David Milgaard Cause Of Death, Obituary Not Yet available – After a brief illness, David Milgaard, the victim of one of Canada’s most renowned miscarriages of justice, died in an Alberta hospital. He was 69. After communicating with Milgaard’s sister on Sunday, James Lockyer, a Toronto-based lawyer who worked closely on the case and helped create the campaign group Innocence Canada, confirmed the death.
According to cheknews.ca, Lockyer, his death is “devastating for the family.” Milgaard was just 16 years old when he was wrongfully accused of the rape and murder of Gail Miller, a Saskatoon nursing attendant who was stabbed and left to die in the snow on Jan. 31, 1969.
He was imprisoned for 23 years before being released in 1992. Milgaard helped raise awareness about wrongful convictions in his later years and demanded changes to the way Canadian courts review convictions. “I think it’s important for everybody, not just lawyers, but for the public itself to be aware that wrongful convictions are taking place and that these people are sitting right now, behind bars and they’re trying to get out,” he said in 2015.
“The policies that keep them there must be changed.” The system for reviewing erroneous convictions is failing us all badly.” Lockyer and Milgaard met with Justice Minister David Lametti in Ottawa just over two years ago to advocate for the establishment of an independent agency to investigate charges of unjust convictions.
