UBC Innocence Project.” – TAMARA LEVY, KC, director of the UBC Innocence Project

Kent Roach is Professor of Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He is the award-winning author of seventeen books, including Canadian Justice and Indigenous Injustice: The Gerald Stanley and Colten Boushie Case (shortlisted for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing). He has also written over 275 articles and chapters published around the world. He served as volume lead for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Report on the Legacy of Residential Schools. In 2015, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.