SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 211

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 12, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 211 - Jun/12/23
Mr. Tako Van Popta (Langley—Aldergrove, CPC)
  • Jun/12/23 1:49:19 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-40 
Mr. Speaker, the minister talked about the two-step procedure under the new regime. Would he be open to having the lower standard, where miscarriage of justice may have occurred, for the first step, but the higher standard, where it was likely to have occurred, for the second step, before the commissioner sends it back into the judicial system?
59 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
Context: House Hansard - 211 - Jun/12/23
Mr. Tako Van Popta (Langley—Aldergrove, CPC)
  • Jun/12/23 1:50:37 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-40 
Mr. Speaker, the police needed a conviction. There had been four widely reported sexual assault cases already in the city, and now a fifth one that ended with the murder of a young woman on her way to work on a cold January morning in 1969. She had been stabbed in the chest and her throat had been slashed with a knife that a city resident many years later reported as having gone missing from her kitchen. Mrs. Fisher suspected it was her husband who was the killer. She did not report that to the police. Although he was known to police officers to be a violent man, they did not pursue that investigation because they had another theory of what happened on that cold winter morning. That theory was based on evidence, which was confusing and contradictory, from a group of confused, impressionable and irresponsible young teenagers prone to doing stupid things like stealing cars, stealing gas for cars and committing petty theft to fuel their drug habits, but rape and murder was not a part of that. At first these confused teenagers told the police officers that their friend David had been with them the whole time and he could not possibly have been the murderer. They did not believe them. They did not like that story or this alibi because it did not fit their theory of what happened that morning, so they brought these witnesses in again. This time they locked them up for 48 hours to sober them up. Then they started questioning them relentlessly, time and again. Finally, these confused, impressionable, irresponsible teenagers changed their story. They just wanted to get out of there. They decided to tell the officers what they wanted to hear so they would get out of there. The figured that David could stand on his own two feet, which would all probably work out in the end anyway, so they changed their story. David Milgaard was charged with murder and went up for trial. Many years later, these witnesses changed their story again. They recanted. They apologized. Their excuse was that they were going through withdrawal symptoms, they just wanted to get out of there and felt the best way to do that was to tell the police officers what they wanted to hear to get out of there and move on. At the trial they did not even give that evidence. However, the police, thinking ahead of time, had already taken their written statements, which were put before the jury. The jury accepted them and David Milgaard was convicted and spent 23 years in jail. He was 17 years old at the time and he spent 23 years in jail for a murder he did not commit while the real murderer continued terrorizing the neighbourhood. Years later, it all seemed so obvious that this was a serious miscarriage of justice, but it did not seem that obvious at the time. I do not have a policing background and have never had to look at the evidence of a crime scene, but I can imagine it must be very frustrating for the police authorities and investigators, particularly under a lot of pressure from the public and politicians to do something about it, to find a person to convict. It is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. I am not very good at them, but there is always a piece that looks like it is going to fit and I just want to take my fist and pound it in to make it work. That is exactly what happened in the David Milgaard case. The piece did not quite fit, so the police used pressure until it finally did, which was a serious miscarriage of justice. David was convicted of the murder of Gail Miller by the jury on January 31, 1970. He appealed to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, which was denied a year later. He went to the Supreme Court of Canada, which refused leave to appeal. It did not even want to hear the case, and David Milgaard spent many years in jail. Thankfully, he did not give up and finally there was a breakthrough. The law eventually caught up with Larry Fisher and he pleaded guilty to several sexual assault charges, and one of attempted murder. Some of these charges were around the events that took place at the same time as the murder of Gail Miller and in the same neighbourhood. This was the breakthrough that David Milgaard and his very determined mother Joyce were looking for and they pursued it. They had a lot of help from a lot of people, such as not-for-profit groups and lawyers who were willing to work pro bono, and they kept digging. The evidence was so clear that David Milgaard had not commit the murder, but he had run out of appeals. There was nothing left that he could do but go the political route, and that is exactly what he did. He went to the minister of justice, under section 690 of the Criminal Code, and he asked for a review. That was in 1988 after this evidence started becoming available. The minister of justice turned him down, but he and his mother Joyce were determined. The credit goes particularly to Mrs. Milgaard for her persistence. One day on September 1991, Mrs. Milgaard held a vigil in front of a hotel in Winnipeg where the prime minister of the day, Brian Mulroney, was about to give a speech. She did not expect to speak with the prime minister; she was expected to maybe shout out at him and be recognized. However, Brian Mulroney walked over to her and asked her what her story was. This is what Prime Minister Mulroney said years later, which was quoted in the Winnipeg Free Press, “There was just something so forlorn about this woman standing alone on a very cold evening on behalf of her son, but in that brief meeting, I got a sense of Mrs. Milgaard and her genuineness and her courage. We all have mothers, but even the most devoted and loving mothers wouldn't continue the crusade for 22 years if there had been any doubt in her mind. So, I went back to Ottawa and had a much closer look at it. I told the appropriate people that I thought a review of this particular case was warranted and I wanted appropriate action taken to bring this about.” It finally landed back on the desk of the minister of justice, and this time, with the evidence that was available then, she was convinced that a miscarriage of justice likely occurred. She referred it to the Supreme Court of Canada, which this time had to look at it and was convinced as well by the new evidence that a new trial should be ordered. It went back to Saskatchewan, but the Saskatchewan attorney general decided that, with the intervening 22 years and witnesses maybe disappearing, evidence maybe disappearing, maybe it would not bother pursuing it, and it dropped the case. David was then a free man, but that was not the same as a finding of innocence or a finding of not guilty. It was just a suspension of further proceedings, and the cloud of suspicion continued to hang over David Milgaard.
1229 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border