Case Summary
On the evening of December 5, 1969, Gary Staples was stuck in Dunnville, Ontario. His car had broken down and he was getting it repaired at a service station.1 Meanwhile in Hamilton, fifty kilometers away, 24-year-old father of two, Gerald Burke, was shot and killed at point blank range in the taxi he was driving.2
Police investigated the crime but got “nowhere” for months.3 A lawsuit filed decades later alleged that it was not until Ontario Provincial Police arrested Staples’ ex-girlfriend, Mary Conklin, in connection with break-in and theft offences that the investigation began to make headway. In exchange for “favourable treatment” in respect of her theft offences, Conklin agreed to provide “assistance” in Burke’s unsolved murder: she told police that Staples had confessed to her that he had robbed and killed the taxi driver.4
A short time later, police arrested Staples for murder. Despite protesting his innocence from the moment he was arrested to the end of his trial, a jury gave weight to Conklin’s testimony and found Staples guilty of non-capital murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.5
After Staples had already served many months of his sentence at Kingston Penitentiary, Staples’ mother found witnesses that corroborated Staples’ alibi that he was 50 kilometers away, at a service station, at the time of the murder.6 7 Staples appealed his conviction and the court ordered that a new trial was required in light of this new evidence. On February 3, 1972, a jury acquitted Staples of the 1969 murder.8 After nearly two years in prison, Staples was free.
However, his acquittal was not an exoneration, and it was clear that not everyone was convinced of Staples’ innocence. In the years that followed, Staples and his family found themselves the subject of a “whisper campaign, stores refused to serve them, people pointed fingers, and there were hushed comments at coffee shops and restaurants where they lived.”9 Staples also found himself fired from jobs and unable to gain employment.
For help proving his innocence, Staples turned to the Innocence Project at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, where students work on the cases of those believed to have been wrongfully convicted. Staples also received help from the unlikeliest of people: Burke’s two sons. Robert Denison and Darrin Burke made a request for the police file on their father’s murder and shared the file with Staples and the Innocence Project.10
It was while examining this file that a “smoking gun” was uncovered that showed that the original detectives on the 1969 murder had concealed evidence.11 An interdepartmental memo titled “The Damned Salisburys” revealed that on the night of the murder, a witness named Wayne Salisbury and his wife had seen three men or teenagers running from the murder scene.12 However, this evidence did not fit police’s theory of Staples being a lone gunman in the attack, so they buried it. In the memo, police officers admitted that they had “concluded at the time that [the Salisburys'] testimony was immaterial and irrelevant and would so confuse a jury that they would acquit just because of the confusion.”13
Almost three decades after his wrongful conviction and imprisonment, armed with this new information, Staples sued the Hamilton chief of police, Hamilton Police Services Board, and five officers.14 In the lawsuit, Staples accused police of “negligence, malicious prosecution, misfeasance in public office, [and] conspiracy” and made claims for punitive, exemplary, and aggravated damages.15 Specifically, the suit stated that investigators did not provide "highly material evidence" to the Crown or Staples' lawyers and sought “a declaration that Gary Staples did not murder Gerald Burke.”16 17 Very soon after this lawsuit was filed, Hamilton police committed to reviewing the 1969 murder file to determine whether the case should be reinvestigated.18
After negotiation, Staples settled with Hamilton police for an undisclosed amount. As a part of the settlement, Police Chief Ken Robertson issued a written apology.19 In it, Hamilton police apologized for the “miscarriage of justice” and acknowledged that the 1969 murder investigation “did not meet the standards for police” at the time.20