David Milgaard, imprisoned on wrongful conviction, dead at 69

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David Milgaard, the sufferer of one in every of Canada’s most infamous miscarriages of justice, has died in an Alberta hospital after a brief sickness. He was 69.

James Lockyer, a Toronto-based lawyer who labored intently on the case and helped discovered the advocacy group Innocence Canada, confirmed the dying after talking with Milgaard’s sister on Sunday.

His loss is “devastating for the household,” Lockyer informed The Canadian Press.

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Milgaard was solely 16 when he was charged and wrongfully convicted within the rape and homicide of Saskatoon nursing aide Gail Miller, who was stabbed and left to die within the snow within the early morning of Jan. 31, 1969.

He would spend 23 years in jail till his launch in 1992.

In his later years, Milgaard helped increase consciousness about wrongful convictions and demanded motion on the best way Canadian courts evaluation convictions.

“I feel it’s necessary for everyone, not simply attorneys, however for the general public itself to bear in mind that wrongful convictions are happening and that these persons are sitting proper now, behind bars and so they’re attempting to get out,” he mentioned in 2015.

“The insurance policies which are maintaining them there have to be modified. The wrongful conviction evaluation course of is failing all of us miserably.”

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Lockyer mentioned he and Milgaard met with Justice Minister David Lametti simply over two years in the past in Ottawa to push for the creation of an impartial physique to evaluation claims of wrongful convictions.

“I feel David’s legacy now’s to comply with via with that, name it the Milgaard laws and let’s get it handed, let’s get that impartial tribunal. We nonetheless don’t have it, however perhaps this can put the spur into the Division of Justice to get on with it,” he mentioned in an interview on Sunday.

The institution of an impartial prison case evaluation fee “to make it simpler and quicker for doubtlessly wrongfully convicted individuals to have their purposes reviewed” is listed as the highest precedence in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mandate letter for Lametti in December 2019. The target is repeated in his mandate letter following the federal election final fall.

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Lockyer mentioned it’s as much as Lametti to “get transferring” on creating the fee.

“They owe it to David Milgaard and so they owe it to the wrongly convicted throughout Canada.”

Throughout their assembly in 2020, Lockyer mentioned the minister requested Milgaard to signal a duplicate of the Tragically Hip album that includes the track “Wheat Kings,” which was impressed by his case.

Lametti posted a press release on Twitter Sunday, saying Milgaard was a tireless advocate for the wrongfully convicted who wished to see the system change.

“I’m deeply saddened to know that he won’t dwell to see this occur,” Lametti wrote.

The minister added that he would hold his signed copy of the Tragically Hip’s album “Absolutely Utterly” as a reminiscence of Milgaard.

Milgaard and two pals had been passing via Saskatoon on a street journey when Miller was killed.

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A yr later, he was convicted of homicide and sentenced to life in jail.

One of many youngest inmates, the 17-year-old was raped and tried suicide. He was additionally shot by police throughout an tried jail break.

“It was a nightmare,” Milgaard mentioned in 2014. “Individuals would not have a lot love and care inside these partitions.”

Milgaard was launched in 1992 after his mom, who fought relentlessly to clear her son’s identify, pushed to get the case heard by the Supreme Courtroom of Canada. The excessive courtroom threw out Milgaard’s conviction and he was lastly exonerated in 1997 after DNA exams proved that semen discovered on the crime scene didn’t match his.

A person named Larry Fisher was convicted in 1999 of first-degree homicide in Miller’s dying and sentenced to life in jail, the place he died in 2015.

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Lockyer mentioned Milgaard’s late mom, Joyce, was “a hero in her personal proper.”

“The Milgaards have given us loads, they’ve given Canada as a lot as any household may have given Canada,” he mentioned.

Peter Edwards, a Toronto Star journalist who helped Joyce Milgaard write a memoir about her combat to see her son exonerated, recalled a second that he mentioned stands proud in his thoughts — when Milgaard visited the paper’s newsroom not lengthy after he was launched from jail to be able to thank Edwards.

It was a wet day, he mentioned, and Milgaard wasn’t carrying a shirt as a result of he wished to really feel the rain in opposition to his pores and skin after lacking it for therefore a few years.

The Saskatchewan authorities issued Milgaard a proper apology and awarded him a $10-million compensation package deal.

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The province additionally spent $11.2 million on a public inquiry into Milgaard’s wrongful conviction. The ultimate report was launched in 2008 with 13 suggestions to reform prosecution and policing in Canada. Amongst them was a suggestion that the federal authorities set up an impartial evaluation fee to look at claims of wrongful conviction.

Ron Dalton, co-president of Innocence Canada, mentioned Milgaard may have “turned inward and been very soured on life, however he didn’t let that occur.”

He may have walked away from his advocacy after clearing his identify, however he “selected to look over his shoulder on the individuals left behind, the individuals who had been going via struggling,” mentioned Dalton, who was wrongfully convicted and later exonerated in his spouse’s dying greater than 30 years in the past.

Milgaard leaves behind two teenaged youngsters, he mentioned in an interview.

Lockyer mentioned he had visited Milgaard at his dwelling in Calgary about six weeks in the past and “he was his traditional comfortable self,” speaking concerning the want for an impartial fee and present claims of wrongful conviction in Canada.

When he heard about Milgaard’s dying on Sunday, Lockyer mentioned he was simply leaving a jail in British Columbia, the place he had been visiting with a lady whose wrongful conviction declare Milgaard had referred to him.

“I’m going to hold on doing what David wished me to do, so there’s a legacy too.”