|
Commission
of Inquiry Into the Wrongful Conviction of David Milgaard
(Page 5)
Honourable Mr. Justice Edward
P. MacCallum, Commissioner
| Commission website
Pre-inquiry
publicity | 2004
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background (also see links on sidebar) Sask
to give inquiry another $700,000
Inquiry gets lesson in
witness manipulation
Les MacPherson, The
StarPhoenix, March 08, 2005
The Milgaard inquiry got a
lesson Monday on what it takes to get an impressionable, 16-year-old
girl to say what police want her to say.
The witness was Nichol John,
Milgaard's travelling companion on that terrible day in 1969
when Gail Miller was sexually assaulted and murdered. Milgaard
was wrongfully convicted and served 23 years in prison before
being exonerated by DNA evidence.
John, now 52 and living in
British Columbia, was the key witness implicating Milgaard. But
not at first. Her story evolved as police pressure intensified.
After five separate interviews and an undeserved night in jail,
she was finally transformed from a credible alibi witness who
vindicated Milgaard to an eyewitness to him committing murder.
That this could not possibly be true was revealed years later
when DNA evidence implicated serial rapist Larry Fisher.
Not quite three months after
the murder, in her first interview with Saskatoon police, John
offered what now appears to be the truth. In a signed statement
taken at her home in Regina, she said she was with Milgaard for
all but a minute or two around the time the crime was committed.
Police regarded her as credible. They further believed that this
meant Milgaard could not possibly be guilty. With John's alibi
evidence, he simply would not have had time to commit the crime.
Less than two weeks later,
Saskatoon police interviewed her again, this time at the Regina
jail. The police report of that interview says she now regarded
Milgaard as dangerous. Otherwise, however, she stuck to her story
that excluded Milgaard.
A month later, she was taken
back to the Regina jail for a third interview. For a third time,
she supported Milgaard's alibi. For a third time, she said she
saw no blood on his clothes or hands. This time, however, she
reportedly characterized Milgaard as someone capable of rape
and murder. The police report says she described him as more
of an animal than a human.
John did not sign this report
and, today, cannot recall ever saying such a thing.
"I would not have used
words like that," she told the inquiry.
This was one of her more revealing
statements before the inquiry. She has not been an illuminating
witness. She remembers almost nothing from the relevant time.
This is not what you'd expect of an eyewitness to murder.
For her fourth police interview,
John was brought back to Saskatoon and shown around the crime
scene. Still, she stuck to her story: Milgaard couldn't have
done it. But now she'd been familiarized with details of the
crime. This spoiled forever any prospect for independent recollection.
But it would help her with details if she could somehow be convinced
to change her story.
An intimidating taste of imprisonment
might have convinced her. Although she was not charged or even
suspected of any offence, John was made by police to spend the
night in jail. She was not there as a guest. Her personal possessions
were taken from her. The inventory was entered into evidence
at the inquiry. Normal practice would be to put up a witness
from out of town in a hotel.
The next day, John was interviewed
for a fifth time, this time by a police polygraph expert from
Calgary. When she stuck to her story, he repeatedly insisted
she was not telling the truth. Unbelievably, he showed her the
victim's bloody nurse's dress. What if this had been your sister,
he demanded.
Now, finally, she implicated
Milgaard. According to a report of that interview, also unsigned,
she told the polygraph expert that she'd seen Milgaard stab Gail
Miller. Oddly enough, however, John was not asked to take a polygraph.
A sixth interview ensued, this time with Saskatoon police. From
this emerged a signed statement in which John claimed to have
seen Milgaard kill Gail Miller. Thus did Milgaard's alibi witness
become his undoing.
In retrospect, John's revised
story seems preposterous. She claimed that Milgaard was looking
for someone to help push their stuck car when he killed Miller.
That he'd murder someone in a public alley with no means of escape
seems unlikely in the extreme. It also seems unlikely that John
would have willingly remained with a savage killer for the balance
of their car trip to Calgary, Edmonton and Regina. She had any
number of chances to go her own way.
John, to her credit, did not
repeat this improbable -- and, as we now know, false -- account
at Milgaard's trial. Rather, she repeatedly insisted that she
didn't remember what happened. Nor did she remember giving her
damning statement to police. This precluded awkward questions
from the defence when the statement was read into evidence. It
tipped the scales against Milgaard.
