International event draws attention to wrongful convictions

David Milgaard was 16 when he was wrongfully convicted of a brutal murder.

Canada and a number of other countries have joined the crusade to raise awareness and highlight the dangers and consequences of wrongful convictions.

David Milgaard spent 23 years in prison for a crime he did not commit and was in Calgary on Thursday to launch the first annual International Wrongful Conviction Day.

David Milgaard was just 16 when he was wrongfully convicted of the 1969 murder of Saskatoon nursing Aide Gail Miller.

Milgaard and his mother, Joyce, fought for years to prove his innocence and he was eventually exonerated by DNA evidence. Serial rapist Larry Fisher was convicted of the crime in 1999.

“It was a nightmare. People do not have much love and care inside those walls,” said Milgaard. “There are just too many political scandals and too much corruption for us to ignore it. How would you feel if you were wrongfully convicted and the system responsible for getting you out doesn’t work?” said Milgaard.

He says it reflects badly on us as a society when we fail the wrongfully convicted inside our prisons.

“We must do all we can do to help them,” said Milgaard. “The question is, are our prisons working? Is the justice model that’s inside our prisons, is it actually working to help the community or is it actually failing the community?  There are many different justice models in this world that function a whole lot better than our Canadian system.”

Milgaard was eventually paid $10 million in compensation by the Saskatchewan government, which held an inquiry into the case.

Calgary lawyer Greg Rodin represented Milgaard in connection with his civil suit against police and prosecutors and says the day is an opportunity to inform and educate the public.

“Today we bring into focus as individuals, as a nation and as an international community the tragedy of wrongful conviction. We think about the pain and suffering of those who are stigmatized and loathed as perpetrators of often the most heinous of crimes when in fact they are innocent. We bring into focus the pain of families, having to stand by helplessly as their loved ones are taken away from them and incarcerated for crimes they did not commit,” said Rodin. “Today’s commemoration of Wrongful Conviction Day is also a call to all of us to do what we can to ensure that we live in a society where the number of wrongful convictions cases are minimized and where they do occur, that they’re identified and acknowledged and appropriately addressed.”

He says no justice system is perfect but the laws that are passed and the policies and procedures that are implemented in the criminal justice system can safeguard against wrongful convictions.

“We must take all necessary steps to ensure that the criminal justice system is designed and operated to uphold the fundamental principal that we are all innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Rodin. “To ensure that we have a fair and unbiased process in place to identify cases of wrongful conviction where they do occur.”

“In our Canadian prisons right now, as I’m speaking to all of you, we have wrongfully convicted people, we have wrongfully convicted men, we have wrongfully convicted women, in some cases children, sitting still right now inside cages and they don’t have our support and they don’t have a system to help them get out of that situation because it’s failing miserably, that’s the most important issue here today," said Milgaard.

Wrongful Conviction Programs are also being held on October 2 in the United States, Australia, The Netherlands, Ireland and several other countries.

For more information, visit the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted website.