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Section 465 of Criminal Code regarding
criminal conspiracy found here
Commission
of Inquiry Into the Wrongful Conviction of David Milgaard:
(Page 23)
Honourable Mr. Justice Edward
P. MacCallum, Commissioner
| Commission website
| Lockyer shows similarities
with Guy Paul Morin investigation |
<
< < Page 22 | page 24 > > > | More
background (also see links on sidebar) Sask
to give inquiry another $700,000
Ruling leaves Milgaard
questioning fairness
Mother terms process' an exercise in futility'after MacCallum's
decision
Betty Ann Adam, The
StarPhoenix, May 03, 2006
Joyce Milgaard walked out of
the inquiry looking into the wrongful conviction of her son,
David Milgaard, on Tuesday, after Commissioner Justice Edward
MacCallum made a ruling she thought was unfair.
"Our group, we don't seem
to be being listened to by the commissioner at all in any of
the things that he's been doing. To me it's just an exercise
in futility to be here. If I'm not seeing justice and fairness
from this man, why be here?" she said.
"I think it's been evident
all along and this was just the straw that broke the camel's
back."
The ruling had to do with which
of the 12 parties with standing at the inquiry would have the
privilege of being last to cross-examine the witness, an issue
that has arisen repeatedly during the inquiry that began 17 months
ago.
MacCallum gave the privilege
of last cross-examination to the Saskatoon Police Service, rather
than to David Milgaard's lawyer, Hersh Wolch, who also wanted
to go last.
Wolch said the rule which has
prevailed throughout the inquiry has been for the party most
closely aligned with the witness to go last and that parties
with similar interests should go one after the other.
Wolch said his client is most
closely aligned to witness Paul Henderson, who believed in Milgaard's
innocence and helped gather information to persuade the federal
justice minister to order a case review at the Supreme Court
of Canada.
"I went first with a slew
of people who said negative things about David," Wolch said.
Despite Joyce Milgaard's impression
of unfairness, commission lawyer Doug Hodson said the lawyers
have usually resolved the order among themselves in a "very
fair manner."
"The commissioner has
said on a number of occasions that it should not be adversarial,
there should not be jockeying for position," Hodson said.
"The commissioner has,
from time to time, made rulings on specific witnesses. Among
counsel we've tried to put together a system that works,"
he said.
"You have competing interests
and it's always not easy to take a hard and fast rule. . . .
Certainly there will be witnesses where one party might not like
the fact they have to go sooner rather than later.
"The commissioner has
indicated that if the parties can't agree or if there isn't any
easy solution, then he will set the order."
MacCallum has been flexible
in rulings thus far.
In June 2005 MacCallum said,
"It is an advantage to be last and those whose clients are
most directly and substantially affected by the testimony of
this witness would have first claim on being last if they choose
to exercise it."
In January, he said, "Whoever
is most identified in interest with the witness goes last."
As it turned out neither Wolch
nor Joyce Milgaard's lawyer, Joanne McLean, had any questions
for the witness Tuesday.
Joyce Milgaard appeared to
see Tuesday's ruling as an indication MacCallum is siding with
parties responsible for her son's wrongful conviction.
"The commissioner's already
made up his mind that nobody did anything wrong," she said.
"Its been obvious almost from Day 1 what's happening here.
"I don't know what his
findings will be, but if this is any example of the fairness
this man has, what will I have next, because this is totally
unfair," she said.
Last fall, MacCallum ordered
David Milgaard to testify at the inquiry or lose his standing,
after Milgaard declared publicly that he would not testify.
Wolch later asked that Milgaard
be allowed to give written answers to written questions and brought
two psychologists who said it would be harmful for Milgaard to
testify at the hearing because he suffers from post traumatic
stress disorder.
MacCallum did not accept that
Milgaard suffers from the disorder but allowed him to testify
in Vancouver in a videotaped interview with Hodson because lawyers
for other parties with standing suggested it.
badam@sp.canwest.com
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2006
Joyce Milgaard takes
the stand at son's inquiry
Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix, Monday, May 08, 2006
After all the work Joyce Milgaard did to free her wrongly convicted
son from prison, she still wonders if she could have done more,
sooner.
Milgaard, who began testifying
Monday at the inquiry into David Milgaard's wrongful conviction
for the 1969 murder of Gail Miller, said she believed in the
justice system and obeyed police and her son's lawyer, who told
her to leave the information gathering to them.
"Looking back, its upsetting.
Should I have done more instead of leaving it to the police who
didn't do a good job," she said.
Ten years after David's 1970
conviction, as he lay in a hospital bed with a police gunshot
wound suffered while he was unlawfully at large, Joyce Milgaard
began investigating in earnest, to find information that would
get her son out of prison.
That led to a 12-year-long
investigation by Joyce that drew in journalists, lawyers and
eventually much of the Canadian public, as she fought to convince
the federal justice department to review David's conviction.
Her work led to the revelation
of serial rapist, Larry Fisher, who lived in the basement of
a house Milgaard had visited on the day of the murder.
The Supreme Court of Canada
quashed Milgaard's conviction in 1992. DNA evidence proved his
innocence in 1997 and was used to help convict Larry Fisher in
1999.
In 1969 David was oldest of
four children of Lorne and Joyce MIlgaard.
