Anthony Hanemaayer

Anthony Hanemaayer was wrongfully convicted in 1989 for a crime he did not commit.¹ On September 29, 1987, a man broke into a house and assaulted a 15-year-old girl, holding her at knifepoint. Before the situation could escalate, the girl’s mother intervened and yelled at the assailant.² Shortly after “raising his arms” and “roaring” at the mother in a brief confrontation, the assailant fled the scene in white car.³ The mother later identified Hannemaayer as the assailant in a photo line-up presented by the police. Hannemaayer had come to police attention because the victim’s mother had conducted her own investigation of nearby construction sites and had been given Hanemaayer’s name. Hanemaayer was 19 years old at the time of his arrest and was living with his wife.⁴ He denied knowing anything about the crime in his statement to the police, and his wife, during his arrest, told the police that he had been with her on the morning of September 29.⁵ After his arrest, he was denied bail.

Before his trial, Anthony turned down the plea deals offered to him twice by the prosecutor.⁶ After the victim’s mother identified him as the perpetrator in court on the first day of his trial, he saw no other option but to take the plea deal. He would “almost certainly be convicted and… sentenced to six years [in prison] or more” if the case went to verdict.⁷ On October 18, 1989, following his guilty plea, Anthony was convicted of breaking and entering. He was sentenced to two years less a day in prison.⁸ He served more than eight months of this sentence before he was released on parole.⁹

On October 17, 2005, Paul Bernardo’s lawyer emailed the Toronto Police Sex Crimes Unit with a list of 18 unsolved sexual assaults and other offences believed to have been committed by Bernardo at the time.¹⁰ In 2006, after an interview with Bernardo and a concomitant investigation, the police were convinced that Bernardo, not Hanemaayer, committed the crime on the morning of September 29, 1987. With representation by Innocence Canada, on June 25, 2008, Anthony was acquitted by the Ontario Court of Appeal, setting aside his guilty pleas and conviction.

The court expressed alarm at the investigative errors made in Anthony’s case. Most problematic was the reliance on the eyewitness evidence in the absence of any other circumstantial evidence. The court acknowledged, based on research findings, that there was “a very weak relationship between the witness’ confidence level and the accuracy of the identification.”¹¹ In addition, the police photo line-up was presented in an array rather than sequentially. As a result, the witness was faced with “a form of multiple-choice testing,” whereby she was induced into “a process of elimination rather than recognition.”¹² Anthony’s photograph was also susceptible to “structural bias” because it was “visually distinct” from others in the array.¹³ Indeed, the victim’s mother testified in cross-examination at Anthony’s trial that his photo was “the least sharp of all the pictures.”¹⁴ The officers conducting the photo line-up knew Hanemaayer was a suspect and no permanent record was made of the identification.

Marc Rosenberg, a former leading defence lawyer and the judge who in 2004 convened the first ever judicial education course on wrongful convictions, wrote the decision accepting the new evidence and acquitting Hanemaayer. He prefaced his judgment by stating the case was “an important cautionary tale for the administration of criminal justice in this province.”¹⁵ Justice Rosenberg noted that the guilty plea was valid under the law in the sense that his plea was “unequivocal and he understood the nature of the charges he faced as well as the consequences of his plea.”¹⁶ Justice Rosenberg further noted, however, that “the court cannot ignore the terrible dilemma facing the appellant. He had spent eight months in jail awaiting trial and was facing the prospect of a further six years in the penitentiary if he was convicted. The estimate of six years was not unrealistic given the seriousness of the offence.”¹⁷ In the end, Justice Rosenberg repeated in his written judgment what he had said at the close of the oral hearing: “It is profoundly regrettable that errors in the justice system led to this miscarriage of justice and the devastating effect it has had on Mr. Hanemaayer and his family.”¹⁸ 

Today, Anthony writes poetry to express the anguish and pain from which he continues to suffer as a result of his wrongful conviction.¹⁹ Though he sought compensation from the province - which was ultimately denied - Anthony explained to the Toronto Star in 2008, “you just can’t put a price on pain.”²⁰