Clarence Woodhouse, who was sent to prison 50 years ago for the murder of a Winnipeg man, has been exonerated.
Woodhouse, now in his 70s, has always proclaimed his innocence, but no one listened to him, Innocence Canada said in a news release in October 2023, when Woodhouse was granted bail during a review of his conviction.
Woodhouse, Allan Woodhouse and Brian Anderson were tried and convicted in 1974 of murdering Ting Fong Chan.
Chan, a 40-year-old chef at the Beachcomber restaurant and a father of two, was beaten and stabbed to death near a downtown construction site on July 17, 1973.
All three First Nations men were sentenced to life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for 10 years.
Anderson and Allan Woodhouse were acquitted in July 2023.
“You were wrongfully convicted. You were innocent,” Chief Justice Glenn Joyal of the Court of King’s Bench in Winnipeg told Woodhouse on Thursday, calling the original conviction a “miscarriage of justice.”
That same phrase was used in July 2024, when Justice Minister Arif Virani ordered a new trial for Woodhouse. A news release from Virani’s office at the time said there were reasonable grounds to conclude a miscarriage of justice likely occurred.
“This is the result of the identification of new information that was not before the courts at the time of Mr. Woodhouse’s trial or appeal,” the news release said. “The minister’s decision to order a new trial is not a decision about the guilt or innocence of the applicant. It is a decision to return the matter to the courts where the relevant legal issues may be determined according to the law.”
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, who first heard about the exoneration while attending an unrelated news conference on Thursday, said he would love to meet and speak with Woodhouse.
“It’s super sad when you hear about somebody’s freedom being taken away from them and you hear about the justice system, that is supposed to be there to keep people safe, facing a challenging moment like this,” he said.
“I can tell you that the provincial government has already taken steps to ensure that we offer some form of redress. We’ll never be able to give back the past that was robbed of this person and the others in a similar situation, but given what we know now, we can take steps to do right.”