Thirty-five years later, John
told the inquiry that she still has no memory of any murder.
Neither can she offer any explanation as to why she changed her
story.
Inquiry commissioner Mr. Justice
Edward MacCallum might not be so generous.
les.macpherson@TheSP.com
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Disguised witness doesn't
remember implicating Milgaard
Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix,
March 08, 2005
The woman who said she saw
David Milgaard stab a woman professed to have almost no memory
of that day 36 years ago when she took the witness stand at the
Milgaard inquiry Monday.
Wearing a dark wig and dark-framed
glasses, Nichol John sat up straight and answered almost every
question with the same response; she didn't remember.
She said she didn't remember
seeing Milgaard stab a woman and didn't remember telling police
she had.
John also denied memory of
agreeing with witness Ron Wilson to lie to police and "give
them what they want to get David," and to "sink him,"
as Wilson has said.
John said she didn't remember
being pressured or coerced by police to make statements against
Milgaard.
Despite John's lack of current
memories, she was able to confirm for commission counsel, Doug
Hodson, that she did sign various documents, testify at hearings
and participate in taped conversations.
In that way, Hodson reviewed
John's participation in events that led to 17-year-old Milgaard
being wrongfully convicted for the Jan. 31, 1969, murder of Saskatoon
nursing assistant Gail Miller and his remaining in prison for
23 years.
Milgaard was released in 1992
after the Supreme Court reviewed the case against him. He was
exonerated in 1997 by use of DNA evidence, which was also used
to convict serial rapist Larry Fisher of the crime in 1999.
John, who was a 16-year-old
hippy who smoked marijuana and used LSD in 1969, first told police
on March 11, 1969, that neither Milgaard nor Wilson was out of
her sight long enough that morning to have raped and murdered
21-year-old Miller.
On March 18, 1969, police took
John to the Regina police station and placed her in a room with
Albert Cadrain, who was the first person to say that he saw blood
on Milgaard's clothing. Until Cadrain, nobody had said anything
to implicate Milgaard.
John came out of the room and
said that everything Cadrain said was true.
But at the same time, John
maintained Milgaard had not been out of her sight long enough
to have committed the crime. Saskatoon police detective Eddy
Karst wrote in a report that John was very convincing and that
there was no way Milgaard could have been connected to the crime.
Monday, John said that while
she didn't remember talking with police on March 18, 1969, she
would not have used the words Karst attributed to her in his
report, when he wrote that John said Milgaard was "more
of an animal nature than you would expect of a human.
"I would never have used
words like that," John said Monday.
John was interviewed again
on May 22 of that year at the Regina police station and then
was taken to Saskatoon. Police took her to the place where Miller's
body was found and pointed out other key landmarks in the case.
She spent that night in cells
at the Saskatoon police station.
The next day, a Calgary police
inspector interviewed her and Wilson. The investigator left John
and Wilson alone for a time.
At the Supreme Court hearing
in 1992, Wilson testified that it was during that brief meeting
that he and John agreed to tell the police what they wanted to
hear, according to transcripts entered at the inquiry Monday.
"Let's sink him. Let's
give them what they want to get David," Wilson said he said
to John that day, according to the transcript.
Later that afternoon when the
officer questioned her and showed her Miller's bloodied uniform,
John said for the first time that she had seen Milgaard stab
the woman.
"My God. I do remember.
. . . I didn't remember until I saw the uniform," the officer
later said John said.
The next morning John gave
a damning 11-page statement to Saskatoon police.
She did not verify the statement
at Milgaard's trial, where she said she couldn't remember events
of the day in question nor giving the police statement. John
is the only witness scheduled for this week. After Hodson finishes
questions intended to draw out relevant information, lawyers
for 12 parties with standing are entitled to cross examine her.
Complete transcripts and documents
are available on commission's website at www.milgaardinquiry.ca.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Witness under hypnosis
didn't verify statement
Betty Ann Adam, The
StarPhoenix, March 9, 2005
A hypnotist tried in 1991 to
help Nichol John recall the morning of Gail Miller's 1969 murder,
but John did not verify her one-time statement that she saw David
Milgaard commit the crime, the Milgaard inquiry heard Tuesday.
