William Mullins-Johnson describes the 12 years he spent in prison wrongfully convicted of murdering his niece as torture.
The Sault Ste. Marie man was 22-years-old when he was arrested on June 27, 1993, accused of strangling and sexually-assaulting his four-year-old niece. He was convicted, mainly due to the testimony of former pediatric forensic pathologist Charles Smith, who was then the leading expert on such cases.
It was later discovered that Smith made errors on several cases; a public inquiry began in 2007 and it was found that Smith had made mistakes on 20 cases, 12 of which resulted in convictions or criminal charges, including Mullins-Johnson.
Expert pathologists eventually determined Mullins-Johnson’s niece had died of natural causes.
Mullins-Johnson shared his story Thursday afternoon with students at Lakehead University’s Bora Laskin Faculty of Law and said he mostly shares his story for his own personal growth.
“It’s totally therapeutic,” he said, noting he’s also in counselling to deal with the anger he had for so many years of proclaiming his innocence on deaf ears.
“Instead of being an angry person, shaking his fist and (saying) ‘things must change,’ to be able to articulate to somebody that what I went through – the fear, the horror, the anger, the anguish, the destruction of my family, everything like that – it’s very much for my personal growth,” he said.
Mullins-Johnson was acquitted in October 2007 and said it’s also important he share his story with law students because they can change the future of humanity by changing how people are treated.
“It’s important for them to hear that when it does go wrong, it goes wrong very badly and very horribly,” he said.
During his speech, Mullins-Johnson said it was Smith’s testimony that secured his conviction and the one thing needed in the justice system is accountability.
“Being responsible for something is meaningless if the accountability isn’t there to protect mistakes. Nobody’s been held accountable in this. Nobody,” he said.
Smith was awarded a $4.25 million settlement in 2010 from the provincial government.
Lakehead’s founding dean of law Lee Stuesser said having Mullins-Johnson speak at the school brought a human dimension to the law.
“You can talk about wrongful convictions. You can talk about what the system does right, what the system does wrong but when you see a person who was so affected and spent 12 years in prison for a crime he didn’t do, you could see the passion, the pain they have. It’s absolutely critical for students and for everyone to see that’s what happens,” he said.
