Wronged by Gary Stephen Ross
While the focus of this piece is rightly upon the 27 years that Irving spent in prison for crimes he did not commit, as well as, his life beyond incarceration, I think it's important to make an observation about something deeply disturbing about earlier police practice.
The online version of this story does not include a rather telling photograph taken at the time of Irving's arrest in 1982. It shows a police line-up organized by the Vancouver Police Department (VPD). Seven individuals are positioned for possible eyewitness identification. The person who is supposedly Ivan Henry (although he claims he was not even present at this event) is suspect number "12" and is the only one being restrained by three VPD officers.
What is disturbing beyond the absurdity of this as a "fair" line-up is the sense I have that at least three of these so-called suspects in the line-up are more than likely plain-clothes VPD officers themselves. The B.C. Court of Appeal eventually found that this event was "biased and farcical" and factored unfairly in Henry's case. Details of Ivan Henry's 2012 Court of Appeal hearing are available at:
R. v. Henry, 2010 BCCA 462 (CanLII)
Certainly, the VPD has made significant strides toward improving, enhancing, and organizing their approach to police line-ups (and other investigative processes and procedures). It is, however, worthwhile to meditate carefully on the fact that the kinds of short-cuts and cynical methods employed to convict someone like Ivan Henry were clearly in place only a few decades ago. The VPD is no small-scale, backwater police department where one might expect somewhat less than "professional" approaches to policing. It is, in fact, chilling to contemplate that the police could so casually contribute to the wrongful conviction of someone like Henry.
It is always to useful to keep the historical record in our mind's eye when addressing issues of justice.
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