STORY: "Ottawa gave wrongfully convicted Canadians a promise of a lifeline with Milgaard’s Law. Under Mark Carney, why has nothing happened since?, by Chief Investigative Reporter Kevin Donovan, published by The Toronto Star on May 14, 2026. (Kevin Donovan is the Toronto Star’s Chief Investigative Reporter. His focus is on journalism that exposes wrongdoing and effects change. Over more than three decades he has reported on the activities of charities, government, police, business among other institutions. Donovan also reported from the battlefields in the Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan following 9/11. He has won three National Newspaper Awards, two Governor General’s Michener Awards, the Canadian Journalism Foundation award and three Canadian Association of Journalists Awards. As the Star’s editor of investigations for many years, Donovan led many award-winning projects for the paper. He is the author of several books, including “Secret Life: The Jian Ghomeshi Investigation” and the “Dead Times” (a fiction novel)."
SUB-HEADING: "The Justice Department has refused to grant an interview with the Star to explain the delay in creating the new Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission."
GIST: "The federal government has failed to set up the independent commission it promised would review allegations of wrongful conviction from people convicted of murder and other crimes.
Heralded three years ago as a long-overdue answer to flaws in the existing internal review process by government lawyers, the “Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission” was to be a dedicated group of people experienced in wrongful convictions.
Their job: to “review, investigate, and decide which cases should be returned to the justice system due to a potential miscarriage of justice,” according to a government statement at the time.
The legislation behind it was the David and Joyce Milgaard Law, named for the late David Milgaard and his mother Joyce.
David was wrongfully convicted of rape and murder and served 23 years in prison before being released and exonerated, following the advocacy of his mother and a group of lawyers.
The government announced the new commission in 2023 and made it law in 2024.
But it never became operational. There’s no office, no staff, and the commissioners that were supposed to vet the applications were never appointed.
“It’s very disappointing,” said Toronto lawyer James Lockyer, who first began advocating for the commission in 1993 and has had a legal hand in freeing numerous individuals from prison due to wrongful convictions.
“All I can say to the government is, please get on with it,” said Lockyer, a founding director of Innocence Canada, which advocates for the wrongfully accused. Innocence Canada has found that “eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, flawed forensic evidence, bias and discrimination collide to create wrongful convictions.”
Why the commission was not set up is shrouded in mystery.
Justice Department officials have refused numerous requests by the Star for an explanation.
The planned “arms-length” commission was to replace the existing in-house system that legal critics say was slow-moving, lacked transparency and had an inherent conflict of interest, because it was made up of Justice Department lawyers.
A concern was that they have an interest in protecting the justice system — not exposing its frailties.
In May 2025, six months after it was set up the Star began asking Mark Carney’s new Justice Minister Sean Fraser when the commission would be active.
The Star’s inquiries related to a potential case for the new commission — that of Christopher Sheriffe.
The former soccer star turned carpenter was convicted of first-degree murder in 2012 and has maintained his innocence.
Sheriffe, now in his 14th year of a life sentence, was hoping to be the first case reviewed by the new commission.
Instead, he is making an appeal to the existing Criminal Conviction Review Group (CCRG), staffed by eight federal lawyers.
Here is a selection of responses the Star received from the minister’s public relations staff when we asked what was going on:
May 22, 2025: “The Commission is not yet operational or accepting applications for wrongful conviction reviews.” And, when asked by the Star for an interview with a senior Justice official: “We cannot arrange for an interview.”
The Star asked for specific information.
May 26, 2025: “There will be a process launched soon. When, I am not sure, as the new minister is getting settled and our office is still getting staffed up,” a spokesperson said, noting that the commission would be based in Winnipeg.
Six months later, the Star followed up.
Sept. 26, 2025: “The government continues to work toward making the commission operational. We have no further updates at this time. Information on next steps, such as appointments, will be made in due course,” a senior public relations official said.
The Star continued to ask questions, receiving almost identical responses.
Last month, closing in on a year and a half after the commission became law, the public relations staff at the justice department said.
