Jason Wallace explains his point of view in front of the Finch Ave. courthouse in Toronto yesterday, saying he was declared innocent of uttering death threats and is troubled by the lack of media coverage of his exoneration. (Dave Thomas, QMI Agency)
TORONTO - There exists no media microphone that Baby Kaylee's dad can resist.
So Jason Wallace was once again calling a press conference Wednesday, this time to announce that he'd successfully defended himself against charges of uttering death threats and was now preparing to sue just about everyone involved for his "malicious prosecution."
But when he arrived at the Finch Ave. courthouse, with partner Crystal Vitelli and new baby Savana in tow, there were only two media representatives who'd bothered to show up in the blazing heat -- the Toronto Sun and a nice young reporter/camerawoman from the CBC.
Needless to say, he was crestfallen.
"The press put out information that dirtied my name," said Wallace, 35. "You're good enough to report I was supposedly a bad guy but you're not good enough to be here for the exoneration? That deeply troubles me. I have a right for people to know of my innocence."
And to be fair, he's right about the media. We're quick to report on his criminal past and when new charges are laid, so we have a duty to report when he's cleared.
But readers and reporters alike have grown all too weary of the litigious Wallace and his hapless saga.
It began, as you'll no doubt recall, right here in the pages of the Toronto Sun in April 2009 when Wallace called with his heart-wrenching story: His infant daughter Kaylee was dying of Joubert Syndrome and he wanted to donate her heart to another desperately ill baby at Sick Kids.
The organ donation drama gripped the country for days and then feisty Kaylee eventually rallied and the operation was called off.
Wallace, though, seemed to relish those daily press conferences outside the hospital and has been seeking the limelight ever since. The problem is that most of the media attention he garners has been of the decidedly negative variety.
There were stories about his cocaine-dealing past, the circus made in bringing Kaylee home by helicopter, and the wild allegations he was constantly making against the city's beloved Sick Kids.
Wallace lost even more public sympathy last summer when I wrote a story about his demanding $2,700 in Baby Kaylee's trust fund so that he could trade in his car for an SUV to better suit her needs.
Organizers of the trust fund balked at releasing the money they'd earmarked for medical needs and turned to the public for input. More than 600 people left comments at torontosun.com -- with many of them outraged.
It was that story that sowed the seeds of his latest legal battle.
One posting online -- since ruled defamatory -- came from someone Wallace suspected at the time was Cody Deas, an acquaintance of Vitelli's. He called the Deas home, a heated argument ensued with the man's mother, and ended with both complaining to different police stations that they'd been threatened with death.
Wallace says his charge against the mother never made it to court, yet he was arrested last September at Kaylee's hospital bedside. His trial began Monday with him representing himself.
"I don't believe in lawyers," explained Wallace, who will be back in court again in a few weeks as he seeks to withdraw a guilty plea he made -- on poor legal advice, he says -- to being an accessory after the fact to assault and robbery after he left a 2006 crime scene.
"A good start would be 100 of them at the bottom of a seabed."
He subpoenaed Toronto Sun lawyer Tycho Manson and me -- though he decided in the end not to call me as a witness. Despite some protocol errors, Wallace managed to demonstrate enough inconsistencies in the evidence that even the Crown attorney offered to withdraw the charges.
Instead, he held out for the judge's acquittal -- and praise. "Mr. Wallace, the trial you conducted was commendable," Justice Neil Kozloff reportedly told him.
With his innocence declared, this was one press conference the much maligned Wallace had every right to call.
But like the boy who's cried wolf far too often, he's found that no one seems to care anymore.
