Jason Wisdom believes a Toronto jury found him guilty of first degree murder based on evidence he was in a gang, sold drugs and kept “bad company,” not because the Crown proved he was one of the triggermen who shot two innocent men, killing one of them, as they sat in a car stopped at a Scarborough intersection during the evening rush hour on March 3, 2004.“There`s three large black guys there (in the prisoners` box) — better just to say guilty then let a murderer out free, that`s the last thing the public wants.”Wisdom said this last week, sitting in the mid-town Toronto office of James Lockyer, the defence lawyer who argued the appeal that led to the 32-year-old, a day earlier, leaving court a free man after serving 13 years and four days in custody.“It`s still surreal. It`s like waking up from a nightmare into another dream — a more pleasant dream, but it`s still a dream,” Wisdom said of his whirlwind 24 hours that included a reunion with family.After leaving the court, “It still didn`t hit me, I was walking, I think on York St., everything just moving so fast ... the city`s different now, right?”Eight summers ago, Wisdom, and co-accused Tyshan Riley and Philip Atkins yelled and pounded the plexiglass dividers separating them after jurors found them guilty of murder, attempted murder and murder to benefit a criminal organization, a band of hardscrabble youth known as the Galloway Boys.It had been the largest street gang prosecution in Canadian history.The Crown`s theory was that the drive-by shooting was a case of mistaken identity, that Riley — the gang`s leader — his close associate Atkins and Wisdom ambushed the vehicle believing the occupants were rival gang members from Malvern, a neighbourhood in the northeast part of the city.Riley and Atkins did not testify. But Wisdom did, and admitted getting involved in “criminal activity” after dropping out of high school — p ...
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