THE ROBERT BADGEROW CASE

Well I'm kind of stunned. I read the article in the Waterloo Region Record earlier this week titled "Man stands trial four times in same murder case". Basically I was appalled that any person in Canada could be convicted of first degree murder, then acquitted upon appeal, only to be charged two more times and the juries could not come to a unanimous verdict, hence a mistrial. That said trial number four is now in the works. This is all wrong I thought and what the hell is wrong with our judicial system. Then lo and behold I read an article from 2014 by a Hamilton Spectator reporter. My God but this same accused was also charged with a second assault as in an attempted murder charge only weeks after the initial murder of Diane Werendowicz.

Allegedly new evidence 35 years after the fact will be allowed at the fourth trial. A local Judge (Gerry Taylor) had stayed the Crown's charges back in 2012 saying that Badgerow had been through enough and the Crown had had ample opportunities to prosecute him. An appeal court said otherwise a couple of years back and here we go again. To date Mr. Badgerow has spent eleven years in jail for crimes to date that the legal system have been unable to make stick. Usually guilty or otherwise, ties go to the runner in baseball and court. In other words you are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Unfortunately sometimes this means that a guilty person walks free but is that not better than the plethora of later proven innocent people that our judicial systems have stuck behind bars for decades?