Milgaard had ‘enormous courage and devotion’: Mulroney

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This article was published 21/03/2020 (1643 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Joyce Milgaard, who lobbied for decades to have her son David Milgaard released from prison, was remembered Sunday for her role in changing Canada’s justice system.

She died in a Winnipeg care home Saturday afternoon at the age of 89.

“Joyce was in the vanguard of courageous mothers and fathers fighting for their children, in the belief they were wrongfully convicted,” former prime minister Brian Mulroney told the Free Press.

“It required enormous courage and devotion, and love, for her to do that.”

Winnipeg-born David Milgaard served 23 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit: the 1969 slaying of 20-year-old Gail Miller in Saskatoon. He was released after decades of campaigning and investigations by his mother.

Mulroney said she left a mark on Canada’s justice system. “What we should all learn from this is that civil liberties are precious, and the court system is never infallible,” he said.

He recalled being confronted by Joyce outside a meeting in Winnipeg. He ordered Milgaard to be transferred to a lower-security part of prison and asked the Supreme Court to review the case. Until then, Ottawa had shut down inquiries into the case.

“I could see in her eyes that whether or not he was innocent was irrelevant. She believed he was innocent,” Mulroney recalled.

“When you feel something has gone awry, citizens should appeal to the prime minister — use his moral authority in the government to make certain things happen in the right way.”

David Asper was a key part of the legal team that got David Milgaard’s charges stayed, and his eventual exoneration. He met Joyce in 1986, and was struck by her resolve, which never wavered.

“There were moments of frustration, but there wasn’t a moment where her foot left the gas pedal,” Asper said.

Joyce used skills she had built up as a Toronto Star switchboard operator to investigate Larry Fisher, who was eventually found guilty of the 1969 homicide.

With no Canadian group for the wrongfully convicted, she reached out to an American organization, Centurion Ministries, for help.

Jim McCloskey recalls Joyce showing up at his New Jersey office. His group went with her to Saskatoon to interview Fisher’s multiple rape victims, to establish a pattern.

The Saskatoon family of the victim eventually agreed to ask for a review. “We both cried, because we knew this was the beginning of the effort to free her son,” McCloskey recalled.

He said Joyce’s story has inspired countless families across the world to pursue their fight for justice.

“She provided such bright hope for them, McCloskey said. “She was a lioness.”

In Ottawa, senior bureaucrats still recall seeing Joyce with a sandwich board outside Parliament Hill in the damp winters, campaigning for her son’s freedom. Former justice minister Kim Campbell brushed off Joyce’s attempt to pass her a report about her son in May 1990. Joyce cornered Mulroney the next year.

In her memoir, A Mother’s Story: The Fight to Free My Son David, Joyce cites her Christian Science faith as key to her resolve. Asper believes her tenacity stemmed from being a good mother.

“What she did shows you what maternal instinct is capable of achieving,” Asper recalled.

“My life was changed in a much better way for having known her.”

A 2008 commission found multiple problems with Canada’s legal system, but it also blamed Joyce for soliciting media coverage and undermining the justice system.

Asper said Joyce brushed off those criticisms, given the multiple failures by police, appeals courts and prosecutors.

James Lockyer, another lawyer whose worked helped Milgaard secure $10 million in compensation from the Saskatchewan government, said he never met anyone as kind and as tenacious.

He said Joyce was the only person who upended Canadians’ belief that everyone in jail deserved to be there.

“We need as many Joyce Milgaards as we can have, especially in times like this,” he said. “Every bone in her body was good.”

Joyce is survived by four children.

David Milgaard, who was imprisoned at age 17, continues his fight for a reform to the criminal justice system, which he argues strips everyone of their dignity.

The federal Liberals have pledged to create an independent body to review cases where an an offender argues they’ve been wrongfully convicted, which is currently handled within the Department of Justice.

Milgaard met a month ago with the federal justice minister in Ottawa, and told the Free Press it was a relief to think a new measure could be in place before his mother died.

“It’s a good thing that this is going to happen while she’s still alive,” Milgaard said at the time.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca