lJustice Denied
First off, one of the main things that went wrong during the case was that the police chief threatened both of the witness into testifying that they saw Marshall murder Sandy Seale, instructed both witness on what to say in court, wrote up a fake statement and then made the witness sign it. This was the major reason that the jurors found Donald guilty. Another thing that went wrong during the case was that they disregarded two witnesses statement because one of them was too young and the other one had mental issues. The first witness that came to tell the police that Roy Ebsary committed the murder was Jimmy MacNeil; however, the police did not believe him as he has bad medical history of mental illness. The second witness who came to report the true killer was the murderer’s daughter, Donna Ebsary. She said that she saw Roy washing the knife and talking to Jimmy MacNeil about the murder. But, the police did not believe her because she was too young. The last thing that went wrong during the case is that they failed to do a proper reinvestigation in 1971. In 1971 they did not interview all of the appropriate witness such as Maynard Chant and John Pratico. They just believed the statements that the police chief, which led them to come up with the same conclusion as the jury.
After being imprisoned for 11 years, another witness told the cops that they saw another man stab Seale. In addition, many of the previous statements targeting Marshall were withdrawn. As such, this was one of the positive things that happened for Marshall because this led the police to re-investigate this case. After further investigation, Maynard Chant told the police that the police chief John Macintyre told him to lie about his statement and in court; however, Macintyre strongly denied this and was never found guilty of doing this.
Nevertheless, this fuelled the police to investigate deeper into the case as they knew themselves that Macintyre did threaten Maynard Chant. Shortly after, they went into Roy Ebsary’s old residence and were able to find a knife that matched the DNA on Seale’s jacket. After finding this piece of evidence, Donald Marshall was then released and brought to justice. The last thing that went right for Donald Marshall is that after a long 11 years of injustice the case ended well for Marshall because he received a compensation of $250 000 .
Throughout this case, both discrimination and civil rights infringement occurred. The discrimination that occurred was direct discrimination. This occurred when the police chief threatened the witness into testifying against Donald Marshell because of the fact that he may dislike Native Americans. This was an example of direct discrimination because it was purposeful and explicit.
A charter violation that occurred was when Macintyre threatened the Maynard Chant and John Pratico to change their statement. This violated Section 12 of the Legal Rights in the Canadian Charters of Rights and Freedom because everyone has the right to not be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment or punishment and in this case Chant was subjected to unusual treatment by MacIntyre as he was forced to lie in order to protect himself from wrongful imprisonment. There are two main things that should be changed within Canada’s judicial system after this case. First off, Donald said that there was an old man, who was there at the crime scene and was also the person who murdered Sandy Seale. Before finding this old man, they should not have held the trial because this was key evidence and would be a disadvantage for Donald’s case. As such, they should take into consideration all possible forms of evidence before going to trial. Secondly, as seen in the movie, the trial witness, Maynard Chant was threatened into changing his statement by the police chief. They should change it so that when the police interrogate the witnesses there should be cameras ensuring that there will be no threat to the witnesses while making their statement. If there were cameras, Maynard would have told the truth and Donald would not have been imprisoned.