Joyce Hayman

Joyce was convicted in 1998 primarily on the now discredited work of the former Motherisk drug testing lab at Toronto’s Hospital of Sick Children. The flawed tests suggested that Joyce’s 3-year-old son had repeatedly ingested cocaine. There was no confirmatory test done. Joyce’s son was removed from her care and to date she has not seen him or a second son that was born to her in 2003. Joyce was sentenced to two years less a day. Joyce’s case was discovered in 2018 as a part of an ongoing investigation into Motherisk. In 2021, twenty-three years after her wrongful conviction Joyce was acquitted by the Ontario Court of Appeal. The publication ban on her name was also lifted by the court, which had been put in place in 2019 when her case was re-opened. Lifting the ban allows her to be clearly seen as innocent by her sons and the public.