David was a hyperactive child
who was expelled from the church-basement kindergarten he attended,
a fact that had become a joke in the family. He was bright and
bored with school, where he was disruptive in class, getting
other students to follow his lead.
In his teen years David joined
the hippie lifestyle and often took to the road, hitchhiking
across Canada with his girlfriend, Sharon Williams.
Milgaard's parents turned to
social services for help in controlling their son and agreed
that sending him to a special school might help. That led to
his being sent to stay in a psychiatric centre The fact was later
used by Crown prosecutor Bobs Caldwell in letters written in
the 1970s to the parole board, arguing that Milgaard should not
be released from prison.
David had recently quit the
hippie lifestyle in 1969 when he was arrested for the January
31 murder. At the time of his arrest, David was selling magazine
subscriptions door to door for Maclean's magazine.
The sales job satisfied his
desire for travel, excitment and money, Joyce Milgaard recalled.
He was working in Winnipeg
when first questioned about the murder a month after it happened.
He was in Saskatoon a few weeks later and willing gave the police
hair and blood samples.
In May 1969 he was working
in Prince George, British Columbia, when he heard that police
were looking for him. His supervisor drove him to the RCMP detatchment
where he turned himself in.
Joyce Milgaard takes
the stand at inquiry into her son's wrongful conviction
Monday, May 08, 2006
SASKATOON (CP) - David Milgaard's
mother says her son was a teenager with a "wild streak"
who had turned his life around when police fingered him for a
vicious rape and murder he didn't commit.
On the stand at the public
inquiry into her son's wrongful conviction, Joyce Milgaard said
David, then 16, had a job selling magazine subscriptions for
Maclean's.
He had cut his hair and had
left the hitchhiking hippie lifestyle behind when Saskatoon nursing
aide Gail Miller was killed in 1969.
She says David had been waiting
to get a licence to sell subscriptions in British Columbia when
he decided to go on a road trip with friends that took them through
Saskatoon on the morning of the crime.
When investigators showed up
on the family's doorstep a few months later, she says she figured
one of his friends might have been involved in a murder, but
she knew her son would have never done such a thing.
David Milgaard spent 23 years
wrongfully in prison for Miller's murder.
It was a crime DNA evidence
would eventually prove he didn't commit.
- Milgaard's mother blasts
the police
They twisted facts, she tells inquiry into son's wrongful murder
conviction,
TIM COOK, Canadian Press
SASKATOON -- Joyce Milgaard
says she knew it would be up to her to prove that her son David
was not guilty of rape and murder after he escaped from prison
and was shot by police in 1980.
She told the inquiry into her
son's wrongful conviction yesterday that she was convinced someone
twisted the facts about the death of Saskatoon nursing aide Gail
Miller to put her son behind bars.
"The only one that could
be the twister of facts were the police," she said.
David Milgaard spent 23 years
in prison for the crime, which DNA evidence eventually proved
he didn't commit.
Ms. Milgaard's unflagging commitment
to her son's cause helped get his conviction overturned by the
Supreme Court in 1992.
She told the inquiry how her
son was a teenager with a "wild streak" who had turned
his life around when police fingered him for Ms. Miller's murder.
When he was 16, she said, David
had a job selling magazine subscriptions for Maclean's. He had
cut his hair and had left the hitchhiking hippie lifestyle behind.
She said her son had been waiting to get a licence to sell subscriptions
in British Columbia when he decided to go on a road trip with
friends that took them through Saskatoon on the morning of Ms.
Miller's murder.
"David had the weekend
off," Ms. Milgaard said. "That's when they took this
fateful trip that has ended here 37 years later."
When her son was initially
charged, she was confident he would be found not guilty.
"I was so convinced that
the Canadian justice system would see through this picture,"
she told the inquiry.
"I just had a lot of belief
that the system was good and David would be alright."
But David's travelling companions testified against him during
the trial, and he ended up being convicted and sentenced to life
in prison.
Ms. Milgaard told the inquiry
she felt she should have been doing more to prove her son's innocence.
"Should I not, as a mom,
have been out researching all this stuff instead of leaving it
to the police, who didn't do a good job?" she asked.
She told the inquiry she understood
that, after her son's escape from prison, "the key would
be thrown away" and parole would be a long shot.
The family managed to put together
enough money for a $10,000 reward for information that would
lead to the case being overturned. They also began to search
for witnesses who had testified at the trial and started their
own investigation of the case.
Ms. Milgaard is scheduled to
testify at the inquiry all week.
Joyce
Milgaard was suspicious of everybody
Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix,
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
One of the first things David
Milgaard's mother, Joyce Milgaard, and his siblings did after
they decided in 1980 to re-investigate the murder case against
him, was to offer a $10,000 reward for information leading to
David's exoneration.
On December 23, the family
issued a news release to inform the public what they were doing
and over the next week they went door to door, delivering thousands
of flyers to Saskatoon households.
They also hired lawyer Gary
Young and began the long, slow legal process to have the case
reopened.
The reward poster yielded a newspaper article and numerous leads.
The news item attracted the
attention of journalist Peter Carlyle-Gordge, who began investigating
the story and came to believe in David Milgaard's innocence.
Among the responses to the
reward poster were some from individual members of the Saskatoon
police who encouraged Joyce Milgaard to continue with her efforts,
she said Tuesday at the inquiry into her son's wrongful conviction.