Although John told police on
May 23 and 24, 1969, that she saw Milgaard stab a woman in an
alley behind a funeral home on 20th Street and Avenue N, she
refused to endorse that statement at Milgaard's preliminary hearing
or at his trial.
She said then, and ever since,
that she does not remember what happened on Jan. 31, 1969, the
morning of Miller's death.
Milgaard was convicted of killing
Miller and spent 23 years in prison before he was released in
1992, after the case was reviewed by the Supreme Court. DNA was
used to exonerate him in 1997 and to convict serial rapist Larry
Fisher of the crime in 1999.
The inquiry, which began in
January, is looking into the original investigation, the prosecution
that led to the wrongful conviction and the actions of justice
officials in the years afterward.
On Tuesday, John said she can't
be sure of what she saw.
"I have things that flash
into my mind but I don't know if they are real," she told
an investigator in 1989.
"I don't know if I really
saw that or if I, from hearing people. . . . I can't tell if
that's what I really saw," she said, according to transcripts
entered at the inquiry.
Also on Tuesday, the inquiry
watched a video of Vancouver psychologist Dr. Lee Pulos trying
to hypnotize John and help her recall what she saw the morning
she arrived in Saskatoon with Milgaard and Ron Wilson.
Pulos had John respond to questions
by lifting different fingers designated to represent Yes, No
and None of your business.
John indicated that her subconscious
mind knew what had happened that day. As Pulos questioned her,
John began to sob and said, "He's stabbing her. . . . His
arm is raised."
She would not say during the
session with Pulos who she meant, saying instead that her mind
felt like it would explode.
She later said she could see
an arm being raised but the person raising his arm had his back
to her. "I don't want to know," she said.
"It was like something
I had gone through before. It was like I was being strangled,"
she said through tears and sobs.
John originally told police
Milgaard was never out of her sight long enough to have committed
the crime. She changed her story after repeated questioning by
police, being taken to the scene of the crime by police, being
placed alone with other witnesses and being made to spend two
nights in police custody.
Joyce Milgaard had tried earlier,
in 1981, to convince John to undergo hypnosis to help her remember.
Milgaard had offered a $10,000 reward for information that would
help clear her son.
She also funded a lawyer to
represent John as Joyce Milgaard tried to convince her to tell
what had happened the day of the murder and during the police
investigation.
Joyce Milgaard also offered
to pay for a psychiatrist to hypnotize John but John never showed
up for the appointment.
David Milgaard wrote to John
twice in the early 1980s, asking for help.
In the first letter, written
May 1, 1981, Milgaard wrote, "I am a 28 year old man that
still believes in human good and I'm also very tired. I don't
know how it's been for you all this time to know that I never
killed anyone, but for me it has been murder.
"Regardless of whoever
or however things were arranged or rearranged so long ago, the
truth will always remain the same. When I saw you on the stand,
I said to myself, they must of really screwed you around."
John has said she cannot remember
most of the events or details of the period in question. She
doesn't remember giving police statements, testifying at Milgaard's
preliminary hearing or trial nor most of the subsequent interviews
and hearings where she has been questioned about the events of
1969.
She did come up with new information
however, in a 1981 interview with Joyce Milgaard and her lawyers.
John said David Milgaard raped
her in a Regina hotel room a few days before she went on the
road trip with him that took them to Saskatoon.
By the end of that same interview,
John had backed off the claim, saying that rape might be "too
strong a word" to describe what had happened.
Eight years later, in 1989,
John added another allegation about Milgaard, saying he had attempted
to rape her again on the trip to Saskatoon.
There has been no evidence
at the hearing to suggest John complained to the police about
the allegations.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
John's hypnosis answered
little
First hypnotist reported John's subconscious knew Milgaard
killed Miller
Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix,
March 10, 2005
The second of two psychologists
who tried in 1992 to help Nichol John remember the morning Gail
Miller was killed in 1969 gave short shrift to a statement that
might have cast light on the police interrogation that resulted
in John saying she saw Milgaard stab Miller.
Milgaard was convicted of Miller's
murder and spent 23 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
He was proven innocent by DNA evidence in 1997, which was used
to convict serial rapist Larry Fisher of the crime in 1999.
On Wednesday, the judicial
inquiry looking into the original death investigation, Milgaard's
wrongful conviction and the subsequent actions of justice officials
watched a video of John being hypnotized and questioned for the
second time.
