Press Release: Innocence Canada Wednesday, August 9, 2023 Tim Rees
Today, the new Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, and his predecessor, David Lametti, announced that Tim Rees’s conviction for the 1989 murder of 10-year-old Darla Thurott was to be sent back to the Ontario Court of Appeal to be reviewed. Darla was strangled in her bed at her home in Etobicoke on March 16, 1989. She was found by her mother in the morning. Tim Rees, then 25 years old, who had visited Darla’s parents the evening before and stayed overnight, was convicted of the murder on September 15, 1990, and sentenced to life imprisonment. His appeal to the Court of Appeal was dismissed on June 16, 1994, and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his case. After 26 years in prison, he was released on parole in October 2016, and he remains on parole today. Innocence Canada adopted Mr. Rees’ case in 2016 and in 2018 filed an application claiming that he had been wrongly convicted with the then Minister of Justice, Jody W...