She doesn't remember their
names and said some of them were anonymous, hang up calls.
One such caller informed her
the exhibits from the trial were still at the court house and
might be destroyed, she said. Soon after, Joyce Milgaard, Young
and Carlyle-Gordge went to the court house and looked at the
exhibits.
Milgaard had Young write to
the court house, asking them to ensure the exhibits were not
destroyed.
Young also requested and was
denied access to police files on the Miller murder investigation.
The chief of police also told Young that police would not talk
to Milgaard's mother or his lawyers unless he received direction
from the attourney general.
Young obtained trial transcripts
and a vetted copy of defence lawyer Cal Tallis's file from his
former law firm. By that time, Tallis had been appointed to the
Saskatchewan Court of Appeal.
Young also asked prosecutor
Bobs Caldwell for his file. Documents show Caldwell agreed to
let Young look at the file, and Caldwell testified he thought
Young had. Young testified at the inquiry that he doesn't recall
acting on the invitation.
Joyce Milgaard says she doesn't
know why they didn't obtain Caldwell's file, which when reviewed
in 1992, was found to contain useful information that was not
disclosed to the defence at the time of the trial.
With few resources, Joyce took
on the role of investigator herself. She set out to find and
interview the main witnesses in the trial. She eventually spoke
to Ron Wilson, Nichol John, Albert Cadrain's mother, motel room
witnesses George Lapchuk, Debbie Hall and Bob Harris.
She was suspicious of everyone,
she said.
In a 1981 interview with Ron
Wilson, who had been with Milgaard the morning of the murder,
Wilson backed off many of the incriminating statements he had
made against David Milgaard in court, but Joyce didn't think
she could believe him.
Debbie Hall's claim that Milgaard
had joked as he fluffed up a pillow in the motel room, increased
Joyce's suspicion of the Crown witnesses who said David re-enacted
the murder and admitted killing Miller.
The family's investigation
also included visiting the scene of the crime, where they re-enacted
the Crown's theory of the way events unfolded and found Nichol
John's damning statement was implausible, Joyce Milgaard said.
"I still wonder to this
day why a prosecutor wouldn't have tested that theory,"
Joyce Milgaard said.
Joyce also investigated many
false leads, including suspecting two other men of the murder.
In 1981 she suspected a man who been convicted of killing his
wife in 1970. A few weeks later, she heard about a mental patient
who had been missing from North Battleford mental hospital "the
day the nurse was killed." The man had showed up at
his parent's home in Leask that day with blood on his clothes
and had told them he had killed a rabbit.
After much investigation, including
a trip to North Battleford to see the man, Milgaard discovered
that "the nurse" mentioned in the tip was not Miller,
but one who had been murdered in 1963 in Saskatoon.
Milgaard's mother put
shoulder to wheel to exonerate son
Betty Ann Adam, CanWest
News Service; Saskatoon StarPhoenix, May 10, 2006
SASKATOON - When David Milgaard's
family decided in 1980 to try and re-open the murder case against
him, one of the first things his mother Joyce Milgaard did was
to offer a $10,000 reward for information leading to her son's
exoneration.
Testifying Tuesday at an inquiry
into his wrongful 1969 conviction for the murder of Gail Miller,
Joyce Milgaard said that just before Christmas in 1980, the family
issued a news release and delivered thousands of flyers to Saskatoon
households. They also hired lawyer Gary Young and began the slow
legal process to have the case re-opened.
The publicity yielded numerous
leads. It also attracted the attention of journalist Peter Carlyle-Gordge,
who began investigating the story and came to believe in Milgaard's
innocence.
Among the responses were some
from individual members of the Saskatoon police who encouraged
Joyce Milgaard to continue her efforts, she testified.
One such caller informed her
the exhibits from the trial were still at the court house and
might be destroyed, she said. Milgaard had Young write to the
court house, asking them to ensure the exhibits were not destroyed.
Young also requested and was
denied access to police files on the Miller murder investigation.
The chief of police also told Young that police would not co-operate
unless directed by the attorney general.
Young obtained trial transcripts
and a vetted copy of defence lawyer Cal Tallis's file from his
former law firm. By that time, Tallis had been appointed to the
Saskatchewan Court of Appeal.
Young also asked prosecutor
Bobs Caldwell for his file. Documents show Caldwell agreed to
let Young look at the file, and Caldwell testified he thought
Young had. Young testified at the inquiry that he doesn't recall
acting on the invitation.
Milgaard says she doesn't know
why they didn't obtain Caldwell's file, which when reviewed in
1992 was found to contain useful information that was not disclosed
to the defence at the time of the trial.
With few resources, Joyce took
on the role of investigator, setting out to interview the main
witnesses in the trial. She was suspicious of everyone, she said.
In a 1981 interview with Ron
Wilson, who had been with her son the morning of the murder,
Wilson backed off many of the incriminating statements he had
made against David Milgaard in court, but Joyce didn't think
she could believe him.
The family's investigation
also included visiting the scene of the crime, where they re-enacted
the Crown's theory of the way events unfolded and found Nichol
John's damning statement was implausible, Joyce Milgaard said.
''I still wonder to this day
why a prosecutor wouldn't have tested that theory,'' Joyce Milgaard
said.
