Allan Miaponoose

Case Summary

On the evening of June 5, 1993, a twelve-year-old girl was attacked by a stranger as she walked home through a field. The man sexually assaulted her. He fled after approximately four to five minutes, having heard a vehicle nearby.1 The girl ran home and told her parents, who called the police. An officer came to her house later that night, and she gave a description of the assailant: a large man with some facial hair, wearing a black t-shirt and jeans.2

In the next few days, police tried and failed to locate possible suspects with facial hair matching the victim’s description.3 On June 8, however, the officer who had recorded the description of the attacker approached Allan Miaponoose, a clean-shaven Indigenous man.4 There was no evidence that Miaponoose had ever had facial hair, and police made no effort to determine whether or not he owned clothing that matched the victim’s description.5

Under false pretences, the officer persuaded Miaponoose to take a ride in a police van, without telling him the true purpose of this trip.6 Meanwhile, he led the victim and her father to believe that Miaponoose had been detained as a suspect, and arranged for them to wait at a specific location, so that he could drive by with Miaponoose in the police van. Upon seeing him in the van, the victim identified Miaponoose as her attacker.7

In August 1994, Miaponoose was convicted of sexual assault following a judge-alone trial. The only evidence connecting him to the attack was the victim’s eyewitness identification. He was sentenced to twelve months in prison.8

Miaponoose appealed his conviction to the Ontario Court of Appeal. The court overturned his conviction and acquitted him, finding that the guilty verdict was unreasonable and could not be supported by the evidence called at trial.9

The court was clear in its ruling: the “identification procedure in this case was totally unjustifiable” and led to an unfair trial that deprived Miaponoose, the victim, and their community of the chance to see justice done.10 The court emphasized that the victim “was sincere and tried to do her best in these trying and distressing circumstances.”11 The victim's identification could not be relied on because police had so strongly suggested that Miaponoose was her assailant. This improper and dishonest procedure compounded the inherent frailties of eyewitness identification, ensuring that the victim’s evidence was compromised from the start.12

In addition, the court criticized the trial prosecutor for refusing to call the officer who arranged the police van identification as a witness - thus forcing defence counsel to do so, which restricted the scope of questioning - and for trying to limit the ensuing cross-examination. The court found that the Crown failed to meet his obligation “to ensure that all relevant circumstances surrounding [the] pretrial eyewitness identification procedures be . . . made available for scrutiny” at Miaponoose’s trial.13

As a result of the Crown and police failure to ensure the integrity of the evidence called in his case, Miaponoose spent time in prison for a heinous crime that he did not commit.14

We include this case in the Registry due to the indicia of wrongful conviction in the form of mistaken eyewitness evidence, occasioned by an improper and suggestive police identification procedure.15


[1] R. v. Miaponoose, 1996 CarswellOnt 3386, 1996 CanLII 1268 (ON CA) at para 2 [Miaponoose].
[2] Ibid. at paras 2, 19.
[3] Ibid. at para 20.
[4] Ibid. at paras 3, 22; Kent Roach, “The Wrongful Conviction of Indigenous People in Australia and Canada” (2015) 17 Flinders Law Journal 202 at 253.
[5] Ibid. at paras 22, 37.
[6] Miaponoose, supra note 1 at paras 3, 6, 23.
[7] Ibid. at paras 3, 23-25.
[8] Ibid. at paras 1, 4, 13.
[9] Ibid. at para 38.
[10] Ibid. at para 28.
[11] Ibid. at para 36.
[12] Ibid. at paras 17, 23-24, 27-28, 35.
[13] Ibid. at paras 29-30.
[14] Ibid. at paras 1, 17, 23-32.
[15] Ibid. at paras 23, 27-28, 35-36.

 

Case Details

  • Full name:

    Allan Miaponoose

  • Gender identity:

    Male

  • Race/ethnicity:

    Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit, Métis, Native American, etc.)

  • Age - at the time of conviction:

    48

  • Charges - specific offences:

    Sexual assault

  • Date of conviction:

    1994-08-02

  • Date wrongful conviction was overturned:

    1996-08-16

  • Sentence - total time served:

    00 years, 02 months, 21 days

  • Legal mechanism by which wrongful conviction was overturned:

    Other

  • Status of alleged crime:

    Unsolved

  • Compensation Received?

    Unknown

  • Guilty plea?

    No

  • Cause(s) of wrongful conviction:

    Miaponoose was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault after police improperly obtained eyewitness evidence from the victim, a twelve-year-old girl. Police led her to believe that Miaponoose was her assailant and then requested that she wait while he was driven by in a police van.