interest and debate In 2006, 50 years after Coffin's hanging, four generations of his family commemorated his death at his graveside. That week, the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted announced it was studying the case. The director of client services for the association called Coffin's case "a blot on the criminal justice system." The coroner at the time, Lionel Rioux, recently told the news media that he believes Coffin was innocent. Rioux accused Maurice Duplessis, premier of Quebec at the time, of making Coffin into a scapegoat for the killings of foreign tourists. Rioux held a coroner's inquest at which Coffin testified. Rioux says that the provincial government destroyed the transcript of Coffin's testimony. Coffin did not testify at his trial. Speaking in 2006, prominent Canadian criminal lawyer Edward Greenspan blamed Coffin's trial lawyer, Raymond Maher who suffered from alcoholism and was drunk for the majority of the trial, for keeping Coffin out of the witness box: "It was incompetence with a capital I," Greenspan said of Maher. "It's the worst case of lawyering I've ever seen." Investigators also had a picture of Coffin with a noose drawn onto his neck on the wall. At the time Coffin was hanged, he had an 8-year-old son. The child's mother wanted to marry Coffin before the execution, but Duplessis denied permission and said it would not be "decent." In a 384-page book titled (translation: The Coffin Affair: A Hoax?) published by Wilson & Lafleur in Montreal, Clément Fortin, a retired attorney and law professor, proceeded to re-establish the facts. Given the evidence presented to the Percé jurors in 1954, Fortin concluded that they were justified to render a verdict of guilty as charged. In 1964, the Royal Commission of Enquiry on the Coffin Affair reached the same conclusion. References External links Current update on the Wilbert Coffin Case Human Rights in Canada: A Historical Perspective L'Affaire Coffin at IMDb Toronto Star article News article Metro Moncton Montreal Gazette article Clément Fortin website Political history of Quebec People murdered in Quebec 1950s in Canada Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine Supreme Court of Canada cases Supreme Court of Canada case articles without infoboxes Supreme Court of Canada reference question cases 1953 in Quebec 1953 murders in Canada