David Milgaard, a man wrongfully imprisoned for 23 years for rape and murder he did not commit, delivered a presentation to a full crowd in the River Building Feb. 1.
He spoke of the importance of implementing a restorative justice system in Canada to combat crime in communities.
“The right way to have people change their minds about doing wrong is to surround them with love and care. They will feel bad about what they have done wrong and they will decide themselves not to do it again,” Milgaard said.
Milgaard was speaking at the fifth annual wrongful conviction event organized by the Wrongful Conviction and Injustice Association of Carleton.
The president, Kelly Lauzon, said she started the organization in 2008 after watching a documentary about Alain Olivier, imprisoned for eight years after an RCMP sting. Olivier maintains they should have targeted his twin brother.
Lauzon and another undergraduate student decided to host the first event to raise awareness about his case with Olivier himself attending.
“Wrongful conviction is the dirty little secret of the justice system,” Lauzon said.
Lauzon also credited Milgaard’s case for getting her involved with advocating for the wrongly convicted.
She said when she learned many other Canadian citizens were subjected to the injustice, she felt outraged and infuriated.
“As much as each of their cases are very much their own, they all have a lot of similar factors that tie them together,” she said.
Lauzon said wrongful convictions are the result of human error and she wants to see more checks and balances to prevent this costly error from occurring.
In his speech, Milgaard said those checks and balances could include an independent review group made up of ordinary people, like what they have in the United Kingdom justice system. He said Canada’s conviction review process was “failing miserably” because it involves police officers investigating themselves.
Darryl Davies teaches a course on wrongful convictions at Carleton and taught both Lauzon and Milgaard in the past. He taught Lauzon when she was taking his wrongful conviction course at Carleton and Milgaard when he was in prison at Saskatchewan Penitentiary.
In an introduction to the event, Davies said there are problems in the justice system that need to be fixed.
“We’re still facing the same problems we’ve faced before with a justice system that is more concerned about themselves than about justice,” Davies said.
He said those who are convicted often come from low socioeconomic backgrounds and to change things, people have to take more action, besides voting.
Milgaard said compensation for the wrongly convicted is important and that fighting for compensation from the government can feel like a second prison.
Romeo Phillion, an Ottawa man who was wrongfully convicted, spent 33 years in prison and is still seeking compensation for his ordeal.
“They should be accountable for what they did and I’m going to fight for it and I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to give up,” Phillion said at the event.
Phillion said he is launching an appeal Feb. 13 against a recent court decision that denied him compensation.