Frustration led to suspicions,
Joyce Milgaard tells inquiry
Feared defence lawyer had betrayed son
Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix,
May 11, 2006
As David Milgaard's mother
struggled in the 1980s to find the key to his freedom, frustration
and suspicion led her to see sinister secrets behind ordinary
remarks and coincidences, the Milgaard inquiry heard Wednesday.
Joyce Milgaard couldn't help
thinking that somebody had done something wrong to put her son
in prison and keep him there so long.
Milgaard recalled that she
was "exceedingly frustrated" by 1990, after David had
been in prison for 20 years and his family had put in 10 years
of intense effort to have the case reopened.
Joyce had led an amateur investigation
into the case against her son in the 1969 rape and murder of
Saskatoon nursing assistant Gail Miller.
The work included poring over
trial transcripts, uncounted trips to Saskatoon from Winnipeg,
days spent knocking on doors, days in library archives reviewing
old newspapers, weeks and months spent tracking down and interviewing
dozens of witnesses and repeated applications to the National
Parole Board, but Milgaard seemed no closer to freedom.
Joyce said she had become increasingly
suspicious of anyone connected to the case.
As she worked in the dark,
the possibility of wrongdoing and collusion seemed ever-present.
The facts behind many of her
suspicions, reviewed in the clear light of the inquiry during
the past 17 months, have been found to have simple explanations.
The family had re-enacted the
Crown's theory of how the murder had occurred and found it implausible.
Joyce suspected Crown prosecutor Bobs Caldwell didn't really
believe it either.
In 1982, she wanted to see
Caldwell's files but feared he might remove incriminating evidence
if he knew she was the person seeking it. In her suspicion, she
forgot that Caldwell had given her previous lawyer, Gary Young,
permission to review his file.
Joyce had journalist and Milgaard
advocate Peter Carlyle-Gordge approach Caldwell saying he was
writing a book on famous western Canadian murders.
Caldwell gave Carlyle-Gordge unrestrained access to his voluminous
files and spoke candidly about the case.
In a taped interview, Caldwell
told Carlyle-Gordge that he got along with Milgaard's defence
lawyer, Cal Tallis, and remarked that the pair of them had worked
together to get a man locked away forever.
"We've been allies on
various things," Caldwell told Carlyle-Gordge.
"Can you understand why
I was suspicious of Mr. Caldwell when I read something like that?
Right away, that's when I thought Mr. Tallis had done something
wrong with him, that he had worked with him to put David away
too," she recalled thinking.
"To me, it seemed so clear
that's what they'd done," she said.
Milgaard didn't know, when
she read the transcript of the interview, that Tallis sometimes
contracted his service to the Attorney General's office and worked
as a prosecutor, which was a common practice in that era, the
inquiry has heard.
Caldwell was referring to a case where he and Tallis had worked
together as prosecutors.
"It's sad when I look
at it now, I wish I'd had a better understanding," Joyce
said.
Also in the 1980s, Joyce began to distrust her lawyer at the
time, Tony Merchant, because he represented former Saskatchewan
cabinet minister Colin Thatcher, who was convicted of murdering
his wife.
Joyce heard from a source,
whom she can no longer remember, that Thatcher had known and
dated Gail Miller.
The connection was never proven,
but at the time, Joyce believed it and came to suspect that Merchant
was deliberately confounding her efforts so that attention would
not turn to Thatcher, whom she suspected was Miller's real killer.
badam@sp.canwest.com
Joyce Milgaard was 'at
the end of her rope'
Julie Saccone, The StarPhoenix,,
May 15, 2006
Sitting on pins and needles,
Joyce Milgaard was at the end of her rope in 1990 as she waited
for word on her son's application to the federal justice minister
to have his case reviewed, she told the inquiry into her son's
wrongful conviction Monday.
Fed up, frustrated, cynical
and suspicious, Milgaard continued her quest to free her son
by forging ahead without the help of authorities.
Her quest would take her all
the way to the wife of the man later convicted of the crime Larry
Fisher.
An anonymous tip to Milgaard lawyer Hersh Wolch pointed the finger
at Larry Fisher and led Joyce to Saskatoon, where she learned
Linda and Larry Fisher were renting the basement of the Albert
Cadrain home during the time of the 1969 rape and murder of nursing
assistant Gail Miller. David Milgaard was convicted of the murder
but later exonerated after DNA evidence proved his innocence
in 1997.
Heading over to a school in
the city where Fisher's daughter Tammy had once attended, Milgaard
was able to find Linda's address. But when she arrived at the
home, she was told Linda had moved to Cando, Sask.
With Seattle-based private
investigator Paul Henderson in toe, the pair headed to Linda's
home. It was here in her discussion with Linda where Milgaard
said she became confident Fisher was indeed the perpetrator.
"When she described the
morning approaching her husband about her paring knife being
missing and she said how his face had drained and he became very
white and shaky, 'I thought this is it, he must have done it,'"
she said. The murder weapon that killed Miller was a plastic-handled
paring knife with a smooth blade.
Although the pair were talking
about a wooden-handled paring knife that Milgaard realized was
not the same as the murder weapon, years later Linda Fisher told
the RCMP she was missing a plastic-handled paring knife she owned
but had forgotten about.
That, coupled with information
of Fisher's involved in other rape cases in the area, sent chills
running up and down her spine, Milgaard testified.
