Case Summary
Corey Robinson spent the evening of July 23, 1992, at his apartment with his partner, Mariah Hutchinson, and neighbour Lori Aiston. Aiston left Robinson’s apartment at around 1 o’clock in the morning and returned to her residence next door.1 Robinson and Hutchinson went to bed and were asleep by 2:30 – 3:00 a.m. At about 5:00 – 5:30 a.m., a neighbour living below Aiston heard “loud thumping, running, [and] screaming” sounds from her apartment for approximately an hour.2 Hutchinson woke up at around 8:00 a.m. that morning, with Robinson in bed next to her. She did not observe him to have any cuts, scratches, or other changes to his appearance.3
The next day, Hutchinson repeatedly tried to contact Aiston, without success. Shortly after, the building manager let her into Aiston’s apartment to check on a water leak from the unit. Hutchinson found Aiston dead on the floor of her bedroom.4 She had been brutally killed in what the Crown would later describe as a “frenzy of rage.”5 Aiston’s two-year-old daughter was in the apartment at the time of the murder.6
Police found the murder weapon, a kitchen knife, but it had been wiped clean and placed in the butcher block. The telephone had been broken, but again no fingerprints were retrieved. However, police did find 40 fingerprints elsewhere in the apartment that they could not identify. The only prints matching Robinson’s were on a living room mirror, suggesting that he had helped his neighbour place the mirror on the wall at some point.7
Police interviewed Robinson on August 2, 1992, at which time he was not a suspect. He provided hair samples, at the request of an officer who explained that the police needed to distinguish any of his hair found at the crime scene from the perpetrator’s hair, since Robinson had visited Aiston often.8
Two years later, Aiston’s murder was still unsolved. In November 1994, Darren Richens, a friend of Aiston’s who also lived in the same apartment building, told police that Robinson had confessed to him that he was the killer. At first, investigating officers did not believe Richens, since they were concerned about his motives: Richens was himself a suspect in the murder; he was facing criminal charges, with which he wanted police assistance; and he was known as an unreliable source who had lied to police in the past. Richens had, however, passed a polygraph test that he had obtained on his own. The investigators decided to try to determine if any of Richens’ statements could be corroborated.9
On December 1, 1994, police requested that Robinson take a polygraph test, to exclude him as a suspect. He agreed to go to the station on December 18.10 RCMP Sergeant Don Adam was tasked with conducting the polygraph. By the time that Robinson arrived, Sgt. Adam saw him as a viable suspect: he had taken “Richens’ statements at face value[,] unaware of the investigating officers’ suspicions as to his motivation.”11
It rapidly emerged that Robinson—who was later found to have an IQ of 75—did not fully understand what was happening in the interview. Sgt. Adam gave Robinson a brochure to read regarding the polygraph test, but despite his best efforts, he struggled to comprehend it. At first, he did not understand that he could refuse to take the test. Sgt. Adam reviewed the pamphlet with him, confirmed that he did not have to do the polygraph, and informed him that he had the right to call a lawyer. It was apparent to Sgt. Adam that Robinson had a limited vocabulary and struggled with “big words.”12
Nonetheless, when Robinson expressed his desire not to take the polygraph, but to go home and call a lawyer, Sgt. Adam ignored this request. He confronted Robinson with Richens’ allegations.13 Robinson again asked to go home, but Sgt. Adam continued the interrogation, until he started to cry. While weeping, Robinson began “rather tentatively to agree with some of the accusations Sergeant Adam was repeatedly making to him.”14
Afterwards, Sgt. Adam took Robinson to a phone booth and called a lawyer, Gail Barnes. He told Barnes that Robinson had killed a woman and directed him to tell her “the truth.”15 Barnes told Sergeant Adam not to talk to her client and that she would come at once to the RCMP’s Surrey Detachment. Robinson then told Adam that he did not want to say anything more before Barnes arrived. However, Sgt. Adam proceeded to phone Robinson’s common-law wife, hoping that he would say something incriminating.16 He claimed that it was important for Robinson “to tell . . . his side of the story so she would understand why he killed her friend.”17