John, who was 16 in 1969, originally
said Milgaard was never out of her sight long enough to have
committed the crime on the morning of the murder.
Months later, she changed her
story, saying she saw Milgaard stab a woman.
The new statement came after
she was repeated interrogated by police, taken to the scene of
the crime and allowed to spend time alone with witnesses who
were implicating Milgaard.
John refused to verify her
statement implicating Milgaard at his preliminary hearing or
his trial. She said then, and since, that she cannot remember
what happened that morning.
In 1991, at the request of
federal justice investigator Eugene Williams, John agreed to
be hypnotized in an effort to remember. John had refused a similar
request 10 years earlier, by Milgaard's mother, Joyce Milgaard.
The first hypnotist was Lee
Pulos, a Vancouver psychologist who was seen in a video viewed
Tuesday by the inquiry. When John said she remembered being in
an alley and seeing a man raise his arm as he struggled with
a woman, Pulos asked if the man was David Milgaard. John did
not answer.
John apparently indicated --
by lifting a finger -- that her subconscious mind knew Milgaard
had killed Miller.
In a letter to Williams, which
was entered at the inquiry Wednesday, Pulos reported that John
had said Milgaard repeatedly stabbed the victim. That remark
did not seem to reflect what John said in the video.
Other psychologists later criticized
Pulos' methods in letters and memos entered at the inquiry.
One such letter, from psychologist
Campbell Perry to Williams, touched briefly on the role of police
in John's damning statement. Perry said there was no way to determine
the truthfulness of what John said during hypnosis, and Pulos
had asked "blunt leading questions."
John agreed to be hypnotized
again, a few months later, by a Philadelphia psychologist, Martin
Orne. That videotaped session was also viewed by the commission
Wednesday.
That interview touched briefly
on John's experience with the police.
At one point, Orne asked John
about the day she made her statement implicating Milgaard. Orne
said police had wanted John to sleep in a cell, and that made
her uncomfortable. Orne then asked what time of day she made
the statement.
John said for the first time
on the record that "it took a long time" to give the
statement, and that police wanted her to sign every page of it.
Orne said, "But they didn't
push you to read the statement."
John agreed they did not.
Orne did not follow up on the
veracity of the damning statement. Instead, he asked John how
long police drove her around the crime scene. She said it was
about two hours in the afternoon.
She said she wanted to take
a polygraph test the day she implicated Milgaard, but the polygraph
expert refused to test her.
During the session, John also
gave a new version of her memory, saying she saw a man in a beige
corduroy jacket kneeling astride a prone figure in the snow.
She had previously said the man was standing and grabbing a woman's
purse from her as she tried to take it back. She had said she
saw the man raise his arm but had previously stopped short of
saying she saw the stabbing.
John will take the stand again
today.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Witness believes she
saw Miller murder
Many gaps in memory at Milgaard Inquiry
Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix,
March 11, 2005
Nichol John's mother told RCMP
in 1993 that David Milgaard had choked Nichol with her jacket
hood the morning of Gail Miller's murder and that their travelling
companion, Ron Wilson, had slapped her face and told her to be
quiet when John screamed, "He killed her. He killed her."
The inquiry looking into Milgaard's
wrongful conviction heard the new allegation written in an RCMP
report the year after Milgaard was released from prison after
serving 23 years for the murder he didn't commit. The Supreme
Court had ordered Milgaard's release, but it was 1997 before
his innocence was established through DNA evidence, which was
later used to convict serial rapist Larry Fisher of the crime.
John has never told the hood
choking story in any of the many times she has testified under
oath or in any official police interviews nor when she was hypnotized
and questioned in 1991 and 1992.
John was the one person who
said she saw Milgaard stab Miller. She gave police a statement
describing the murder but then refused to verify it in court.
She said then and since then that she doesn't remember anything
about the events surrounding the day of the murder.
According to the RCMP report,
Mary Eva John said she reminded Nichol, after Nichol testified
at the Supreme Court in 1992, that the reason Nichol sometimes
experienced a choking sensation when she was under stress was
because of the hood incident in an alley.
Mary John told RCMP her daughter
had told her about the choking incident sometime after Milgaard's
1970 trial.
