A settlement has been reached in Kyle Unger’s wrongful conviction lawsuit.
Unger, who turned 48 earlier this month, was suing for $14 million in compensation after spending 14 years in prison for the 1990 murder of 16-year-old Brigitte Grenier.
In a statement to CTV Winnipeg a provincial spokesperson said, “I can confirm a settlement has been reached. However, the terms of this agreement are confidential.”
One of Unger’s lawyers Gavin Wolch, son of the late Hersh Wolch, who previously represented Unger during his acquittal, also confirmed a settlement involving all defendants named in the lawsuit has been reached.
Wolch said the parties involved have agreed not to release details of the agreement.
He hopes Unger can find peace now that the lawsuit’s been settled.
"It's going to take some time because he's been living with this since the early nineties,” said Wolch. I think it's going to take him some time to process and rightfully. It's a very, very big day for him."
“He is unequivocally innocent and as innocent as you can be under the law in Canada.”
Court dates in the matter were scheduled for three days in Winnipeg this week but have since been adjourned.
Unger and another man, Timothy Houlahan, were convicted in 1992 and sentenced to life in prison in the killing of Grenier, whose badly beaten body was found near the site of a music festival in Roseisle, Man.
In 2004, the Forensic Evidence Review Committee recommended that Manitoba Justice reassess Unger’s conviction, based on DNA testing which confirmed that Unger could be excluded as a contributor of the hair evidence found on the clothing worn by Grenier on the night of the murder.
Another key piece of evidence was a confession Unger gave to undercover police officers as part of a “Mr. Big Investigation.”
Unger told them he had killed Grenier but got several facts wrong, including the existence of a bridge at the festival site that was only constructed several months after the murder.
The only witness who claimed to have seen Unger kill the girl was his co-accused, Timothy Houlahan, who committed suicide in 1994 while waiting for a retrial.
Unger filed an application with the federal justice minister in 2004 to review his conviction and in 2009 was formally acquitted.
Several defendants were named in the lawsuit including the Crown attorney in the case George Dangerfield, Manitoba’s Minister of Justice and the Attorney General of Canada.
In an amended Statement of Claim filed in February 2013, Unger’s lawyers argued the defendants intentionally and maliciously failed to disclose certain evidence in a timely manner or at all.
In court documents, lawyers for the province argued the prosecution of Unger was based upon reasonable and probable cause and was therefore not malicious.
“The cause of Unger’s conviction for Ms. Grenier’s murder was his voluntary detailed, and gruesome confessions to the crime,” says a motion for a summary judgment filed earlier this month by the province’s lawyer, Jamie Kagan. “There was no conspiracy among the defendants to cause harm to Unger, rather, at all material times, the provincial defendants were acting in the course of their duties as Crown prosecutors and with the goal of ascertaining the truth of Ms. Grenier’s murder.”
A phone call and email to a lawyer representing the federal defendants named in the lawsuit were not immediately returned.
-with files from the Canadian Press
