The criminal justice system failed Donald Marshall, Jr. at virtually every turn from his arrest and wrongful conviction for murder in 1971 up to and even beyond, his acquittal by the Court of Appeal in 1983. The tragedy of the failure is compounded by evidence that this miscarriage of justice could and should have been prevented, or at least corrected quickly, if those involved in the system had carried out their duties in a professional or competent manner. That they did not is due in part at least to the fact that Donald Marshall, Jr. is a Native.
Shortly before midnight on May 28, 1971, Donald Marshall, Jr., a 17-year-old Micmac, and Sandy Seale, a 17-year-old Black, met by chance and were walking through Wentworth Park in Sydney when they …show more content…
was charged on June 4, 1971 with murdering Sandy Seale. While the perjured evidence of Chant and Pratico did prove damning in court, commissioners have concluded the Marshall's wrongful conviction resulted as well from the failure of others - including both the Crown prosecutor and Marshall's own defence counsel - to discharge their professional obligations. Inspector Alan Marshall did not demand to see the Sydney City Police Department's entire file on the Seale case, did not interview Ebsary, Marshall, Chant or Pratico, and did not even speak to Jimmy MacNeil, except briefly in connection with the taking of a polygraph test. Instead, he relied almost exclusively on the results of those polygraph tests, on what Maclntyre himself had told him about the case, and on his own innate faith in the workings of the criminal justice system. Based on an incompetent and incomplete investigation, Inspector Marshall filed a report that claimed to be "a thorough review of the case", and concluded that Marshall had stabbed Seale. The fact that MacNeil had come forward with this new and potentially important information was not disclosed to Marshall's defence counsel nor to the Halifax Crown counsel assigned to handle Marshall's appeal of his conviction. As a result, this information was never presented to the Court of Appeal. If it had been, the commissioners believe it is all but inevitable that a new …show more content…
They not only interviewed all of the appropriate witnesses - including Maynard Chant, John Pratico, Roy Ebsary and Marshall himself - but they also gathered the physical evidence that indicated that Ebsary's knife had been used to stab Sandy Seale. This is not to suggest that they believed everything about the 1982 investigation was handled well. Katz (2011) believed that the RCMP officers should not have suggested to Marshall during their interview with him in Dorchester Penitentiary that Marshall had better tell them a story they could believe or they would leave and never return. That led Marshall who, it must be remembered, had spent 111 years in jail unsuccessfully protesting his innocence, to go along with what he already knew was Roy Ebsary's version of events - that the stabbing had occurred in the course of an attempted robbery. While the Court did quash Marshall's conviction and enter a verdict of acquittal, it also inexplicably chose to blame Marshall for his wrongful conviction. Katz (2011) have concluded that the Court's conclusion in this regard represented a serious and fundamental error. The Court used the evidence before it - as well as information that was never admitted into