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A murder case prompts a public debate about who can testify ) by KEVIN STEEL
Ontario prosecutors thought they had a bulletproof case against Francis Carl Roy for the murder of 1-year-old Alison Parrott in 1986. DNA evidence proved Roy's semen was found inside the child's body. For the jury to acquit, they would have to accept Roy's testimony that he happened to find Parrott already dead and sexually violated her corpse. Paul Culver, a senior crown attorney, directed the case from outside the courtroom. When jurors went into deliberation, he says, the prosecution anticipated a guilty verdict, and quickly. "We didn't think it would take six days for them to decide."
No one else expected Roy to get off either. But tension mounted as the days wore on. Meanwhile, the media revealed evidence which the jury had not been allowed to hear, and none of the revelations increased public sympathy for the accused. Unlike the jury deliberating in a small room in a Toronto courthouse, the public learned that Roy was on parole for two brutal rapes at the time of Parrott's murder. The two victims, 19 and 14 years of age at the time of their rapes, had testified to being tied up and violently abused by Roy. Their heart-rending tales of horror had been excluded from the criminal's latest trial by Justice David Watt.
On April 13, the jurors convicted the41year-old Roy. He was then sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of...