TORONTO - Ontario's attorney general won't appeal a decision to strike down Romeo Phillion's decades-old murder conviction but has yet to decide whether to withdraw the charges.
The office said Friday it would not take the case to the Supreme Court and is weighing its other options.
"The Crown is aware that all involved in this case would like to see the matter resolved as soon as possible," said ministry spokesman Brendan Crawley.
"The Crown is carefully considering the options that are available for proceeding (and) it would be inappropriate to comment further."
Phillion spent 31 years behind bars on account of a confession he recanted in the 1967 stabbing death of Ottawa firefighter Leopold Roy.
While Ontario's top court struck down the conviction last month, it didn't declare him not guilty and ordered a new trial.
Since the murder happened more than 40 years ago, both Crown and defence agreed there was little point in retrying him -- a point Crawley reaffirmed Friday.
The attorney general must still decide whether to withdraw the charge or decide, as Phillion's legal team wants, to arraign him anew but offer no evidence -- which would lead to an outright acquittal.
The Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, which handled Phillion's case, said it wasn't surprised by the move because it hadn't expected the Crown to take the case to the Supreme Court, and will await a decision on the charge.
Phillion is the longest-serving individual to have a murder conviction overturned.
In a March 5 ruling, Appeal Court Justice Mike Moldaver found the prosecution at Phillion's 1972 trial never told the defence that investigators had, at one point, concluded Phillion was far from the crime scene and could not have been the killer.
The Appeal Court also concluded Phillion's spontaneous confession to police four years after the murder was "compelling" in its accuracy and detail but was wrong on one key fact.