"I really felt we're here,"
she said. "I went out of there saying, 'We're gonna get
you out David, we're gonna get you out.'"
Milgaard testified Monday she
had not considered turning the information over to the authorities
after months of inaction.
"This was information
to be followed, it was fresh, I wanted answers," she said,
adding she felt she had to prove her son's innocence because
the authorities wouldn't.
"I wanted to be sure that I would get the information, that
they weren't going to cover it up," she added.
Milgaard, David and his lawyers,
had been waiting for word from then federal justice minister
Kim Campbell on the status of her son's application to have his
case reviewed.
Milgaard testified she assumed
that once the application was deemed to have merit, the department
would met with her, reexamine the case and a remedy or solution
would result.
"If they once looked at
the case from the start and looked at all the things that didn't
add up, the original testimony of the witnesses being the same,
that they were never there, how those witnesses were changed,
if we could show all of these things that we had found out, we
felt that they would start really going back and investigating
all of that," she said.
But Milgaard came to later
understand that she was wrong.
One of the most devastating
events for the mother struggling to prove her son's innocence
came during a meeting with the minister, where she tried to hand
her a forensic pathologist's report that she believed proved
his innocence.
Ultimately, Milgaard maintained
that she believed the minister would provide a decision in the
case.
"That was one of the reasons
that I went and tried to approach Kim Campbell when she was in
Winnipeg, to give her the ... report because obviously if she'd
seen that ... report I figured my son's case would be reopened,"
she said. "All I wanted to do was hand her the report and
she sort of brushed me aside, and she said, 'Don't talk to me
Mrs. Milgaard," Milgaard explained. "It was one of
the most crushing moments of my life but it proved to be a wonderful
thing because it just made so many people so mad at Kim Campbell."
The inquiry continues Tuesday.
Rejection letter spurs
breakdown
Joyce Milgaard felt evidence overwhelming
Sarah MacDonald, The StarPhoenix,
May 18, 2006
Joyce Milgaard broke down Wednesday
as she was questioned about a letter from the federal Department
of Justice turning down her son David's submission to have his
conviction for the 1969 rape and murder of Gail Miller reviewed.
"I need to take a break," she told commission counsel
Doug Hodson, choking on her words. "I find this letter very
upsetting."
Hodson called for a 15-minute
break from the inquiry into David Milgaard's wrongful conviction.
As the room emptied, Joyce Milgaard sat in the witness chair,
took off her glasses and fought back tears.
The letter was from former
justice minister Kim Campbell, explaining that David Milgaard's
application for a new trial wasn't strong enough. He was convicted
a year after Miller died, in 1970. He was exonerated in 1997
when DNA evidence proved he was innocent. Larry Fisher was convicted
of the crime in 1999.
In 1990, the Department of
Justice claimed that a report by Dr. James Ferris which revealed
that forensic evidence was tainted by dog urine was not strong
enough.
It also said Joyce Milgaard and her lawyer David Asper's linking
of Fisher to the rape and murder of Miller was not enough to
warrant an approval of David Milgaard's application.
On Wednesday, Joyce Milgaard
testified that she and Asper did a lot of their own investigations
into Fisher.
In June 1990, the CBC publicized
Fisher's name in connection with several rapes that happened
in Saskatoon around the time Miller was killed, and with the
David Milgaard case. Joyce Milgaard had given the CBC Fisher's
name, but under the condition it not be released. However, the
CBC did its own investigation, finding critical information that
tied Fisher to the rapes in Saskatoon.
Milgaard said she was pleased
that the news about Fisher was in the public.
"I was glad people knew about it. I had concerns . . . but
I was relieved it was out there."
She said she was concerned
for Fisher's ex-wife, Linda Fisher, and the toll it would take
on her, but Milgaard said her defence of her son was her priority.
"We were feeding this
to the public so they could see what was wrong with this case,"
Milgaard said.
After the CBC got documents
about Fisher's rape charges in Saskatoon, Milgaard said she and
Asper found the addresses of the victims and mapped them out.
"They encircled Gail Miller,"
Milgaard explained. "It was so obvious." Milgaard said
she was excited to get this information.
"It was a real bombshell."
She said she thought the Department
of Justice couldn't discount that information. Fisher was a convicted
rapist, he lived in a house that David Milgaard had visited,
which was in the area where Miller was killed. She said she wondered
how the department could ignore that information.
Milgaard said she saw all this
evidence as proof, so she was devastated when the letter from
the Department of Justice denied her son's application.
"It was a no and I had
expected a yes," she said.
Supreme Court ruling
angered Joyce Milgaard
Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix,
May 30, 2006
Joyce Milgaard was outraged
by the Supreme Court of Canada decision in 1992 that impeded
David Milgaard's hope for exoneration and compensation at the
same time that it guaranteed his freedom after 23 years in prison.
The Supreme Court refused to
hear evidence about wrongdoing by police or prosecutors but then
declared in its decision that it had heard no probative evidence
to support Milgaard's claim there had been any wrongdoing by
them, Joyce Milgaard said Monday at the inquiry into the wrongful
conviction of her son.
"It blew my mind that
they would say that. . . . How could they say that when they
didn't want it?" Joyce Milgaard said.
"I just felt they'd failed
him miserably. . . . He wandered around for years with a cloud
over his head," she said.
