David Milgaard

David Milgaard (born July 7, 1952) is a Canadian who was wrongfully convicted for the rape and murder of nursing assistant Gail Miller. He was released and compensated after spending 23 years in prison. He was born in Winnipeg. As of 2015, he lives in Calgary and is employed as a community support worker.

In January 1969, 16-year-old Milgaard and his friends Ron Wilson and Nichol John took a trip across Canada.

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 picking up their friend Albert Cadrain, whose family was renting out their basement to Larry Fisher.

Tipped off by Cadrain, who admitted he was mostly interested in the $2000 reward for information, British Columbia police arrested Milgaard in May 1969 and sent him back to Saskatchewan, where he was charged with Miller's murder. Cadrain testified he had seen Milgaard return the night of Miller's murder in blood-stained clothing.

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

Milgaard was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison on January 31, 1970, exactly a year after Miller's murder. He was 17 years old. Twenty-three years later he was exonerated.

Milgaard wrote of the hardships he faced in jail, especially the difficulty of having his case reviewed, in his foreword to Gary Botting's book Wrongful Conviction in Canadian Law (Toronto: LexisNexis, 2010).

Milgaard appealed his conviction several times but was blocked both by bureaucracy and by a justice system unreceptive to those unwilling to admit their guilt. His formal application was completed in 1988 but was not considered until 1991 after Liberal MP Lloyd Axworthy addressed Parliament: "...I wish to speak of a travesty of justice. I speak of the plight of David Milgaard who has spent the last 21 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."

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