Nichol John said Thursday she
doesn't remember being choked by Milgaard or being slapped by
Wilson. Nor does she remember telling her mother that story or
her mother bringing it up after the Supreme Court hearing.
Earlier in the day, the inquiry
saw John's notoriously poor memory produce new information in
the 1993 RCMP interview.
When asked if she remembered
another female being in the car the morning of the murder, John
said she had had the thought of it over the years. She said it
was "a feeling," more than a memory.
Although John has always claimed
to have almost no memory of events, she was able to recall her
first meeting with Milgaard, waiting at Wilson's house for the
boys to fix the car before they set out on the road trip that
took them through Saskatoon, the clothes she was wearing that
morning and realizing they were approaching Saskatoon that morning
because she could see the city lights ahead.
She remembered using the bathroom
in the basement of a house when the car got stuck in an alley,
remembered Wilson having battery acid on his pants and Milgaard's
ripped pants.
She said for the first time
that she found a piece of picture identification in a cosmetic
bag from the glove compartment of Wilson's car. She had first
talked about identification in the bag about 12 years after the
event but had never said anything about a photo on it. She said
in 1993 that she didn't know whose identification it was.
She had no independent memory
of it Thursday.
While some of the details she
offered sounded much like evidence that had been put to her in
questions over the years, some of it was brand new and spontaneous.
She remembered feeling apprehensive when being taken to the Regina
police station for questioning, riding in a police car to Saskatoon
and the car driving into an underground garage at the Saskatoon
police station.
She remembered wearing a new,
pink dress her mother had made her buy when she testified at
Milgaard's trial.
While John still did not say
she saw Milgaard kill Miller, she said she believed she saw the
murder.
John said Thursday she still
believes she saw the murder because she has so many gaps in her
memory.
Commission counsel Doug Hodson
questioned John about why she was able to recount no less the
52 new details in 1993 that never came out in previous questionings.
John said it might have been
because she was more relaxed during that interview. She attributes
her poor memory to traumatic events that have happened in her
life.
The inquiry does not sit on
Fridays. John will return to the stand on Monday. As many as
eight of the lawyers for parties with standing have indicated
they may cross-examine her then.
Hearing transcripts and documents
entered at the inquiry are available on the commission's website
at www.milgaardinquiry.ca.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Police led Milgaard
witness
lawyer
Betty Ann Adam, The
StarPhoenix, March 15, 2005
What happened to Nichol John
during three crucial days in May 1969 that caused her to sign
a statement saying she saw David Milgaard murder Gail Miller?
The inquiry into Milgaard's
wrongful conviction on Monday listened as James Lockyer, the
lawyer for Milgaard's mother, Joyce Milgaard, led John through
the many police statements and hearing transcripts that reveal
the information disclosed to John and the pressure applied to
her before police obtained the statements that helped seal Milgaard's
fate.
"Bit by bit, we can squeeze
out how police (were) leading 16-year-old Nichol John in the
direction they want to take her," Lockyer said.
Milgaard spent 23 years in
prison before being released in 1992, after the case was reviewed
by the Supreme Court. DNA proved his innocence in 1997 and was
used to convict serial rapist Larry Fisher of the crime in 1999.
The inquiry is looking into
the 1969 investigation and prosecution and what actions justice
officials took in the years after, as new information became
known.
On March 11, 1969, the first
time John was questioned about a trip she made to Saskatoon with
Milgaard and Ron Wilson on the day of the murder, she gave a
detailed account of the crime-free, early-morning trip to Saskatoon,
where the trio searched for the home of Milgaard's friend, Albert
Cadrain.
That statement was never mentioned
at Milgaard's trial.
That original story of John's
matched the accounts given by Milgaard and Wilson.
It said they got stuck in the
snow behind the car of a couple who were stuck in an alley, got
help from a tow truck and eventually made it to Cadrain's, where
the boys changed clothes.
They all said Wilson had battery
acid on his pants and Milgaard's were dirty and ripped. All said
they were never out of each other's company long enough for Milgaard
to have committed rape and murder. None saw blood on Milgaard's
clothes.
Police reports show that over
the next eight weeks police repeatedly questioned John, but she
insisted nothing had happened to implicate Milgaard in murder.
Yet police reports indicate
John was beginning to adopt bits of negative information being
presented to her about Milgaard.
