Daughter of wrongfully convicted N.S. man says grief grows without probe of police

The daughter of a wrongfully convicted man says burying her father next month will renew her intense grief — especially if a criminal investigation into his case remains stalled.

The daughter of a wrongfully convicted Nova Scotia man says burying her father next month will renew her intense grief — especially if a criminal investigation into his case remains stalled.

Amanda Huckle says when her father Glen Assoun died about two years ago, she felt the accumulated injustice of the almost 17 years he spent in a federal prison for a crime he was found not guilty of committing.

“As his life left his body, it’s like all his pain just sat in the palm of our hands and we’re left to carry this,” she said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

In March 2019, a Nova Scotia court acquitted Assoun in the 1995 killing of his ex-girlfriend, Brenda Lee Way. During the years in prison and the five years living under strict bail conditions, Assoun developed debilitating heart illnesses and suffered from mental illnesses. He only received a compensation settlement from the federal and provincial governments about two years before he died at the age of 67.

Huckle said the family is frustrated that a police oversight body hasn’t started a formal probe into whether RCMP officers broke the law when they destroyed evidence relevant to Assoun’s case.

She said it would help if the investigation is launched before the Christian interment ceremony takes place in June. “Not having this investigation occurring intensifies the grief because we feel this injustice … we’re feeling it for him,” she said.

The daughter said she appreciates recent comments from Erin Nauss, the director of Nova Scotia’s police oversight body — the Serious Incident Response Team — that the case is “a priority” and that the agency hopes to make an announcement in the “near future.”

However, she said she’s heard similar comments repeatedly over the past five years, since a former Liberal cabinet minister first asked in the fall of 2020 that the police oversight agency carry out a probe of potential criminal wrongdoing involving the RCMP and Halifax police.