In 1992, the Supreme Court
quashed Milgaard's conviction for the 1969 murder of Saskatoon
nursing assistant Gail Miller, saying that his continued conviction
would constitute a miscarriage of justice.
The court said there was new,
credible evidence which might have affected the findings of a
jury, but it also stated that it was not satisfied that Milgaard
was innocent.
The court also recommended
that if Milgaard was given a new trial and was convicted, that
Saskatchewan Justice should give him a conditional pardon.
Milgaard was released and the charge against him was stayed,
leaving him without any support for his claim of innocence, the
inquiry heard Monday.
DNA evidence proved Milgaard's
innocence in 1997 and was used to help convict rapist Larry Fisher
of the crime in 1999. That year the Saskatchewan government paid
Milgaard $10 million in compensation.
Then-justice minister Bob Mitchell
relied upon the Supreme Court's ruling to support his decision
not to give Milgaard another trial.
Mitchell also declared there
would be no public inquiry into Milgaard's allegation that police
had coerced witnesses to lie and that they and other justice
officials had deliberately suppressed information about Fisher.
"I do not see what an
inquiry could possibly establish that the Supreme Court has not
already done," Mitchell said.
"There was nothing brought
before the Supreme Court justices that could convince even one
justice that Mr. Milgaard is either innocent or a victim of a
miscarriage of justice. Anyone who would suggest otherwise has
no understanding of what the Supreme Court said," Mitchell
stated in a news release two days after the Supreme Court ruling.
Mitchell said he wanted to
make it "crystal clear" there would be no compensation.
He told a Globe and Mail newspaper
reporter in 1995 that he believed Milgaard was guilty.
In the years leading up to
the Supreme Court review, Milgaard's efforts were directed at
convincing the federal government of the need for that review.
After the decision, the Supreme
Court ruling had become a serious impediment to David's hopes
for exoneration and compensation, Joyce Milgaard said.
At that point, the Milgaards' efforts turned toward the Saskatchewan
government, which had the power to order a public inquiry and
provide compensation.
By the fall of 1992, Mitchell
had maintained his refusal to revisit the case and David Milgaard
needed a way to maintain public pressure to change the government
position, Joyce Milgaard said.
t was then they chose to hold
a news conference revealing the allegations of Michael Breckenridge,
a former Justice Department employee who had come to them earlier
that year claiming there had been closed-door meetings of high-ranking
justice officials in Regina who discussed the Milgaard and Fisher
files.
The allegations turned out to be unfounded and it was shown that
Breckenridge didn't work in the department during the period
covered in the allegations.
A private investigator hired by Milgaard's lawyer, David Asper,
to look into Breckenridge had reported that the allegations required
further investigation and had cast some doubt on Breckenridge's
credibility.
Joyce Milgaard said she believed
Breckenridge and doesn't think she was aware of the investigator's
report at the time of the September news conference.
Breckenridge's claims fit so
neatly with her belief that there had been a cover-up in her
son's case that she was less suspicious than she should have
been, she said.
- Chretien pressure spurred
DNA testing
Joyce Milgaard
Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix,
May 31, 2006
Joyce Milgaard credited former
prime minister Jean Chretien Tuesday with influencing the federal
government to order the 1997 DNA testing that exonerated David
Milgaard of murder and implicated rapist Larry Fisher.
In 1995, Winnipeg MP John Harvard arranged for Joyce Milgaard
to meet with Chretien and then-justice minister Allan Rock.
Milgaard told Chretien about
the difficulty her son David was having adjusting to life outside
prison while many people still believed he was guilty of murder.
When Chretien said he thought everybody knew Milgaard was innocent,
Joyce Milgaard said she told Chretien her son needed a way of
proving it to the rest of the country. She wanted the government
to call an inquiry into the matter.
"Allan Rock told him he
just couldn't get involved. So he (Chretien) said to him (Rock),
'Whatever you can do for this lady, I want you to help her in
whatever way you can. Do you understand?' And he said, 'Yes,
prime minister, I do,' " Milgaard testified before the inquiry
into David Milgaard's wrongful conviction.
By then, Joyce Milgaard was supporting the causes of other wrongfully
convicted individuals and had seen cases in which DNA evidence
had been used successfully.
DNA testing was still a fairly
new and evolving science that was prohibitively expensive, she
said.
She returned to Rock and asked
that the federal government arrange to have murder victim Gail
Miller's clothing tested.
When Rock balked, Joyce Milgaard
reminded him of Chretien's direction.
"I said, 'Maybe I should
go see him again,' and he said, 'No, why don't you leave it with
me.' "
It took almost two years, but
the results exonerated Milgaard.
The next day, two Saskatchewan
Crown prosecutors apologized to Milgaard and joined him in calling
for a public inquiry into the case.
The DNA findings were used
in 1999 to convict Fisher of murder in Miller's 1969 death, the
crime for which Milgaard had spent 23 years in prison.
Also on Tuesday, the inquiry
looked at the chronology of events in 1992 that led to the Milgaard
group publicly accusing high-ranking Saskatchewan justice officials,
including then-premier Roy Romanow, of criminal misconduct. An
RCMP investigation later concluded the allegations were unfounded.
* In the fall of 1991, Centurion
Ministries investigators declared in the media that Milgaard
had been framed and there had been a coverup to conceal facts
about Fisher convictions for other sexual assaults in the area,
which could have raised doubts about the Milgaard conviction.
