No public inquiry to be held into Baltovich case: Ont. attorney general

Attorney General Chris Bentley announced Friday he had no plans to call an inquiry after giving the matter a "great deal of thought" and speaking with Baltovich's lawyers and the parents of Baltovich's former girlfriend Elizabeth Bain, who disappeared in 1990.

"I've listened carefully to the reasons for and against another inquiry into this matter, and I've concluded that another inquiry into this case will not provide additional information to strengthen the administration of justice," he said.

But the province will do "whatever it takes" to improve the system so that such long delays of justice don't happen again, Bentley added.

"I say to Mr. and Mrs. Bain, you have my commitment, our government's commitment, that we will improve our system of justice so that no family will have to wait like you have had to - that we move to justice faster," he said.

Baltovich, who added his voice to calls for an inquiry, was found not guilty minutes into his second trial last month after the Crown said it had no evidence to support a conviction.

The 42-year-old librarian was handed a life sentence in 1992 after he was found guilty of killing Bain. He served eight years of his prison sentence before he was given a chance to appeal his case, and was released on bail in 2000.

Ontario's highest court quashed his conviction in 2005 and ordered a new trial, saying the original judge had been unacceptably biased in charging the jury that found him guilty.

Bentley acknowledged that while Baltovich received a fair trial, it took much too long.

"We all know that justice requires patience," he said. "But cases shouldn't take 18 years."

Baltovich's lawyer James Lockyer condemned the decision, saying he tried to convince Bentley to hold an inquiry during a meeting earlier this week.

"It's a case that now looks like it's doomed to never being solved, which is a terrible thing," said Lockyer, a prominent criminal lawyer who has been involved in exposing a number of wrongful conviction cases in Canada, including David Milgaard's.

"The justice system made such a mess of this case. For 18 years, they made a mess of it and nothing's going to be done to ensure it doesn't happen to someone else."

Lockyer said he hasn't been able to give the bad news to Baltovich, who took his first plane trip on Sunday to visit relatives out west.

"I know he'll be disappointed," he said.

Bentley had initially dismissed the idea of public inquiry soon after Baltovich's acquittal, but hopes were revived when Premier Dalton McGuinty seemed more sympathetic.

Without an inquiry, neither Baltovich nor the Bain family will find the answers they've long sought, said Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory.

"(Bentley's) answered all the questions in his own mind - hasn't answered it for the rest of us, by the way - and now he's trying to sweep all this under the carpet," he said.

The government can't fix the system until it understands what went wrong in the Baltovich case and so many others, said NDP critic Peter Kormos.

"What it's going to take is for there to be a careful and thorough analysis of the Baltovich prosecution for the attorney general to start to understand the flaws in the system," he said.

"And unless we do that, we are not going to prevent similar miscarriages of justice."

Police have said they have no plans to launch a new investigation into the murder of the 22-year-old Bain, who vanished from the University of Toronto's east-end campus in June 1990. Her bloodstained car was found nearby three days later.

Police suspected Baltovich almost immediately. At his original trial, the Crown argued that he killed Bain in a jealous rage because she wanted to break up with him.

Those close to the case still maintain the Crown and the officers who charged Baltovich have much to answer for.

Other issues include what appears to have been a consistent lack of disclosure of important evidence that might have exonerated Baltovich, and an unwillingness to consider killer Paul Bernardo as a viable suspect.

During an eight-day appeal in 2004, Baltovich's lawyers argued that at the time of Bain's disappearance, Bernardo had been prowling east-end Toronto as the as-yet unidentified Scarborough rapist.

Bentley said Baltovich didn't request financial compensation, but Lockyer suggested it hasn't been ruled out.

"Rob's own position at the moment is, 'Right now, I just need to get on with my life and I'll think about that in due course,"' Lockyer said.

The province will be receiving recommendations on how to deal with cases more quickly, Bentley said.

Two prominent experts are currently reviewing how large and complex criminal cases are handled by Ontario's justice system and are expected to deliver their findings by the end of the summer, Bentley said.

The ministry has also started going through its biggest cases to see if they can be moved more quickly through the system, he said.

Bentley also promised to launch a new initiative "in the near future" that will ensure all cases, not just the largest ones, are moving faster and more efficiently through the criminal justice system.