Wrongfully Convicted Man Seeks Compensation
March 9th, 2009 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
Quebec resident Michel Dumont (pictured) is suing the Canadian and Quebecois provincial governments for their detention of him for 34 months for a sex crime he did not commit. Read about it here (CTV, 2/23/09).
After his conviction in 1991, the victim of the assault told police and federal authorities that she was no longer certain that her assailant had been Dumont. Nevertheless, authorities failed to convey that information to Dumont or his counsel despite the fact that they had appealed the conviction. That appeal was denied in 1994.
Oddly, the Crown now asserts that his attorney knew of the victim’s recantation, but elected not to raise the issue on appeal. Unfortunately for Dumont, his first attorney has died and so cannot testify regarding receipt, or lack thereof, of the evidence.
Dumont was finally acquitted and released in 1997, but not before he was jailed with the label ‘sex offender.’ He has testified to threats and assaults of which he was the victim while in prison.
And of course, having supposedly “gotten their man,” police have been unable, since Dumont’s acquittal, to ascertain the identity of the actual offender. Presumably, he is a free man.