* In January 1992, the Supreme
Court of Canada began hearing evidence in a review of Milgaard's
case.
* In March 1992, Milgaard's lawyers received letter from a former
Saskatchewan Justice Department employee, Michael Breckenridge,
who alleged he had delivered the Milgaard and Fisher fi les to
closed-door meetings involving prosecutor Serge Kujawa, then-Saskatchewan
attorney general Romanow and other senior justice offi cials.
Breckenridge claimed Kujawa told staff to keep their mouths closed
if they valued their jobs.
* In April 1992, the Supreme Court quashed Milgaard's conviction
but said there was still evidence that a jury might use to convict
him. The court ordered new trial for Milgaard but said that if
he was found guilty, the Saskatchewan government should give
him a conditional pardon.
The court said it had not heard any evidence of police or prosecutor
wrongdoing.
* On April 16, 1992, Milgaard was released. The Saskatchewan
government stayed the charge and said there would be no inquiry
or any compensation for Milgaard.
* From April to September 1992, Milgaard lawyer Hersh Wolch and
supporters exchanged numerous letters of debate with then-Saskatchewan
justice minister Bob Mitchell requesting an inquiry. Mitchell
refused, saying the Supreme Court conducted a thorough inquiry
that "left no stone unturned." The Milgaard group countered
that the Supreme Court had stated the review was not an inquiry
into all aspects of the case.
* In May 1992, Milgaard lawyers hired a private investigator
to look into Breckenridge. The investigator interviewed him and
reported that the allegations required further inquiry and cast
doubt on Breckenridge's credibility.
* In June 1992, Joyce Milgaard and the investigator met with
Breckenridge. The investigator later told RCMP that he was never
directed to conduct further inquiries into Breckenridge, as he
had recommended.
* In September 1992, David Milgaard, Joyce Milgaard and Wolch
held a Winnipeg news conference where they released Breckenridge's
allegations of various wrongdoings and a coverup by Saskatoon
police and Saskatchewan justice offi cials.
* In October 1992, the Saskatchewan deputy justice minister asked
the RCMP to investigate Milgaard's allegations.
* In January 1994, the RCMP report concluded that the available
evidence did not support allegations of wrongdoing by Saskatoon
police or other justice offi cials. It also concluded there was
no new evidence which would exonerate Milgaard or inculpate anyone
else, including Fisher.
In response to questions by
commission lawyer, Doug Hodson, Joyce Milgaard agreed the reason
for the September news conference was to discredit the Saskatchewan
government and to increase public pressure for an inquiry into
the matter.
badam@sp.canwest.com
Milgaard inquiry continues
CanWest News Service,
May 31, 2006
SASKATOON - Joyce Milgaard
says she overlooked evidence about rapist Larry Fisher in the
early 1980s as she looked into the possibility a convicted murderer
was Gail Miller's real killer.
At the inquiry into the wrongful
conviction of her son, David, Joyce Milgaard said she found the
name of Lorne Mahar, when she reviewed old copies of the Saskatoon
StarPhoenix on microfilm.
Facts about Mahar's known crime
convinced her he was the real killer, she testified Wednesday
under cross-examination by lawyer Aaron Fox, who represents retired
police detective Eddy Karst.
Journalist and Milgaard advocate
Peter Carlyle-Gordge had interviewed Crown witness Albert Cadrain
and his brother, Dennis Cadrain, both of whom had told Carlyle-Gordge
that Fisher, who had lived in the basement of their house at
the time of the murder, had later been convicted of committing
rapes.
Carlyle-Gordge had asked about
Fisher because he'd seen a police report in prosecutor Bobs Caldwell's
files in which a constable had questioned Fisher at Miller's
bus stop on the Monday after the murder and Fisher had given
his address.
Carlyle-Gordge had recognized
the address as the Cadrain residence, but he told the inquiry
he never made a connection between Fisher committing rapes and
the Miller murder.
Carlyle-Gordge had also sought
Fisher's wife, Linda Fisher, by placing a classified ad in the
StarPhoenix. Linda Fisher and her then-common law husband both
sent written replies, but Carlyle-Gordge never followed them
up.
Joyce Milgaard said she didn't
know at the time that Linda Fisher had responded.
Fox told Milgaard that Karst never wanted an innocent person
to imprisoned, nor for a guilty man to go free.
Witnesses could be called
upon to answer for their actions
Julie Saccone, Saskatchewan
News Network; CanWest News Service, June 02, 2006
SASKATOON -- Federal witnesses
may be questioned about the reasons for their actions and the
advice they provided or received in connection with the David
Milgaard case, Milgaard inquiry commissioner Justice Edward MacCallum
ruled Thursday.
In response to a proposal by
commission counsel to question federal witnesses about the reasons
for their actions in relation to the case, MacCallum set limits
on the lawyers' questioning in a written decision.
MacCallum referred to the federal
department of justice, which says questions "may be asked
which engage investigative or fact finding activities, but not
those which touch upon advice, legal or otherwise, giving rise
to or following those activities."
Further, no provincially constituted
commission of inquiry can inquire into the management or administration
of a federal institution. But MacCallum ruled that advice, legal
or otherwise, in the Milgaard case, does not fall under these
areas.
