Security & Fraud

Standing up when it counts most

If I asked a thousand readers whether they agreed with the statement: "It is better to let a hundred guilty persons go free than to convict one innocent person." Many would disagree. Yet this is a fundamental precept of our criminal justice system. In that system, a person must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

All of us read the newspapers with astonishment when it appears the courts are catering to the accused at the expense of the victims of crime. We often hear there are plenty of rights for the criminals but none for the victims. But just imagine, if you will, that the 'criminal' in question is innocent. Imagine the accused is your father or brother or son, and you know they are innocent. All of a sudden, the above statement no longer seems so inequitable.

Believe me, the investigations that we have conducted over the years have put plenty of people in jail and in most cases I have come across, the people in jail belong there. But there are exceptions, Guy Paul Morin and Donald Marshall to mention just a couple. Ask yourself this: Have you ever had any experience with a large government bureaucracy during which they have made a mistake? If the answer is yes, then you can see that even in the criminal justice system, mistakes can happen.

Although there are flaws on, for the most part, the system works. The people who should be in jail are and those who shouldn't aren't. But what happens when mistakes are made or natural justice is ignored? In a recent case we worked on the result was that a young man's life was taken away from him. He and his family were devastated both emotionally and financially in an effort to prove his innocence.

From the moment you are arrested, you have lost control. No one, with exception of your family and if you are lucky, your lawyer cares about your interests any longer. As you go through the process of the many hearings and the eventual trial. As you spend all of your resources, and as you see many people you thought would support you in your time of need slip away, you are alone with the criminal justice machine. No doubt you are frightened, you have never gone through this before, and you are alone in jail, wondering just how this could have happened to you.

If you are found guilty, the nightmare really begins because, there is no longer any hope that the system in which you have placed your trust will work for you. Most likely, by this point, you have spent all of your own and your family's money to

Bill Joynt is a well-known private investigator with The Investigator's Group in Toronto. He can be contacted at 416-955-9450 or by e-mail at billj@investigators-group.com.