Candace Derksen Case Study

On November 30, 1984, a 13-year old girl named Candace Derksen went missing on her way home from her school. After a massive search for Candace which spanned almost two months, her frozen body was found on January 17, 1985, tied up in a storage shed. After over 20 years of the case remaining unsolved, police charged Mark Edward Grant, a career criminal and sex offender, with the murder of Candace Derksen on May 16, 2007. Police were able to make the arrest based on previously untested DNA evidence discovered at the shed where Candace was found, which they claimed pointed to Grant. (The Canadian Press)

Grant was convicted of second-degree murder by a jury on February 18, 2011. However, Grant appealed to the Manitoba Court of Appeal in October of 2013 on the grounds that the judge in the trial disallowed evidence that pointed to another possible killer. His appeal was successful, and was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in March 2015. The Crown announced shortly after the Supreme Court decision that they would retry Grant for second-degree murder, and on January

The main issues with the Crown’s case is the possible contamination of the DNA evidence collected at the scene. This crime took place when the use of DNA evidence in court was in its infancy, and there were little to no protocols in place to prevent the contamination of DNA evidence. If this crime had taken place 20 years later, I believe that Grant would have been found guilty. Another issue with the Crown’s case was the fact that the DNA was tested more than 20 years after the crime had been committed, and that the lab did not take the steps necessary to properly test the DNA. Again, if this crime was committed when we knew more about DNA, the defendant would probably have been found