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INNOCENCE CANADA PRESS RELEASE – December 19, 2022 

WADE SKIFFINGTON – MINISTER OF JUSTICE CONCLUDES A MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE LIKELY OCCURRED IN HIS SECOND-DEGREE MURDER CONVICTION FOR THE MURDER OF WANDA MARTIN IN RICHMOND, B.C. IN 1994.

This morning, the Minister of Justice, the Honourable Justice Lametti, announced that he has concluded that a miscarriage of justice likely occurred in Mr. Skiffington’s second degree murder conviction in 2001 for the murder of Wanda Martin in 1994. This announcement is the culmination of a four-year investigation by his Ministry. Innocence Canada adopted Mr. Skiffington’s case in 2017 and presented his case to the Minister through its counsel. The Minister has today referred his conviction to the British Columbia Court of Appeal for a new appeal.

This is welcome news for Mr. Skiffington who for two decades has maintained that he is innocent of Wanda’s murder and was wrongly convicted. He was in prison for more than 17 years before being released on bail in January 2019 by the Honourable Mr. Justice Tammen of the British Columbia Supreme Court. He ruled that Mr. Skiffington should be allowed to live with his family in Newfoundland and Labrador while the Minister’s investigation into the integrity of his conviction was underway.

When Wanda Martin was murdered in a friend’s apartment building in Richmond, B.C. on September 6, 1994, police investigators rushed to the judgment that her fiancé Wade Skiffington was responsible. However, there was never any forensic evidence tying him to the offence, even though there should have been if he was the perpetrator. Witnesses who did not know Mr. Skiffington established that he had a credible alibi and no opportunity to commit the offence. Mr. Skiffington was co-operative with police in the aftermath of Wanda’s homicide. He provided them with multiple statements and allowed them to search his residence. Despite reports of a break and enter, and a suspicious man hiding in bushes, in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene in the afternoon Wanda was killed, police remained focused on Mr. Skiffington. Mr. Skiffington was convicted solely on the basis of a dubious “Mr. Big” confession. More than 5 years after Wanda’s murder, RCMP officers masquerading as gangsters lured him into a fake underworld and persisted in their efforts even after he tried to disassociate himself from them. He was given lavish financial incentives and he was subjected to episodes of simulated violence. Not surprisingly, he succumbed to their demands that he admit, falsely, that he killed Wanda. Before and since his highly dubious “Mr. Big” confession, Mr. Skiffington has proclaimed his innocence. His family and friends have never wavered in their support for him. While serving his prison sentence, Mr. Skiffington was a model prisoner, and by the time he was released on bail in 2019, he had been eligible for full parole for four years. He was denied parole because he would not participate in correctional programming that required him to admit guilt for a crime he did not commit.

Innocence Canada believes that the police investigation into Wanda Martin’s murder was a classic case of tunnel vision, a well-known cause of wrongful convictions. All too often, a rush to judgment results in law enforcement neglecting to investigate other viable leads. In 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Hart recognized that if the Mr. Big technique becomes abusive, it will produce unreliable confessions, in itself a further known cause of wrongful convictions. Innocence Canada believes that police tunnel vision led to Mr. Skiffington’s false confession and his wrongful conviction.

Mr. Skiffington will not talk about his case now it is back before the Court of Appeal. He is represented at his appeal by Tamara Duncan and James Lockyer, both Directors of Innocence Canada.

Previous Innocence Canada exonerees who went through the lengthy s.696.1 process include Steven Truscott, Romeo Phillion and Bill Mullins-Johnson. To date, Innocence Canada (formerly known as AIDWYC – the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted) has been involved in 24 cases of wrongful conviction.

Media Inquiries:

For further information please contact James Lockyer at: 416-613-0416 or jlockyer@lzzdefence.ca