Many legal systems throughout the world have established out-of-court remedies to rectify miscarriages of justice and wrongful convictions. In Canada, this extraordinary remedy is served by a government minister, who is entrusted with the assessment of claims of innocence post-conviction. While researchers have already addressed various concerns over the current conviction review process (Braiden & Brockman, 1999; Walker & Campbell, 2009; Roach, 2012a), Roach (2012b) emphasized that little is known about the applicant’s lived experience. This thesis intends to explore the underlying rationale of the current regime under section 696.1 of the Criminal Code and shed light on how the Canadian government, through the Minister of Justice addresses claims and attempts to remedy wrongful conviction. A case study of Mr. Hailemikael Fekade Kassa’s criminal case file, an applicant who consented to this study of his second-degree murder conviction in 2009, will be used to explore the challenges faced by a Canadian claimant of innocence in preparation of his post-conviction review application. This research has revealed that: (1) the Canadian conviction review process implicitly removes the responsibility for error from the conventional justice system; and (2) despite significant evidence capable of raising doubt, the applicant under study encountered great difficulty in meeting the stringent eligibility criteria. A review of the literature provides the necessary contextual information to this critical examination through a comparative study of the post-conviction review schemes operating in North Carolina, the United Kingdom, Norway and Canada. Further, this project uses Foucault’s (1991) theory of governmentality as its analytical framework to investigate the governmental technologies and rationalities securing the current objectives of the Canadian review process and to explore the effects of policy at the micro-level. Following a presentation of the major findings and brief discussions of the evidence discovered in Mr. Kassa’s file, a final analysis situates the research findings within governmentality theory and highlights their broader implications.

This thesis sets out to provide a deep analysis of the mechanisms for review of convictions in New Zealand and England after initial appeal rights are exhausted, and to identify the key areas of similarity and difference between these systems, the reasons for these differences, and their implications. The appeal systems in each jurisdiction are briefly examined, alongside the pressures and restrictions on their functioning. Particular attention is paid to the options for appeal out of time, and for revisiting appeal decisions if new material comes to light. The main discussion is of the specialist procedures for review of suspect convictions in each jurisdiction: the Royal Prerogative of Mercy process carried out by the New Zealand Ministry of Justice and the work of the English Criminal Cases Review Commission. This discussion presents the results of empirical research carried out by the author utilising the files of each of these bodies. It investigates the legal context in which each body functions, and provides an account of how each body functions in practice, by examining the circumstances in which each body will contemplate referring a matter back to an appeal court and the means by which a determination is made as to whether to do so in an individual case. In addition it examines the various factors (legal and non-legal) which impact on their work. Finally, the key features of the two systems are contrasted, with a discussion of the areas of similarity and difference, as well as the possible implications of these, in particular for reform of the New Zealand processes.

Ce mémoire propose une conception narrative du système de justice criminel. Pour ce faire, l’auteure mobilise la théorie narrative suivant laquelle le procès contradictoire est appréhendé comme un concours entre différentes histoires. Le caractère général de cette théorie confère à l’auteure l’espace nécessaire pour analyser et expliquer différents aspects du traitement judiciaire des faits, que ce soit la preuve judiciaire, le processus de détermination judiciaire des faits, l’intervention judiciaire en appel ou encore le droit qui encadre chacun de ces aspects. La notion d’« histoire » favorise l’adoption d’une perspective qui sort du cadre restreint du procès dans lequel la notion de « preuve » est enfermée. La théorie narrative permet ainsi à l’auteure d’expliquer et d’organiser en un tout unifié divers aspects du processus judiciaire comme l’enquête, le dépôt des accusations, la théorie de la cause, le contre-interrogatoire ou encore la façon dont les faits sont d’abord choisis et assemblés par les parties avant d’être administrés et traités au procès sous forme de « preuve ». Appliquée au procès, cette théorie implique une approche holistique de la preuve suivant laquelle la détermination judiciaire des faits est une évaluation de la vraisemblance relative des histoires en compétition. Cela remet en question la vision traditionnelle (ou rationaliste) atomiste de la preuve où les faits sont déterminés suite à une décision sur la véracité ou la fausseté de chacun des éléments de preuve. Le nouvel éclairage qu’apporte cette vision narrative du procès et ses diverses implications mènent l’auteure à remettre en question le bien-fondé de la vision traditionnelle voulant que le procès mène à une détermination judiciaire des faits qui soit exacte. Au terme de son illustration de la valeur heuristique de la théorie narrative, l’auteure revisite sous la perspective narrative les récentes études en matière d’erreurs judiciaires. Elle en conclut que le droit commande au juge d’atteindre une vérité hybride sur les faits, à michemin entre, d’une part, ce qui est survenu dans la réalité et, d’autre part, ce qui permet de conférer un maximum de cohérence aux éléments de preuves effectivement présentés au procès. / This master’s thesis proposes a narrative conceptualization of the criminal justice system. The author employs the narrative theory framework that conceives the adversarial trial as a contest between different stories. This comprehensive theory offers a lens through which the author analyzes and explains multiple aspects of the judicial processing of facts including evidence at trial, fact-finding, appellate review and the law governing these aspects. The concept of “story” allows a broader perspective than the concept of “evidence” which is limited to the trial. This umbrella theory is therefore used to explain, organize and provide a united understanding of various aspects of the judicial system, such as the investigatory process, the laying of charges, the theory of a case, the cross-examinations, as well as how facts are chosen and organized before being presented and processed at trial as “evidence”. At trial, the global perspective of the narrative theory challenges the traditional (or rationalist) atomist approach to evidence, which explains fact-finding as a decision based on the truthfulness or the falseness of each individual piece of evidence adduced at trial. The narrative perspective, rather, suggests a holistic approach – fact-finding is a decision regarding the relative plausibility between two competing stories. Thus, these insights from the narrative theory call into question the traditional assumption that trials lead to accurate findings of fact. After her demonstration of the heuristic value of the narrative theory, the author applies the narrative framework to recent studies on miscarriages of justice. She concludes that the law enables triers of fact to reach only a hybrid truth, halfway between what happened in reality and an assessment of the consistency between the evidence adduced at trial.