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Advocate for Wrongly Convicted, David Milgaard Fights to Keep Innocent out of ‘Cages’”

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Advocate for Wrongly Convicted, David Milgaard Fights to Keep Innocent out of ‘Cages’” Networked Knowledge Media Reports Networked Knowledge Canada Homepage This page set up by Dr Robert N Moles On 2 OCTOBER 2014 Valerie Fortney of the Calgary Herald reported “Advocate for wrongly convicted, David Milgaard fights to keep innocent out of ‘cages’”. David Milgaard, who spent 23 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, spoke at the John Howard Society in Calgary on Thursday as part of the first Wrongful Conviction Day. Photograph by: Leah Hennel David Milgaard is not by definition an angry man. “I love my life,” says the youthful 62-year-old, who has called Calgary home for the past six years. “I’m grateful for everything I have today.” Stir his memories, though, and the old demons rush over him like an ocean wave. “I had trouble sitting with some men recently who were wrongfully convicted,” he says. “I wish to say that anger isn’t there, but it is there.” Despite the unwelcome emotions such encounters trigger, Milgaard — who spent more than 23 years in a Canadian prison for a crime he didn’t commit — stands outside the John Howard Society on Thursday morning, the featured speaker at a press conference launching the first Wrongful Conviction Day. Together with his long time lawyer Greg Rodin, who also lives in Calgary, Milgaard speaks passionately to the gathered media about the issues surrounding the wrongly convicted. “We cannot let innocent people be disqualified from life, from beauty,” he says. “In our Canadian prisons right now, we have wrongly convicted men, we have wrongly convicted women and, in some cases, children, sitting still right now inside cages.” The new day of recognition is being hosted by the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, a national non-profit organization that grew out of the Justice for Guy Paul Morin Committee. Its volunteer base has worked on hundreds of cases, leading to the exoneration of 18 people, including Steven Truscott and Robert Baltovich, both of whom spent years in prison for murders they didn’t commit. On this day, Milgaard makes a public appeal for a review process in this country independent of the justice system, pointing to the United Kingdom as a model to follow. “It’s operated by an impartial tribunal that is hand-picked for its impartiality,” he says, “and its ability to investigate cases of wrongful convictions to come to appropriate conclusions.” When it comes to the stories of the wrongfully convicted in Canada, David Milgaard is something of a household name. He was just 17 in 1969 when he was arrested and charged with the murder of Gail Miller, a 20-year-old Saskatoon nursing student. Sentenced to life in prison in 1970, he was released in 1992 after the Supreme Court of Canada reviewed his case and recommended his conviction be set aside. In 1997, DNA tests confirmed Milgaard’s innocence; Larry Fisher, a man who lived near Miller and had served 23 years in prison for numerous rapes, was later convicted of her murder and sentenced to life in prison. After winning a $10-million civil lawsuit against the Saskatchewan government with the help of lawyer Rodin, Milgaard set out to live a life out of the spotlight, not always with success. In 2011, he faced assault and other charges after a domestic dispute. Those charges were later dropped and Milgaard received counselling from forensic psychologist Patrick Baillie, who was a witness at the Saskatchewan inquiry into his wrongful conviction. The soft-spoken Milgaard — who has said he lost most of his lawsuit money in bad stock market investments — admits that his ongoing notoriety and people’s curiosity is something he grapples with today. “I want to keep it about those still in prison, not about me,” he says of his decision to be here on this day, along with an increasing number of public speaking engagements at schools and other organizations. “But I want to be here to help others in my situation.” After all, he says, the world’s best role model raised him. “She fought for years to get me out of prison,” he says of mom Joyce Milgaard, now 80 and in contact every week with her son from her home in Winnipeg. “She has continued to go forward and fight for other people in the same situation . if it’s going to make a difference, I’ll be out there, saying what I feel.” While revisiting the painful past brings up unwelcome emotions, Milgaard says he can now quickly recalibrate when he reminds himself of the good things in his present life. He receives support from his community at Bethany Church and keeps busy with indigenous studies at Mount Royal University when he isn’t on the road public speaking — but, mostly, he derives his greatest joy from his family. “My kids make me happy, my wife makes me happy,” he says of son Robert, 8, daughter Julia, 6 and wife Cristina. “Life is still a struggle some days. You just have to put one foot in front of the other.” .
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