In September 1983, Tomas Yebes was wrongfully convicted of murdering his two sons. His nephew, Allard Law alum Tarek Elneweihi, always knew he was innocent.
“All my life I told people about my uncle’s story and how I wanted to do something about it,” says Elneweihi. He was five years old when he decided to become a lawyer to help free his uncle.
When Elneweihi began law school at UBC in 2009, his uncle was out on parole after 27 years in prison, and he continued to maintain his innocence.
Tamara Levy, Director of the UBC Innocence Project at Allard Law, took on Elneweihi as a student – and his uncle’s case. The Project began to find significant problems with Yebes’s conviction, including some of the science that was relied on to support the original conviction. Nine years later, on November 5, 2020, the Minister of Justice ordered a new trial, and Yebes was declared not guilty at age 77.
“I can still remember pushing my uncle’s wheelchair out of the courthouse, and he was repeating, ‘I can't believe it. I can't believe it,’” Elneweihi recalls.
After so many years since Yebes’s conviction, both Yebes and Elneweihi underestimated the impact of clearing his name. “We obviously always knew he was innocent, but we all got used to the fact that what happened, happened,” he says.
The acquittal, however, was “completely life changing,” according to Elneweihi. “Recognition from the public and the attorney general of his innocence – that what he said from day one was true – changed my uncle’s attitude towards everything. It gave him peace and took away the shame that he and our family experienced. The UBC Innocence Project turned my family's life around significantly.”
Since then, Elneweihi has remained dedicated to the UBC Innocence Project, volunteering his time as a supervising lawyer: “I'll always be available for the Project for the rest of my life.”
An unparalleled learning opportunity
For many law students and alumni, having the opportunity to support the work of the UBC Innocence Project is one of the most significant aspects of their law school experience.
Once accepted to the Project, law students are assigned the case file of an applicant who has been convicted of a serious crime, exhausted their appeals (with some narrow exceptions), and continues to maintain their innocence. Students review case files from the original investigation through to the final appeal, with guidance from experienced supervising lawyers.
If a wrongful conviction is suspected, students work with the Director and a supervising lawyer to help secure a review of the case by the Minister of Justice.
“The range of practical experience you can gain through casework, such as investigating evidence, interviewing witnesses, contacting forensic experts, and drafting affidavits, is unmatched by most other law school opportunities,” says Emma Zhang, an Allard Law student who is currently working at the UBC Innocence Project.
For Zhang, helping advance claims of wrongful conviction has been “extremely meaningful.” She came to Allard Law committed to joining the UBC Innocence Project, after learning about the slow, uphill battle facing those who have been wrongfully convicted.
Zhang hopes that feeling heard can also help repair the deep injustice felt by many who have been wrongfully convicted.
“I can imagine that after enduring such an unbelievable amount of shock and disappointment with so little support, as many of them have, that just feeling heard by an actor in the legal system can begin to mend the deep injustice they feel,” says Zhang. “Our clients have told me that even if little legal progress is made, it’s life-changing just to know that there are people who care and who are working to help them.”
Moving the justice system forward
It wasn’t until 1992 that the first-ever innocence project was founded, based in New York at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
“Before then, people didn’t give all that much thought to wrongful convictions,” says UBC Innocence Project alum Isaac Sahota. “The legal system is still catching up.”
For the wrongfully convicted, and for innocence projects working on their behalf, accessing the information that’s needed to understand if a miscarriage of justice has occurred can be extremely difficult.
Innocence projects are frequently denied access to the police and Crown files they need to assess their client’s innocence, as the UBC Innocence Project explained in a recent report on Post-Conviction Disclosure in the Canadian Context.
“It’s a very slow process and it takes a lot of resources,” says Sahota, who has since returned to the UBC Innocence Project as an articling student. “Sometimes to make just a little bit of progress, it takes you three to four months of going back and forth with the Crown.” In many cases, requests for police files, or other materials, are denied or delayed for years.
While these roadblocks can be discouraging, Sahota stays focused on the person he’s trying to help and the steady progress the UBC Innocence Project continues to make.
“If you believe someone may be innocent, when you hear a ‘no,’ you just try again,” says Sahota. “You’re pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and paving the way for others.”
