Kyle Unger Acquitted Of Murder After 14 Years In Jail

WINNIPEG, Manitoba — A Canadian man who spent 13 years in prison for the murder of a teenage girl in 1990 was acquitted Friday.

A judge acquitted Kyle Unger, 38, after prosecutors said Friday that they had no evidence against him. Unger was wrongfully convicted of beating, sexually assaulting and killing 16-year-old Brigitte Grenier at a rock concert southwest of Winnipeg.

"It's the first day of the rest of my life, a new beginning," Unger said outside a Winnipeg, Manitoba, courthouse.

Unger said he was "upset, but not angry" about being wrongfully sent to prison.

"When you feed off anger it just takes more from you," Unger said. "They already took my younger years away from me, why let them have my mind?"

Unger was jailed in 1991 and found guilty and sentenced to life in prison the following year.

He was convicted partly because a forensics expert testified that a hair found on the victim's body belonged to Unger. But Unger was granted bail after DNA tests in 2005 showed the hair came from someone else.

Unger now lives in Merritt, British Columbia, and returned to Winnipeg for Friday's proceedings.

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A new trial was ordered in March after federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson ruled there was a reasonable likelihood Unger had been wrongfully convicted. But prosecutors later determined they did not have enough evidence to retry him.

Prosecutor Don Slough told the court Friday that further testing this year "did not find any trace of Unger on the victim."

Unger had also confessed to the killing to undercover police posing as drug dealers, but he said on Friday that he lied to the "dealers" because he wanted to work with them.

"When you're young, naive and desperate for money, they hold a lot of promises to you, so you say and do what you have to do to survive, just like in prison," Unger said Friday when asked about the false confession.

Another factor in Unger's conviction was the testimony of his co-accused, Timothy Houlahan, who committed suicide while waiting for a retrial in 1994.

Unger's lawyer Hersh Wolch said Friday that the court's decision to acquit Unger outright was unprecedented.

"Right now we are joyful that the man has an acquittal," Wolch said. "This is a momentous day. The (justice) minister ... rarely sends the matter to a retrial. Rarely. Tell me of one. And then an acquittal?"

"It's virtually unheard of. It is unheard of. So this is huge."

Wolch said he would not address the issue of compensation for his client at this time.

But Manitoba's Attorney General Dave Chomiak said Unger was not eligible for any compensation because there never would have been a trial if he hadn't confessed to the murder of Grenier.

Comments

[Shawna Watson]

As perhaps the only actual citizen of Winnipeg, Manitoba - where this occurred-who reads and posts on HuffPo, I can tell you that there is a very very good chance- indeed, despite the article's quotation- a 100% chance that he will be compensated. Previous to Kyle, we had another very very high profile case involving a murder of a young 16 year old girl who was killed for no reason and at her place of work, a donut shop. The rush to judgement was BEYOND anything you can imagine here in this city and a man was convicted. There were many of us, including our version of 60 Minutes (called W5) who realized that he was likely innocent and after many many years, he was also cleared and finally freed. We are not perfect, there is such a huge pressure on police to solve our very very FEW murders here, but thankfully we do not have the death penalty and that is why I can't understand a country who does. But the real reason our crime is lower? When someone gets mad here, you gotta try hard to get a gun.

[GoDogGo]

Having recently testified at a criminal trial, I can see how someone could get railroaded quite easily. Prosecutors demand witnesses be concrete even when there is uncertainty. They encourage you to say things in ways that are forceful or dramatic than they were. The end goal is not to win justice, it's just to win.

That said, this case is why you never confess to something you didn't do. Even still, being convicted without evidence like this demands compensation if we are a fair society. His economic situation was the duress that led to the confession, not unlike the duress of two detectives and a bright light. Give him his $250k and move on.

[Bobotheclown]

I think anything less than $14 million would be unfair. A mere $1 million per year is less than the bonus that any of the 1,000's of Wall Street criminals (er, executives) will receive this year. If you think that is too much money then I'm sure you will accept my offer of $17,000 to immediately spend the next year in jail yourself. When you have the courage to think about your own freedom you will find that things add up a little differently.

[dwill123]

From the prosecutors, "Sorry About That"

[BambooHarvester]

America's criminal justice system is criminal !
~

[motoGpifupleez]

It's nice that this story appears the same day as the Governor Rick Perry story about his attempting to cover up the latest execution of an innocent man.

[AlDavidson]

Thank God Canada does not have the death penalty, this man would already be dead in Texas. If one innocent person is put to death wrongly, it is one person to many, and that is enough reason to do away with the death penalty.

[LITU]

Prosecutors become Attorney Generals. See the link?

[pat8942]

The biggest problem is that the prosecution is more interested in winning than justice.

[ZTB]

http://www.innocenceproject.org

[MajorKong]

Wow! What do you say after something like that? "Oops! Our bad!"?

