Wrongful Convictions.pdf - Robson Hall Faculty of Law

36 MANITOBA LAW JOURNAL|VOLUME 36 ISSUE 1Against that backdrop, it is not surprising that the Crown in Manitobawas willing to reach back and do a double check, to ensure that there wasno one in jail who had been improperly convicted as a result of hairmicroscopy evidence. And it is particularly reassuring that all provinceswere ultimately prepared to follow Manitoba’s lead, and participate in anational double check.In the fullness of time, prosecution services in Canada may wish toconsider the establishment of permanent conviction review mechanismswithin each Ministry to ensure the continued integrity of guilty verdicts incontentious cases. Indeed, “Conviction Integrity Units” embedded withinprosecution offices have recently been established in several jurisdictionsin the US. 114 In the meantime, what Canadians can expect now is aprosecution service that is willing, on an ongoing basis, to root aroundand do a principled and credible double check on cases where there is areasonable basis to believe that miscarriages of justice may have occurred,and Crown action could uncover the truth of what happened. After all,truth-seeking does form a critical objective of the criminal justice system,and everyone in the legal profession has a special duty to ensure that thepublic has and continues to have confidence in our legal system.114The first was established by the District Attorney in Dallas, Texas in 2007:http://dallasda.co/webdev/?page_id=73. A similar initiative was announced inMarch, 2010 in New York: .Since then, like initiatives have been established in Illinois, Michiganand California. For a thought-provoking commentary on the subject, see: BarryScheck, “Professional and Conviction Integrity Programs: Why We Need Them, WhyThey Will Work, and Models for Creating Them”, 31 Cardozo Law Review 2215 at2248 (2010): found online at .