Robert Baltovich: The Murder Of Elizabeth Bain

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Robert Baltovich was wrongly convicted of the murder of his girlfriend, Elizabeth Bain, in Scarborough, Canada. He was arrested on November 19, 1990, and charged for first-degree murder. On March 31, 1992, he was convicted of second-degree murder. Finally, on April 22, 2008, he was found not guilty of the murder. The Scenario It all started on June 19, 1990, when Elizabeth Bain suddenly disappeared after supposedly visiting the University of Toronto, Scarborough Campus. Bain’s car was recovered soon after, with a large blood stain on the back seat identified as hers. Bain’s body was never found. During Baltovich’s first trial, the testimonies of two witnesses stated that it was Baltovich’s intention to kill his girlfriend “in a jealous rage.” One of the witnesses, Marianne Perz, recalled that the couple were seen …show more content…

Help Arrives During the winter of 1999, when all hope that his appeal would be heard became lost, Baltovich decided to contact James Lockyer, a founding director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC), to take carriage of his appeal. The AIDWYC, led by James Lockyer, looked into Baltovich’s case and found numerous problems that were involved in the court proceedings. Two of the biggest problems that they encountered were the reliability of the testimonies from the witnesses, which led the jury to rely too much on information that had a high chance of being false, and the bias point of view of the judge, which led other jury members to follow along with the judge instead of making their own decisions. Many of these issues were brought to the attention of the Ontario Court of

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