Romeo Phyllion -Why did this innocent man spend so much time in prison?

Romeo Phyllion wants somebody to pay for this

*Wrongful murder conviction in 1972
cost him 3 decades in prison. *

An ailing man who spent 31 years in jail for the stabbing death of an Ottawa firefighter, is now hoping to see his named cleared before he dies.

"Every morning (in prison) I would get up and ask, what am I doing here?" said Romeo Phillion at the Ontario Court of Appeal as final arguments in his case got under way. Now, he is suffering from emphysema and with his appeal hanging over him, "every day is a hurdle."

His lawyer told court Phillion's conviction decades ago depended on a false confession - and a prosecutor who didn't tell Phillion's lawyer about evidence he was stuck at a service station in Trenton, Ont., at the time of the killing.

Phillion, 69, confessed in 1972 to killing Leopold Roy, an Ottawa firefighter who was fatally stabbed in an apartment stairwell by an intruder in August of 1967. He said he confessed so police would release a friend they had arrested, but he recanted within hours.

Phillion had just been arrested for the armed robbery of an Ottawa taxi driver in 1972 when he suddenly confessed to Roy's murder. Unbeknownst to him, Phillion had already been cleared of the murder four years earlier by police, who had verified an alibi.

A police report not shown to the defence at the original trial confirms Phillion was stuck at a service station in Trenton, Ont. (200 kilometres from Ottawa) when the crime took place, according to Phillion's lawyer and a group of law students from York University's Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. The group, called "The Innocence Project," also says there's evidence that four Crown witnesses all changed their testimony about when they saw Phillion in Ottawa.

Justice Michael Moldaver, one of three judges who is reviewing Phyllion's request for exoneration, said that he's never known of a case such as Phyllion's, where police verified an alibi - placing Phyllion hundreds of kilometres away at the time of the murder - then claimed to have debunked their own finding.

In fact, it happens all the time, whenever anybody in a position of authority, covers up a legitimate complaint.

If the Ontario Court of Appeal acquits Phyllion, he will have the official distinction of being the longest-serving wrongly convicted person in the western world.

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