For half a lifetime, Robert Mailman dreamed about a single moment.
But when it finally came, inside a Saint John courtroom on Jan. 4, 2024, he felt robbed.
“When they said ‘not guilty,’ I never got the feeling that I really wanted, because I know it’s overshadowed by cancer, that I’m dying,” said Mailman. “I’m down to nothing. I’m a skeleton.”
Mailman, who at 76 has only been given a few months to live, wasn’t alone that day. Sitting beside him was Walter Gillespie, his closest friend.
Gillespie, 80, says even though Mailman is dying, he had enough energy to kick him under the table the moment the judge delivered her verdict.
“A couple of tears come from my eyes, but I try not to show it too much,” said Gillespie.
What brought these two men together is that in 1984, they were both convicted of second-degree murder in the death of George Leeman and sentenced to life in prison. They were incarcerated at the maximum-security Dorchester Institution and were later transferred to the Atlantic Institute in Renous, N.B.
Throughout their decades in prison, the men always maintained their innocence — and on Jan. 4, New Brunswick Chief Justice Tracey DeWare confirmed it.
On the courthouse steps after the decision, in his first moments of true freedom in four decades, Gillespie was overcome with emotion and couldn’t speak to the media.
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