Catching up

I'm late on reporting all the news because I left sunny Florida in order to return gray, bitter Ottawa-- my home! Since I have an inbox full of Milgaard alerts from Yahoo and Google, I will summarize them rather than going into any depth.

1. David Asper received funding from the inquiry. Justice McCallum concluded that Asper may face criticism in his role as Milgaard's defense lawyer and that he has a right to have his legal costs paid. Most Canadians know that David Asper is part of the well-known Asper family, which controls CanWest Global television and a number of newspapers across Canada.

Asper filed two of David Milgaard's applications for a review of his case; this resulted in Milgaard's conviction being set aside by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1992.

2. Serge Kujawa, former chief prosecutor for the province of Saskatchewan, testified at the inquiry on Wednesday. He said that the means that Milgaard supporters used to have the case overturned were inappropriate. Kujawa believes that the public should not be making decisions about the judicial system based on impressions that they receive from inmates' families or the media.

"A whole lot of the people pushing for that kind of inquiry were not qualified to express opinions on that inquiry or the justice system or the legal system," Kujawa said on Wednesday, according to CBC News.

3. On Thursday, Kujawa went so far as to question the DNA evidence. "Nothing is perfectly proven and I don't know how the substance that was tested on those clothes got on that. I don't know where it came from," Betty Ann Adam of the Star Phoenix reported on Friday.

Kujawa intimated that someone may have tampered with the evidence, although he issued an official apology to David back in 1997 after the DNA results indicated that Larry Fisher committed the vicious rape and murder. Hersh Wolch, Milgaard's lawyer, suggested that Kujawa had "tunnel vision" and questioned the sincerity of his apology to Milgaard earlier.

Sigrid Mac, Ottawa