Sgt. Adam interjected into the call at multiple points, telling Robinson’s wife that he had committed the murder, despite him denying it over the phone. He also alleged that Robinson had been having an affair with Aiston. Robinson and his wife both cried.18 Finally, he cracked:
Sergeant Adam held the phone receiver away from his ear and said to Mr. Robinson[,] “You never had a long-term plan to kill her, did you?” [. . .] Mr. Robinson was crying, with his head down, [and] . . . he shook his head and said “no”. Sergeant Adam then said[,] “Was it just something that just got out of control and just happened?” and in response to that Mr. Robinson, still crying, nodded his head and said, “yeah”.19
Robinson would later explain why he confessed to a crime he did not commit: “The officers took me in and they started drilling questions at me. They wouldn't let me go home. They kept saying, ‘If you tell us that you did it, we'll let you go home.’ It was too much to take. . . . The next thing you know, I'm being charged. From there, my whole life went downhill.”20
After Robinson’s arrest, Sgt. Adam continued to interrogate him through the evening. At one point, “he referred to Mr. Robinson’s right to counsel and to remain silent as ‘legal mumble jumble.’”21 Robinson was cold; it appears that he did not eat all day. Sgt. Adam thought that he might be suicidal.22
The prosecution used a number of Robinson’s police statements as evidence at his jury trial. The Crown also called a forensic expert who testified that the DNA from Robinson’s hair samples matched DNA found under the fingernails on Aiston’s right hand.23 The jurors were convinced of Robinson’s guilt. On December 17, 1996, they found him guilty of second degree murder.24
Robinson appealed his conviction. The British Columbia Court of Appeal found that police had violated Robinson’s constitutional right to speak with a lawyer, and that “[t]he violation was followed by intensive, skillful interrogation designed to elicit a confession.”25 The Court found that this breach was “particularly serious” in light of Robinson’s intellectual limitations. Concluding that his confession could not be relied on, the Court ordered a new trial.26
The centrepiece of the Crown’s case at Robinson’s second jury trial was the DNA found under Aiston’s fingernails. In reaching its verdict, the jury had to determine how Robinson’s DNA had been transferred to Aiston. The Crown’s theory was that the DNA transfer occurred because Robinson attacked her. The forensic expert testified that “a fair amount of force” would have been involved; however, he agreed in cross-examination that non-violent physical contact could have caused the transfer.27 Apparently agreeing with the Crown’s theory, the jury again found Robinson guilty of second degree murder.28
Robinson appealed his conviction again. This time, the British Columbia Court of Appeal acquitted him outright, finding that no reasonable jury could have convicted him.29 The Court found the DNA evidence to be inconclusive: the forensic expert had himself said that in fact “he had no expert qualifications in the area of DNA transfer.”30 Rather, his opinion was based on what he believed to be logical inferences from an article he had read in the science journal Nature. The Court did not accept this logic, since it found a mathematical error at the heart of his conclusions. It held that this evidence failed to establish that the DNA transfer was due to violence, rather than casual contact between Robinson and Aiston at their social gathering on the night of her death.31
One of Robinson’s lawyers, Neil Cobb, said after his acquittal that he believed in his client’s innocence “100 per cent. . . . [T]hat’s not a luxury we're afforded very often in this job.”32 He described the case as “physically and emotionally draining” for himself and his wife, Kathleen Mell, who also represented Robinson. Cobb stated that the “system can keep sending me hoards and hoards of guilty clients. . . . I’m just not that keen on having any more of the innocent ones.”33
Much had changed in Robinson’s life in the wake of almost a decade in prison. Shortly after his release, he told a reporter that: “His wife left him years ago. He is estranged from his family. His faith in mankind is understandably damaged.” He explained that after leaving the “hell he endured” in prison, he was struggling to find anyone who would hire him for work.34 He said that, “I’m collecting bottles, doing whatever I can” to earn income in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside while doing “his best to avoid the police.”35
We include this case in the Registry because of the indicia of wrongful conviction in the form of Robinson’s false confession and misinterpreted DNA evidence.36