Wrongful convictions in Canada topic of Chief Justice Thane A. Campbell Lectureship in Law
Canadian criminal defence lawyer James Lockyer, CM, will speak about wrongful convictions in Canada during the Chief Justice Thane A. Campbell Lectureship in Law presentation on Thursday, May 9, 2024, at The Guild, 111 Queen Street, Charlottetown, at 4:30 pm.
The Chief Justice Thane A. Campbell Lectureship in Law is open to the public. All are welcome to attend.
Lockyer obtained his LLB at the University of Nottingham in 1971 and in 1974 was called to the bar in England as a barrister. In 1972–1973, he was an assistant professor of law at McGill University, and from 1974–1977 he was an assistant professor of law at the University of Windsor. In 1977, he was called to the Ontario bar and began to practice criminal law. He has been a criminal lawyer for 45 years doing trial defence and appeal work. Since 1992, much of his practice has involved unravelling wrongful convictions.
A partner in the Toronto office of Lockyer Zaduk Zeeh, he is a founding director of Innocence Canada (formerly known as the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted), a Canada-wide organization that advocates for the wrongly convicted. In this capacity, he has been involved in more than 30 high-profile wrongful conviction cases including those of Guy Paul Morin (1995), David Milgaard (1997), Clayton Johnson (2002), Steven Truscott (2007), Robert Baltovich (2008), William Mullins Johnson (2008), Romeo Phillion (2010), Tammy Marquardt (2011), Leighton Hay (2014), John Salmon (2015), Maria Shepherd (2016), Frank Ostrowski (2018), Joyce Hayman (2021), Jacques Delisle (2021), Bernard Doyle (2023), Brian Anderson and Allan Woodhouse (2023), and Robert Mailman and Walter Gillespie (2024).
In 2001, he received the G. Arthur Martin Criminal Justice Medal from the Criminal Lawyers’ Association. In 2005, he received the John Howard Society’s Award for Distinguished Humanitarian Service. In 2012, he received the Award for Justice (Advocates Society). He has received honorary doctorates from five Canadian universities and the Law Society of Upper Canada. In December 2018, he was named a member of the Order of Canada.
Co-sponsored by the University of Prince Edward Island and the Law Foundation of Prince Edward Island, the Chief Justice Thane A. Campbell Lectureship in Law honours Thane A. Campbell, Rhodes Scholar, former premier of Prince Edward Island, and first chancellor of the University of Prince Edward Island.
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