Criminalistics Case Review

This essay will give a critical review of the R-v-Guy Paul Morin case, which started to take place in Canada over twenty years ago. It will look at both the prosecution and defence cases, the evidence given within both cases and the decisions from both court cases and the appeal, which finally freed Guy Paul Morin.

On New Years Eve 1984 Christine Jessop a nine-year-old girl from Ontario, Canada was found murdered in a field about fifty kilometres from where she lived. Christine Jessop’s body had been left in disgusting position, she had also been sexually assaulted and decapitated. The police felt they needed to arrest this killer before another similar crime could be committed. After extensive investigation by the police of at least three hundred and fifty suspects, a young musician and next door neighbour of the Jessop’s, Guy Paul Morin was arrested and spent eleven months in jail waiting for the case to be brought to trial. Whilst incarcerated, an undercover officer was placed in Morin’s cell to try and extract information from him relating to the crime. This was done because the police were aware of the weakness of their case. In all the time Morin was under observation, by the undercover officer, he at no point admitted any involvement in the murder of Christine Jessop. In 1986 the case went to trial, mid-way through, in an astonishing tactic Morin’s lawyer tried to prove that he was schizophrenic. The jury didn’t believe the evidence of the schizophrenia, but never the less Morin was still acquitted of the crime.

In the years following the acquittal the Canadian legal system was tested to its limits, Morin’s acquittal was reversed and a new trial was ordered. In 1992 Morin was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to twenty-five years with no chance of parole. In the years following new DNA evidence surfaced proving that Morin was a convenient fall guy in a badly botched investigation. There were a lot of questions, which needed to be asked of both the investigation and the centre of forensic investigation.

The prosicution team knew that their case was weak and thus as mentioned before an under cover officer was placed in a cell with Morin. According to the officer, when he asked Morin how he managed to deal