Wrongfully Convicted: The Case of Romeo Phillon

Introduction 

Recently, wrongful convictions have become a thorny issue that has been accepted in most common law jurisdictions. The wrongful conviction cases draw Canadians' attention to the damaging effects of the miscarriage of justice on the wrongfully convicted individual. When the wrongfully convicted person is jailed, they lose not only their freedom but also their sense of self and former identity. The individual may also lose their family due to the separation caused by incarceration. Families themselves are also affected due to the loss of breadwinners. After being acquitted, wrongfully convicted individuals are likely to have feelings of anger and aggression towards society and, as a result, may have a hard time reintegrating into society. Original crime victims are also affected in addition to the wrongfully convicted individuals and their families. The victims may experience feelings of guilt, fear, or depression. The wrongful conviction cases also showcase how the elements of Canada’s criminal justice process have failed. Some of the causes of wrongful conviction include false eyewitness testimonies, false confessions, law enforcement, prosecutorial misconduct, perjury, false forensic evidence, over-dependence on in-custody informants, and mistaken witness identification. Romeo Phillion was wrongfully convicted for the murder of Leopold Roy, who was killed in 1967. The major human factor of Phillion’s wrongful conviction was a false confession in the absence of a lawyer since the law enforcement officers, the jury, and the prosecution relied on the confession to find Phillion guilty of killing Roy. 

Biographical Details 

Romeo Phillion was born in Cobalt, Ontario, in 1939. He was the fourth born child in a family of nine children. When Phillion was eight, his parents took him to a training institution for truants and orphans managed by a Christian order (Makin, 2016). He had negative experiences at the school, given that he was sexually abused and bullied. He grew up to be a drifter and survived by committing petty crimes. At the time of Leopold Roy’s murder, his criminal record entailed theft and assault. He was not close to his parents and siblings due to his criminal activities. However, he had a girlfriend known as Gail Brazeau. In 1972, Phillion was thirty-three years old when he was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for killing Leopold Roy. At that time, he had a boyfriend known as Neil Miller. He was the prime suspect in Roy’s murder since Miller told the law enforcement authorities that Phillion had privately confessed to him about killing Roy. In addition, Mildred Roy, the victim’s wife, claimed that Phillion resembled the assailant who had killed her husband ("Romeo Phillion," n.d.). Phillion was released from prison in 2003 and died in 2015 after a long illness. 

The Crime 

In August 1967, a firefighter known as Leopold Roy, who was based in Ottawa, died after being stabbed by an unknown attacker. Roy was working as a superintended at an apartment building when he died. Roy's wife described the assailant to the police, who made a composite sketch of the attacker. The sketch was distributed to citizens, and after a few days, Phillion’s girlfriend, Gail Brazeau, told the law enforcement that Romeo Phillion resembled the sketch. As a result, Phillion became a person of interest to the police. Phillion and Roy were not related in any way. Romeo had an identical brother known as Donald. Both of them appeared in a police lineup. However, Donald was released after police confirmed that he was out of time at the time of the murder. Roy’s wife saw Romeo Phillion in a police lineup and told the law enforcement officers that the latter resembled the assailant who killed Leopold Roy (Huff & Killias, 2013) . However, Roy’s wife could not make a positive identification. In addition, Phillion offered an alibi indicating that Romeo was far from Ottawa at the time of the murder. The law enforcement officers had no choice but to release Phillion. The crime remained unsolved for the next four years. In 1972, Romeo’s false confession opened the door for solving Roy’s murder case. At that time, he was arrested for engaging in the armed robbery of a cab driver. When he was questioned about the robbery incident, he confessed to killing Roy. Romeo promised to sign a confession if the officers allowed him to see Neil Miller, his boyfriend (Makin, 2016). The officers allowed Romeos to see Miller and later signed his confession admitting to committing the crime of killing Leopold Roy. Phillion became a suspect as a result of his false confession. 

The Trial 

Romeo's trial began in October 1972 after he signed his full confession. The prosecution built its case against Romeo on three pieces of evidence, including Romeo's identification as the assailant by Roy's wife, Romeo's signed confession given freely, and Romeo's previous confession to Neil Miller. Romeo's trial was by jury and carried out in Ontario since it was the crime location. Romeo's defense argued that the accused was innocent. The defense presented expert evidence indicating that Romeo suffered from a personality disorder and that he had the tendency to lie and devise stories to make him sound important ("Romeo Phillion," n.d.). According to the experts, this desire to feel relevant pushed Romeo to confess to the crime of killing Roy. Additionally, the defense mentioned that the accused had recanted his full confession to another law enforcement officer on the night of the confession. Romeo had mentioned that he was innocent and that he and Neil had devised a scheme to send the law enforcement officers on a wild goose chase. Romeo and Neil hoped that Romeo’s full confession and Neil’s report of the confession would enable them to receive the reward money for the confession. Another defense was that the law enforcement officers had lost many pieces of evidence that the prosecution should have been presented in the murder case. The evidence included Romeo's hair sample and Leopold's blood sample, fingernail scrapings, and hair samples (Huff & Killias, 2013) . The defense urged the jury members to examine the police's lack of proper investigation in labeling Romeo as the killer carefully. However, the defense failed to prevent Romeo from being incarcerated since the jury found him guilty. The judge sentenced Romeo to imprisonment with no parole entitlement for ten years in Kingston Penitentiary. 