On March 18, a week after John's
first interview, Saskatoon police went to Regina and took the
16-year-old girl to the Regina men's jail, where they put her
in a room with Cadrain. He was the only person implicating Milgaard
in the murder, claiming Milgaard had blood on his clothes when
he changed at the Cadrain house.
Lockyer said that in 30 years
as a lawyer, he has never seen police use such a tactic.
Saskatoon police detective
Eddy Karst wrote in a report at the time that John hadn't changed
her story but now agreed Milgaard could be capable of such a
crime. Karst wrote that John was believable and that her story
meant Milgaard couldn't have committed the crime.
Ten weeks later, on May 22,
1969, Saskatoon police detective Raymond Mackie took John from
her Regina home to Saskatoon, where he took her to the entrance
of the alley where Miller's body was found. That entrance was
in front of St. Mary's Cathedral on Ave. O South, which could
be the reason John has since recognized the church, Lockyer suggested.
John said she hadn't been in
that location on the morning in question.
Thirty years later, when Mackie
testified for the defence at Larry Fisher's trial for the Miller
murder, Mackie said he took John to the spot to re-establish
the route the teens had taken that morning and to "show
her where she had been."
John was kept overnight at
the Saskatoon police station cells. The next day she was taken
to the Sheraton Cavalier Hotel, where she was allowed to talk
alone with Wilson before being questioned by a polygraph expert
from Calgary.
Documents entered at the inquiry
show Wilson has said it was during that meeting he and John agreed
they would give police the information they wanted to "sink"
Milgaard.
The Calgary polygraph officer
also showed John the victim's blood-stained nurse's uniform,
which, according to the officer's report of that May 23 interview,
resulted in John declaring that she suddenly remembered Milgaard
stabbing the nurse.
On John's third day in Saskatoon,
May 24, she signed each page of an 11-page statement that included
the damning new information.
Lockyer made a point of referring
to that statement as "the document you signed on May 24."
He pointed out that John has said she tends to skim when she
reads and has said that, under pressure, she might well sign
anything.
Lockyer suggested and John
agreed, that since 1969, numerous investigators and prosecutors
have tried to get her to adopt or repeat the claim that she saw
Milgaard stab Miller. She never has.
At Milgaard's 1969 preliminary
hearing, January 1970 trial and ever since, John has adopted
"items on the edge of incriminating" Milgaard but has
avoided adopting the "core items" that would have proven
definitively that that he did it, Lockyer said. John agreed.
Lockyer led John through seven
new items in the May 24 document that were not in her March 11
statement. It alleged Milgaard stole a knife from a grain elevator
on the way to Saskatoon. However, the person who worked at the
elevator has said no knife was stolen, Lockyer said.
The statement alleged Milgaard
talked about snatching a purse in Saskatoon. That point became
the basis of the police theory about Milgaard's motivation for
attacking Miller, Lockyer said.
The statement alleged Milgaard
asked a girl for directions. At Milgaard's trial, John embellished,
giving a description of the girl's coat that gave the impression
of a nurse's cape. John agreed it didn't make common sense that
her memory of the girl's appearance would improve over time.
At the trial, John adopted
another new item in the May 24 statement, which said the car
got stuck a second time that morning, prior to the incident behind
the couple's car. She testified the boys got out of the car and
walked away in different directions seeking help.
But John stopped short of endorsing
the May 24 claim of seeing Milgaard stab a woman in the alley
and place her purse in a garbage can.
John adopted a new item alleging
she found a cosmetic case in the glove compartment of Wilson's
car and that Milgaard threw it out the window. John agreed Monday
it was obvious the Crown prosecutor wanted the jury to believe
the cosmetic case belonged to Miller. She said she didn't know
the police had already found Miller's cosmetic case and all of
her identification.
John agreed that if she really
had found a cosmetic case, it wouldn't have belonged to Miller.
She agreed with Lockyer's assessment of the fact as, "pretty
bizarre."
The damning May 24 statement
also included an account of Wilson telling John in Calgary that
Milgaard had confessed to murder and that John responded that
she already knew about it. John denied remembering that item
when questioned about it at Milgaard's trial.
Lockyer suggested that the
reason John didn't adopt all the points in the May 24 statement
is because "it was a pack of lies," but that John adopted
enough of the incriminating points to "keep the authorities
happy."
John takes the stand again
today.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. 