"Therefore questions which seek to probe the reasons behind
the actions, including questions about advice given or received,
do not trench upon exclusive federal jurisdiction," he said
in the decision.
Cross-examination of Joyce
Milgaard continued at the inquiry Thursday. Milgaard admitted,
in retrospect, she would never have held a press conference in
1992 suggesting Saskatchewan government officials were involved
in a coverup surrounding her son's case.
Milgaard told Garrett Wilson,
the lawyer for then-Crown prosecutor Serge Kujawa, that he believed
the information provided to her team at the time to be true.
The information was provided by Michael Breckenridge, a former
employee of the attorney general's office who had written to
Milgaard's lawyers in the months after he was released from prison.
David Milgaard was convicted in the 1969 rape and murder of nursing
assistant Gail Miller, but was later exonerated after DNA evidence
proved his innocence in 1997. Serial rapist Larry Fisher was
convicted of the crime in 1999.
Breckenridge claimed that around
1971, he delivered files on Milgaard and Fisher to Kujawa as
he met with then-attorney general Roy Romanow and then-deputy
justice minister Ken Lysyk. Joyce Milgaard also believed the
individuals committed wrongdoing in connecting the Larry Fisher
file with the David Milgaard file, in knowing Fisher was the
real killer.
The allegations were presented
at a news conference in 1992, where they demanded a public inquiry
into Milgaard's wrongful conviction. A subsequent investigation
by the RCMP followed and concluded there was no evidence to support
the allegations.
"If I knew what I knew
today I would have never conducted that press conference and,
naturally, I have regrets about the disparaging remarks that
were made about people that turned out not to be true,"
Milgaard told the inquiry Thursday. One of the people Milgaard
was suspicious about was former Canadian governor general Ray
Hnatyshyn.
She explained she was focused
on exonerating her son at the time and was highly suspicious
of everyone.
"If you had been where
I had been at that point in my life, up against walls every time
I turned around, you would have become as suspicious as I was
of everyone and looking behind the bushes everywhere at anybody
and anything," she said.
Report the focus at hearing
into Milgaard's conviction
Julie Saccone, Saskatchewan
News Network; CanWest News Service, June 07, 2006
SASKATOON -- Federal Justice
Department lawyer Eugene Williams testified Tuesday he did not
consider notifying David Milgaard's lawyer that a promising report
forming a basis for his first appeal to the minister had no merit.
"This was material that
I was duty bound to bring to the minister," he said during
questioning by commission counsel Doug Hodson.
"Mr. Asper and Mr. Wolch
--- they had made their inquiries, they had made their assessment
of the file and they brought this forward as their ground. My
job was to make the necessary inquiries and provide a report
to the minister. It would be inappropriate for me to prejudge
how the minister would receive this information."
Milgaard applied to the justice
minister in December 1988 to review his murder conviction in
the 1969 rape and murder of nursing assistant Gail Miller.
The application questioned the forensic evidence of semen found
in the snow and included the statement of a motel party witness,
Deb Hall, who said Milgaard was being sarcastic when he admitted
killing Miller after others teased him about the fact he was
a suspect in the murder.
Between 1986 and 1988 the applicants
had the opportunity to gather material and provide the minister
with the grounds to support the application, Williams said.
"When you make that application
the assumption is you've done your research, you've identified
the things that are wrong and you bring it to the minister's
attention for consideration and a decision," he said. "It's
not a game of ping-pong. Make your submission, you put your best
foot forward, if you need our help to bolster any of the information
around it, and if you ask, certainly we'll provide it."
Williams said it would not
have been proper to share his assessment of the application before
going to the minister.
"First, my role is to
advise the minister," he said. "Second, my advice may
not always be accepted by the minister, consequently it wasn't
my responsibility or it wasn't appropriate for me to disclose
to the applicant that type of information."
Williams said communication with the Milgaard team came through
their lawyers and not directly with David Milgaard. The assumption
was that Milgaard's lawyers would keep him abreast of any new
developments.
Joyce Milgaard testified last
month she assumed once the application was deemed to have merit,
the department would meet with her and re-examine the case. By
the mid-1990s, Milgaard, his family and lawyers were frustrated
with the lack of communication from the Justice Department, believing
Williams was biased in favour maintaining the conviction.
At the time Joyce Milgaard
has said she believed authorities were involved in a coverup
surrounding her son's case, prompting her to launch her own investigation
and take her findings to the media.
Williams said he did not have
the authority nor felt it was appropriate to argue the case in
the media. His role was to assess the grounds of the application
and provide advice to the minister, he said. But he was concerned
as coverage in the media was mounting during the time, the public
was being informed of the case without hearing the full story.
"The public's view is
being shaped by a series of articles that didn't fully reflect
the facts as I knew them and I was unable to correct that perception
without violating the law as I understood it," he said.
Time spent preparing briefing
notes for the minister to respond to reports in the media hampered
the investigation of the application by delaying his work on
the case, Williams said.
William's rejected the grounds
of the application under section 690 of the Criminal Code, partly
because the report calling into questioning the forensic evidence
was based on incorrect assumptions, he said.
Milgaard's 1988 application
was dismissed by the federal justice minister on Feb. 27, 1991.
A second application was filed Aug. 14, 1991 and the case referred
to the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada directed
a new trial and the minister to quash the conviction.
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