Retrial/Exoneration 

Before a retrial took place, Romeo tried to appeal his sentence to the Ontario Court of Appeal, arguing that the police investigation had many problems. He indicated that he had been denied the assumption of innocence to which all accused individuals are entitled. He failed in his appeal in 1974. Three years later, he appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, which dismissed his appeal. After his appeal failed, Phillion began sending letters to the Minister of Justice indicating that he was out of town at the time of Roy’s murder. He also asked the minister to reopen his case but to no avail. In 1998, the McCombie report gave Phillion hope of being exonerated. His parole officer gave him an envelope that had various police reports obtained from his Corrections Canada file ("Romeo Phillion," n.d.). One of the reports was an investigation report prepared in 1968 by a detective known as John McCombie. The McCombie report ruled Romeo as a suspect in Leopold’s murder. According to the report, the detective had spoken with a Trenton service station operator who affirmed that Phillion had been in Trenton on the day of Roy’s murder. The operator told McCombie that Phillion was at the station between noon and one p.m., and as a result, Phillion could not return to Ottawa by 2.45 p.m. when Roy was killed. The train station operator had never been mentioned in Phillion’s trial. 

Phillion sent the McCombie report to the Innocence Project, and Innocence Canada adopted his case in 2001. Two years later, a joint application was submitted by the Innocence Project and Innocence Canada to the Minister of Justice for the investigation of Phillion’s case. Romeo was released on bail while the minister reviewed the joint application (Huff & Killias, 2013) . The Innocence Project and Innocence Canada also discovered new evidence showing that Romeo had made significant errors in his original police statements. For instance, Romeo had taken detectives to a bridge where he had allegedly thrown his blood-stained clothes into a river. Later, he changed his mind and took them to a different bridge when he learned that the original location where he took the investigators initially was inaccessible by car. 

In 2006, the Minister of Justice concluded that the new evidence warranted the reopening of Romeo’s case. The minister ordered the Ontario Court of Appeal to review Romeo’s case. The judges reviewed evidence to determine why the McCombie report was never disclosed to Romeo's lawyer. In a majority decision, the Ontario-based court concluded that the prosecution had not deliberately pursued their case against Romeo, knowing that he was innocent. The court's majority decided that there was a high level of confusion regarding whether and when the law enforcement officials learned additional information that discredited Romeo’s alibi (Makin, 2016). The court overturned Romeo’s conviction and instructed that a retrial be conducted. Regardless, the prosecution withdrew the murder charge against Phillion in 2010, given that there was no chance that the retrial would result in his sentencing. In this respect, Romeo was exonerated without a retrial. The lack of a retrial denied him the possibility of receiving monetary compensation outside of a civil lawsuit. 

Conclusion 

Romeo Phillion’s case is an excellent example of a wrongfully convicted individual. Phillion spent more than three decades in prison for a crime he did not commit. Numerous factors can lead to an individual being wrongfully convicted, for instance, faulty forensic evidence, witness error, judicial malpractice, confessions obtained in the absence of a lawyer, judicial error, and suppression of evidence. Romeo's wrongful conviction was down to three primary causes, including confession in the absence of a lawyer, suppression of evidence, and witness error. In the absence of a lawyer, Romeo confessed to killing Roy after an officer agreed to bring him coffee. The jury relied significantly on his false confession in issuing their guilty verdict. If a lawyer was present, the false confession would most likely not have been issued by Romeo. Another cause of the wrongful conviction was the suppression of evidence by the prosecution. The prosecutors failed to present the McCombie report to Romeo's defense. As a result, Romeo's lawyer was unaware of valuable evidence that could have exonerated him. Witness error was another cause of Romeo's wrongful conviction. Roy's wife erroneously identified Romeo as the assailant who had killed her husband. The jury relied on the wife's conclusion to issue a guilty verdict. However, the false confession issued by Romeo to the law enforcement officers and Neil Miller proved to be the major cause of his wrongful conviction since the law enforcement, jury, and prosecutors all relied on Romeo’s false confession to determine whether he was guilty of killing Roy. 

References 

Huff, C. R., & Killias, M. (2013).  Wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice: Causes and remedies in North American and European criminal justice systems . Routledge. 

Makin, K. (2016).  Romeo Phillion Case . THECANADIANENCYCLOPEDIA. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/romeo-phillion-case . 

Romeo Phillion . (n.d.). Innocence Canada. https://www.innocencecanada.com/exonerations/romeo-phillion/ .