Romeo Phillion could have gained his release from prison in the 1980s, but refused to apply for parole because he said that to do so would be an admission of guilt.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
A man who spent decades in prison for a murder he didn't commit, leaving enduring lessons for the Canadian justice system, has died.
In 1972, Romeo Phillion confessed to the murder of an Ottawa firefighter.
He quickly recanted the confession and maintained his innocence for the rest of his life, finally seeing his conviction overturned.
In the meantime, he spent 31 years behind bars, longer than any other Canadian in history known to have been wrongfully convicted.
Mr. Phillion died Monday after a lengthy illness, said a statement from the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. He was 76.
"One of the important things about his case is that it's a specimen, example, of how confessions can be unreliable, which is something that a lot of people have trouble getting their head around," said James Lockyer, a founding director of the association who took on Mr. Phillion's case and ended up representing him for 12 years.
"It's well known now … that people confess to crimes they didn't commit," Mr. Lockyer said. "And Romeo was an example of that. And did he ever pay a high price for it."
After being released from prison in his mid-60s, Mr. Phillion spent his last decade living with a friend in Mississauga. He suffered from emphysema and used a wheelchair for the past couple of years, Mr. Lockyer said.
For years before his death, Mr. Phillion fought in court for the right to sue Ottawa police and prosecutors, finally winning approval from the Supreme Court of Canada earlier this year.
However, he died before he could see the lawsuit through, living "very poorly" after his release from prison, Mr. Lockyer said.
His case made legal history more than once, starting with a winter day in 1972, when Mr. Phillion decided, for reasons that wouldn't be understood until later, to confess to the stabbing death four years earlier of firefighter Leopold Roy.
He was speaking to Ottawa police about another matter when he made the surprise confession.
Within hours, said Mr. Lockyer, he told another officer that he "was making a fool of the police" by giving them the wrong information, and he asked if his name was in the papers.
Psychological experts later testified that he suffered from personality disorders and would lie to make himself seem important.
His defence lawyer tried to use polygraph evidence to show that he was telling the truth, but the request was turned down, a decision that the Supreme Court later upheld in a landmark ruling on the use of polygraphs.
Mr. Phillion was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. When he became eligible for parole, he refused to apply for it, saying that to do so would be to admit guilt.
It should have been obvious at the time of his trial that there were other problems with his account of the murder, Mr. Lockyer said.
"When you review the confession, he got all the facts wrong," he said.
"He had the deceased being stabbed in the wrong part of the building. He had himself … fleeing out the wrong door. He misdescribed the interior of the building."
Twenty-six years later, an old file came to light that backed up Mr. Phillion's innocence, showing that police and prosecutors had a report showing he had been out of town at the time of the murder. Various pieces of evidence that could have corroborated – or disproven – the alibi had gone missing.
The association and the Innocence Project at Osgoode Hall Law School submitted an application for a ministerial review in 2003.
Mr. Phillion was granted bail while the application was being considered, 31 years after he was first jailed.
The justice minister referred the case to the Ontario Court of Appeal, and in 2009 the court overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial. The Crown then withdrew the murder charge on April 29, 2010, which was Mr. Phillion's 71st birthday.
"I had a lot of admiration for Romeo. He was a good man and I'm glad he got those last 12 years free and pretty happy," Mr. Lockyer said.
"I'll always remember the day he walked out of the courthouse."
The first thing Mr. Phillion did was look to the CN Tower, which hadn't been built when he was imprisoned.
"He was kind of in awe of it," Mr. Lockyer said. "He'd always talked about wanting to see it."