Tuesday’s Quick Clicks…

Yesterday, the Texas House voted on HB 166, a bill that would create the Timothy Cole Exoneration Review Commission.  This so-called innocence commission would investigate past exoneration cases to find out why the wrongful conviction happened in the first place. The group would not intervene in pending cases or open cases without an exoneration.

A Vancouver man suing for compensation for 27 years in prison for sex assaults he didn’t commit has won a preliminary round in court against the provincial government.  The government opposed Ivan Henry’s application in B.C. Supreme Court to change his legal claim that would spell out the circumstances where the province can be held liable for breaching his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  The government claimed the rule of prosecutorial immunity only allows claims for charter breaches to succeed if they arose from malicious conduct by the prosecutor.  But Justice Richard Goepel ruled in Henry’s favour, finding “that a claim lies against the province for charter damages if the plaintiff can establish that Crown counsel acted in a marked and unacceptable departure from the reasonable standards expected of Crown counsel.”