It Never Happened

TORONTO -- A man who spent more than a third of his life in prison for a rape and murder that may have never taken place stepped into the sunshine Wednesday, freed on bail from a 12-year "hell" while Ottawa decides whether he fell victim to another Canadian miscarriage of justice.

William Mullins-Johnson fought back tears as he emerged from a Toronto courthouse just minutes after an Ontario Superior Court judge set him free on $125,000 bail pending the results of a federal review of his case.

The 35-year-old Mullins-Johnson, of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, was convicted in 1994 of sodomizing and strangling his four-year-old niece Valin Johnson, who was found dead in her bed on the morning of June 27, 1993.

No forensic evidence linked him to the crime but he was found guilty based on testimony from pathologists, one of whom was Dr. Charles Smith, whose handling of 40 suspicious child deaths since 1991 is currently under review.

Two experts, including Ontario's chief pathologist, now say Valin was never sexually abused or strangled. They argue she in fact died of natural causes, possibly from choking on her own vomit caused by a chronic stomach ailment.

It now falls to Justice Minister Irwin Cotler to decide whether to quash the guilty verdict and order a new trial, hand it back to the Ontario Court of Appeal, or simply dismiss the application.

"I hope that my family comes to understand that nothing was done to my niece - not by me, and not by anybody else," said Mullins-Johnson. "I loved that little girl and she loved me."

(adapted from an article appearing in The Canadian Press, Wednesday, September 21, 2005)