Guy Paul Morin is a Canadian who was wrongly convicted of the October 1984 rape and murder of his eight-year-old next-door neighbour, Christine Jessop of Queensville, Ontario. DNA testing led to a subsequent overturning of this verdict.
Morin was acquitted of murder at his first trial in 1986.[1] The Crown exercised its right to appeal the verdict on the grounds that the trial judge made a fundamental error prejudicing the Crown's right to a fair trial.[2] In 1987 the Court of Appeal ordered a new trial.[3] The retrial was delayed until 1992 by Morin's own appeals based on the Crown's non-disclosure of exculpatory evidence and by other issues, including the double jeopardy rule.[3]
Morin was convicted at his second trial and was sentenced to life imprisonment.[4] Unlike others convicted of murdering children after sexually abusing them, he was kept in the general population throughout his time in prison.[5] Improvements in DNA testing led to a test in 1995 which excluded Morin as the murderer.[6] Morin's appeal of his conviction was allowed (i.e., the conviction was reversed), and a directed verdict of acquittal entered in the appeal.[3]
An inquiry culminating in the Kaufman Report into Morin's case also uncovered evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct, and of misrepresentation of forensic evidence by the Ontario Centre of Forensic Sciences.[3][7]
Up until his release, he was held at Canada's only Super-Maximum security penitentiary in Quebec.
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