[Vurz]

Convicting the innocent doesn't just take an innocent person's life away from them and give it to the prison system, it means that the guilty person walks away scot-free.

That is why DNA is so important. It's wonderful to see an innocent person get out of prison. It's also wonderful to see a case that was considered closed reopened and them to go after the real criminal.

[NCwordman]

Makes me wonder how reasonable "reasonable doubt" is.

[UncleJimbo]

In America it's usually....How Much Justice Can You Afford?

[Thaigold]

In the US justice system, to get a conviction, it must be beyond “reasonable doubt.” So here’s the solution: if, years later a man convicted of homicide or rape is later found to be innocent, then why not punish the convicting jurors? What is a greater crime than sending a fellow citizen to prison or execution for a crime not committed?

[Godweiser]

Especially those people that make their snap decisions on the basis of hair, skin color, religion, status as an immigrant and so forth and just want to convict him and get it over with so they can go home. There are a lot of 'lock 'em up and throw away the key' type people in America who shouldn't be sitting on juries who do because we (perhaps unwisely?) let just about anyone sit on a jury.

I mean, that's a cold comfort, hoping that the jury is either objective or prejudiced in your direction. Some sort of punishment for getting it wrong would be a really good way to discourage that sort of irresponsible acting out of one's issues whilst in a jury...unless they want to pay a price, anyway.

[loyalreader]

Thats a great idea. Jurors would then take their responsibility seriously and forget their own petty prejudices. And how about the prosecuring team? Many cases are solved because the public demands closure and some poor soul is 'put away'.

[CaveatLector]

Here here. The whole 'innocent untiil proven guilty' is a crock. Trust me on that one.

[EscapeTireTube]

Are you perfect? You never make mistakes? If jurors could go to jail for wrongly convicting someone, no sane juror would ever vote to convict. Also, at least in American trials, jurors are not given all the evidence. Much evidence is thrown out because of technicalities. Many juries don't hear confessions.

[Bobotheclown]

Are you saying that American courtrooms provide no justice?

[Bobotheclown]

I agree. In every case like this that has come up one always finds a situation that is completely circumstantial (how could it be otherwise since the guy actually didn't do it?) and pushed by biased prosecutors. Hindsight shows that these cases were ridiculous from the start and that reasonable doubt was written large across the courtroom. But some juries are just not taking the responsibility seriously. It is very possible to game the system to find 12 people who have been obediant to authority their whole lives, That's what the questioning of jurors is there to find out. So if jurors ignore the obvious reasonable doubt and obey the procecutors authority because it makes them feel good haven't they committed the crime of reckless indifference? Even more, have they not struck at the heart of our judicial system in as serious a way as a terrorist? There are penalties on the books for crimes of this nature but I like the simple "eye for an eye" approach. If you sentence an obviously innocent man to life in prison and he is later proved to be innocent, you get to serve the rest of his sentence in his place. That would make juries take the process of deliberation as seriously as it deserves.

[CaptainFrogbert]

There is a nice vest-pocket analysis of type I and type II errors in the management of the justice system here:

http://www.intuitor.com/statistics/T1T2Errors.html

In a type I error a guilty person is set free. (i.e. the police and DA fail to assemble a legal, sufficient case that proves the individual's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, or the police simply fail to find and arrest the guilty party -- which occurs roughly half the time in all sorts of crimes)

In a type II error an innocent person is arrested and goes to jail (and the guilty person obviously, therefore, goes free). Logically, along with the horror of an innocent person being incarcerated and punished for a crime they did not commit, a type II error also results in a guilty person not being captured and punished and is therefore the more egregious mistake because the failure involves two injustices, not just one.

It always amazes me that it seems far more important to right wingers that "someone" (anyone) get convicted and punished, rather than that the right person gets convicted. One would think that "law and order" types would actually care that an injustice had been committed. Apparently not.

[marco01]

Good thing he was convicted in TX. He would have been executed by now.

[Woodn88s]

yeah, especially if blood thirsty bush (the christian)were governor.

[Godweiser]

Perry's been getting 'thirstier' about it, no doubt playing to his plebes for his electoral future. Texas politics is simple; you look like a real tough guy if you just have people sentenced and you look decisive if you just punish criminals harshly. And you gotta make a big show about it, so if the evidence shows that you are prosecuting the wrong guy (and asked for the death penalty) you're going to get tarred with the 'let 'im git away' brush that then haunts you for the rest of your political career.

Yeah, not only are you discouraged from being 'soft' on crime, there's a lot of good reasons in Texas, politically, not to admit you're wrong if you do make an error. If you want to get elected, you gotta stick to your story and suppress exculpatory evidence if it comes up.

True story, ask Clarence Brandley.

[marco01]

"wasn't"