Justice Miscarried. Helena Katz

September 1984, tired of fighting what seemed like yet another uphill battle, Marshall settled for $270,000 in compensation from the province of Nova Scotia. He agreed, in return, not to take any legal action against the Crown for his wrongful imprisonment. Compensation included $97,000 in legal costs he incurred to prove his innocence and get compensation. Cacchione and Aronson reduced their legal bills. Aronson received $70,000 and Cacchione got $27,000, but this still left Marshall with only $173,000 for nearly eleven years behind bars. That amounted to $43.79 a day for nearly 4,000 days in prison. The federal government agreed to cover half of the compensation. A fund that Montreal United Church minister Robert Hussey set up collected another $45,000 for Marshall. As Cacchione told The Globe and Mail in an interview, “This is not a happy ending. This is partial repayment of an unpayable debt.”[15]

      Fifteen years after Marshall was wrongly convicted, the Nova Scotia government appointed a royal commission, in October 1986, to examine the circumstances that led to Marshall’s wrongful conviction, as well as the administration of criminal justice in the province. Alexander Hickman, chief justice of the Newfoundland Supreme Court’s trial division, headed the commission. The other members were Associate Chief Justice Lawrence Poitras of the Quebec Superior Court and Chief Justice Gregory Evans of the Ontario Supreme Court.

      About eighty people packed the basement hall of St. Andrews United Church, just blocks from where Seale was murdered, when the inquiry got underway in Sydney on September 9, 1987. During the inquiry, the three commissioners learned that the police investigation was shoddy: the crime scene wasn’t sealed off and searched for clues, bystanders weren’t questioned, no autopsy was performed, a description that Marshall gave police wasn’t circulated to officers on patrol, and police didn’t search files looking for someone fitting Ebsary’s description. The Crown also failed to give the defence copies of witnesses’ contradictory police statements, and defence lawyers failed to request them. Witnesses agreed that full disclosure did not exist in Nova Scotia. The trial judge didn’t allow the defence to question a witness about his admission in the hallway outside the court that his testimony about witnessing Marshall stab Seale was a lie. Marshall’s lawyers failed to raise this legally incorrect ruling during their 1972 appeal. A 1971 RCMP re-investigation of the case simply rubber-stamped the original Sydney Police investigation. Frank Edwards, the prosecutor in Marshall’s 1983 appeal hearing, wanted to argue for an acquittal on the grounds that there was a miscarriage of justice. But he was directed by deputy minister Gordon Coles to argue that Marshall was partly to blame for his wrongful conviction. The five appeal justices who blamed Marshall for his wrongful conviction reached their conclusion in 1983 based on statements and affidavits that were filed but weren’t formally introduced before the court. This meant that the Crown and defence counsel couldn’t make submissions about them or cross-examine people who made the statements to which the judges referred in their ruling.

      Justice Alexander Hickman headed the Commission of Inquiry into Donald Marshall’s wrongful conviction. Courtesy of Justice Alexander Hickman