Three people from this province played key roles in the exoneration of two men wrongly convicted of a murder in New Brunswick 40 years ago.

On Thursday, Robert Mailman and Walter Gillespie were finally acquitted in the 1984 killing of George Leeman, thanks to Innocence Canada, formerly the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted.

They showed that the jury was never privy to crucial evidence and testimony from two Crown witnesses. That included the fact they were paid by police, and that they later recanted their damning testimony against the accused men.

Longtime St. John’s defence lawyer and former provincial justice minister Jerome Kennedy championed and argued their case.

The decision this week was significant for Innocence Canada and the two men, but especially gratifying for Dalton, who worked on their behalf while serving time with them in the same prison.

“I was working with Mr. Mailman and Mr. Gillespie 33 years ago when I was serving a life sentence alongside of them. That’s why this one in particular is kind of personal for me,” he said, noting it was the longest outstanding case for Innocence Canada.

“But the fact that I knew the men personally … I was no jailhouse lawyer but I typed a few letters and tried to help them get attention from media, investigators and justice officials at the time. And then when I got out 25 years ago I knew that there was people like them and others still left behind in the system, so I looked around to see who was doing any kind of work to help those people and it turned out that Innocence Canada was the outfit that was doing it.”

Leeman’s body was found beaten and burned in Saint John on November 30th, 1984 by a jogger.

The case remains unsolved.