David Milgaard

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Milgaard's mugshot

David Milgaard (born 1954) is a Canadian who was wrongfully convicted for the murder and rape of nursing assistant Gail Miller. His case received international attention and today is a staple of high school and university legal studies.

In 1969, Milgaard along with two friends, Ron Wilson and Nichol John, decided on a whim to take a road trip across the Canadian prairies, a trip which involved some drug use and petty theft. Ron Wilson would later testify against Milgaard, claiming among other things, that Milgaard had stolen a flashlight from a grain elevator outside Aylesbury, Saskatchewan.

While the friends were in Saskatoon, a 20 year old nursing student, Gail Miller was found dead on a snowbank. At the time Milgaard and his friends were stopping to pick up a casual friend Albert Cadrain, whose family was renting out their basement to Larry Fisher, an ex-con who would later be found guilty of the crime.

Tipped off by Cadrain, who admitted he was mostly interested in the CAD $2,000 reward for information, British Columbia police arrested Milgaard in May of 1969 and sent him back to Saskatchewan where he was charged with Miller's murder. Cadrain testified that he had seen Milgaard return the night of Miller's murder in blood-stained clothing, and claimed that the teenage Milgaard was also a secret Mafia member who was plotting to have witnesses assassinated. His grip on reality however was less than secure, and he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital several months later after claiming he was the Son of God.

Both Ron and Nichol were also called to testify against him. They had originally told police that they had been with Milgaard the entire day and that they believed him to be innocent, but they changed their stories for the court. Ron later recanted his testimony claiming that he had been told he was personally under suspicion and wanted to alleviate the pressure on himself.

Milgaard was sentenced to life in prison, on January 31, 1970, at the age of 16 — exactly a year after Miller's murder.

He appealed his innocence several times, but was blocked both by bureaucracy and by a justice system unreceptive to those who were not willing to admit their guilt, considered a sign of lack of remorse. His formal application was completed in 1988, but was not considered until 1991 after a Liberal MP, Lloyd Axworthy addressed the Parliament: "...I wish to speak of a travesty of justice. I speak of the plight of David Milgaard who has spent the last twenty-one years of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit. Yet for the last two years, the Department of Justice has been sitting on an application to reopen his case…. But rather than review these conclusive reports, rather than appreciate the agony and trauma of the Milgaard family, the Minister of Justice refuses to act."

Parliament acted, and rejected Milgaard's application for a Conviction Review. In her 1996 autobiography Time and Chance, former Prime Minister (and then Justice Minister) Kim Campbell devotes an entire chapter to Milgaard. In this she claims that one of the main reasons for the delay in acting on the request to reopen his case was due to the fact that Milgaard's lawyers continually added new documentation to the file, which slowed the process in regard to when she could begin the review proceedings.

The federal government submitted a reference question to the Supreme Court of Canada, which recommended that Milgaard's conviction be quashed. Subsequently a new trial was held. Milgaard's lawyer for this new trial was Hersh Wolch. He was finally cleared of the crime on July 18, 1997, by DNA evidence. On July 25 1997, Larry Fisher was arrested for the murder and rape of Ms. Miller. On May 17 1999, Milgaard was compensated CAD $10 million by the Canadian government.

On September 30, 2003, a Royal Commission began investigating Milgaard's wrongful conviction. It was headed by Justice Edward P. MacCallum, with Douglas Hodson as commission counsel.

It should also be noted that Milgaard's mother, Joyce, was the prime moving force behind his case remaining in the spotlight long enough to be reviewed and resulting ultimately in his conviction being overturned.

The Milgaard Case in Popular Culture

To date, the David Milgaard case has been the subject of two movies: the 1992 documentary "The David Milgaard Story", directed by Vic Sarin, and the 1999 docudrama "Milgaard", directed by Stephen Williams and starring Ian Tracey.

The song "Wheat Kings" by The Tragically Hip (from their 1992 album Fully Completely) contains references to the Milgaard story.

External links

• Official Website for the Royal Commission into the Wrongful Conviction of David Milgaard
• CBC.ca Indepth: Timeline of David Milgaard story
• CBC Digital Archives: The Wrongful Conviction of David Milgaard
• Supreme Court of Canada opinion Reference re Milgaard (Can.), [1992] 1 S.C.R. 866