April 23, 2026: “Thank you for your email. The Government of Canada continues to work diligently towards the establishment of the Miscarriage of Justice Commission. Efforts are currently ongoing to identify and appoint a suitable chief commissioner as an important step toward full implementation of the commission. Given the importance and sensitivity of the commission’s mandate, it is essential that the right individual is selected to lead this work.”
Given the time that had passed since the law passed, the Star asked to interview a senior Justice official — not public relations staff.
April 24, 2026: “Hello, Kevin. An interview will not be possible, but we hope the additional information will be helpful. The chief commissioner and four to eight full- or part-time commissioners will be governor in council appointments made on the recommendation of the minister of justice. Once a chief commissioner is in place, the process to appoint commissioners will be pursued,” read an email from the public relations staff.
How many Canadian prisoners are wrongfully convicted?
Nobody can put a number on the number of Canadians who have been wrongfully convicted.
Lockyer, a lawyer who has devoted his career to advocating for the victims of wrongful convictions, said between two and three per cent of people convicted are innocent.
Should the commission be set up, Lockyer estimates it would receive 200 serious applications each year.
“The criminal justice system is a human system, so it’s fallible,” Lockyer told the Star in an interview. The Milgaard case, seen as a sort of flag bearer for the wrongfully convicted, was one of the many he has worked on.
Milgaard was 16 when he was charged and was later convicted of the rape and murder of nurse Gail Miller.
His conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1992 after he had served 23 years in prison.
In one of the many flaws discovered in his case, a police informant was found to have given false information to police in return for a $2,000 payment.
Milgaard was fully cleared in 1997 after tests proved that semen found at the crime scene didn’t match his DNA.
The real killer, a serial rapist, was convicted years after Milgaard’s release.
Milgaard and his mother went on to be tireless advocates for others they believed were wrongfully convicted. Joyce died in 2020; David in 2022.
When Milgaard and his lawyers first applied to the existing conviction review group, his request was dismissed. It took three more years before a second application was accepted by the group.
Other notable cases of wrongful conviction for murder in Canada include those of Steven Truscott, Guy Paul Morin, Donald Marshall and Tammy Marquardt.
A government-initiated report that led to the final formation of the new commission noted that the existing CCRG has delays of up to six years before the lawyers review a case.
Since 2002, only 20 “referrals” have been made back to the court from the CCRG. All were men, and all but two were white (one was Black, the other indigenous).
The report recommends that the new commission be made up of nine commissioners (one-third with legal training, one-third with expertise in wrongful convictions, and one-third representing groups that are overrepresented in prison, including at least one Black and one Indigenous commissioner).
The report notes (using 2020 figures) that while Indigenous people make up five per cent of the Canadian population, they account for 30 per cent of Canada’s prison population.
The report notes that Black people are also overrepresented, but does not provide the actual percentages.
The commission would not be cheap, which may be a stumbling block, given the federal government’s push toward austerity. The plan was to pay the commissioners similar to a federally-appointed judge (roughly $420,000 annually), and to have offices and support staff.
Ron Dalton, Innocence Canada co-president, himself a victim of a miscarriage of justice, thinks funding is the issue.
“You know, times are tight, money is scarce, the government’s trying to get smaller, not larger. It’s not a great time to be trying to create a new bureaucracy,” said Dalton.
The 70-year-old Newfoundland man was convicted of second-degree murder in his wife’s 1988 death. He served eight years in prison, but was freed after it was discovered that a pathologist had mistakenly determined his wife was strangled — she had actually choked on a piece of food.
Dalton said it is long past time the government created the independent commission it promised three years ago. Innocence Canada and other groups rely on fundraising and lawyers working pro bono to advocate for people.
“We spend all of our time either raising money to do the work we do, or fixing the government’s mistakes and paying for the privilege of doing this.”
Earlier this week, the Star reported that a new team of Toronto lawyers have taken on Sheriffe’s case as an example of a wrongful conviction.
Like in Milgaard’s case, the lawyers’ arguments centre on the use of evidence from anonymous police informants.
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;
