A lawyer for an Ontario man whose conviction in the killing of a 10-year-old girl decades ago was set aside this week says he hopes to have some clarity on the fate of his client’s case by the end of the year.
James Lockyer says Timothy Rees’s legal team is trying to schedule a date in Superior Court next month to discuss what happens next, including whether another trial will be held.
It is up to the Crown to decide whether to prosecute the case a second time and Lockyer says it is not uncommon in these types of cases for the Crown to opt against it.
Prosecutors also have the discretion to agree to enter an acquittal, which Lockyer says he is hoping for in Rees’s case.
The Court of Appeal for Ontario on Thursday concluded there was a miscarriage of justice and ordered a new trial for Rees, who was convicted of killing Darla Thurrott in 1989.
In 1990, he was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 15 years.
His conviction was referred back to the Appeal Court by the federal justice minister in 2023 after new information was identified.
The new challenge centred on a recording of a conversation between an officer and the landlord of the building, which police had not disclosed. The landlord lived in the same home as Darla and her family.
The court ruled that withholding the tape diminished the fairness of the trial by denying the defence material to further advance its theory of a third-party suspect.
