ABSTRACT
During the past three decades in North America, we have witnessed a considerable strengthening of both academic and public interest in the realities of wrongful criminal conviction (e.g., Denov & Campbell, 2005; Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1986, 1996; Radelet, Bedau, & Putnam, 1992; Scheck & Neufeld, 2001). A number of high-profile cases in both the United States and Canada, most involving DNA evidence, have shone a critical light on the inevitability of human fallibility in the determination of guilt. That light has been particularly intense when culpable homicide is involved and when the nature of the homicide is especially repugnant, demanding a penalty of either life imprisonment or, in some parts of the United States, execution. The case that forms the backbone of this chapter, Milgaard v. The Queen,1 falls into this category. Convicted in 1969 of the predatory sexual homicide of a young nursing aide, David Milgaard spent 23 years in federal prisons in Canada before securing his release (Milgaard & Edwards, 1999).
