Calculating the costs | Updated chronology of foster parent story | Where is the money going to come from? An example | John Popowich | Gary Staples | Greg Parsons | January 7, 2003: Judge orders sanctions for withholding evidence in sex-ring civil lawsuit | Reparations sought for Tulsa Race Riots |

How much damage have the Saskatoon Police done?

Dec. 1, 2001: When assessing the costs of wrongful prosecution, first there are actual damages done to the wrongfully prosecuted and then come the punitive damages which must be designed to deter the erring parties from continuing their reckless ways. Many successful (wrongful) prosecutions have come from sloppy Saskatoon police investigations.

The Crown failed to learn the lessons of the Milgaard case, even though the end result was costly to it. The prosecutors should have taken a week-end off two years ago to read Joyce Milgaard's book, A Mother's Story. There they would have read how Saskatoon police perpetrated a fraud upon the courts by visiting Larry Fisher's victims and telling them the outright lie that they had been raped by David Milgaard. This tactic worked because it kept secret that Fisher was a viable suspect in the rape and murder for which Milgaard was convicted.

They had become so conviced that Milgaard was their rapist that they would not return Joyce Milgaard's mail or letters. With the help of a private investigator, they were finally persuaded to hear the truth -- that Saskatoon police had lied to them.

Saskatoon Police Service paid not a cent toward the Milgaard settlement. When Larry Fisher was tried and convicted in 1999 for the murder Milgaard served 22 years for, Saskatoon police spokesmen went on talk radio shows to put forth their theory that while Fisher had done the rape, Milgaard was the murderer, concocting a secret partnership between the two despite evidence that Milgaard and Fisher did not know each other. If the police had been forced to pay, they might have thought twice before making defamatory public statements against an innocent man.

In the Scandal of the Century foster parent case, Saskatoon police had the names of 40 people on file, arrested sixteen and jailed four. All these people were innocent of the charges against the Ross children. All these people have been branded as violent pedaphiles. Several people have been branded as criminal libellers for trying to bring the facts of this case to the public. The main investigating officer on this case, Corporal Brian Dueck, used methods which had worked in convicting Milgaard, including spreading rumours, lying to witnesses to extract more lies from them and hiding evidence from the Crown. An order to make public apologies, pay full compensation and severe punitive damages might deter the Saskatoon police from continuing in this reckless and destructive mode.

Most recently the police in Saskatoon have stated that the unlawful confinement of Darrell Night was an isolated incident and that having fired Hatchen and Munson they have cleaned up their act. An order to pay a hefty settlement of Night's claim against them might make their statements more credible.

Many good cops have been enlisted to participate in the cover-ups, simply by carrying the lies of their superiors. We need a full public inquiry into the gap between what they say they do and what they really do. And making them pay would certainly help narrow that gap.

We have been told by many well-meaning people that we are tilting at windmills in our efforts to get Saskatoon Police Service to account for its actions. "You'll never get anywhere," we've been told over and over again, by citizens who accept compromised lives in a compromised city. We are not convinced.

The Herman Kaglik case: $1.1M settlement for wrongful rape conviction | Popwich case set for trial | Supreme Court guidelines from 1996 | The David Milgaard settlement that Joyce Milgaard worked tirelessly to get | Greg Parsons: starved into accepting inadequate settlement | Derek Bentley: hanged | Steven Truscott: Almost hanged | The Birmingham Six: Too little too late | Mailman & Gillespie: innocent but still no justice | Thomas Sophonow: approaching justice |

May 10, 1999: Queens' Bench Judge Klebuc awarded four men in Regina $140,000 damages to compensate for their having been falsely accused of murder and held for two weeks before the police realized their mistake and stayed the charges against them.

Eat that, Quinney!

The judge said that not only was he making the cash award but that he was absolutely clearing their names. He called the police investigation ". . .so reckless and devoid of reason . . .it was malicious."

Lawyer Tony Merchant called it a victory for the rights of the individual. injusticebusters agree. Following the government's graceless acceptance of culpability in the David Milgaard fiasco, it is time they realized that the sooner they apologize to and compensate the many others they have damaged through malice, the sooner they can get on with their lives! Although those lives may well be on the unemployment lines! In the Klassen/Kvello and Sterling cases, the false charges were sex crimes against children. The stigma attached to such crimes is as damaging as the brand of murderer, and the government would do well do move quickly to clear the names of all those they have condemned to live with that brand.

StarPhoenix, Sat. July 25, 1998 carries a small report on page 4 about Darrel Keith Kaye who was held for a week in a Regina jail on murder charges before the Crown decided they had the wrong man. "You just feel helpless," Kaye is quoted as saying. It brought up the David Milgaard case and the Marshall case."

Kaye is the most recent in a string of people falsely held on serious charges and then released with little fanfare. See May 10, 1999 settlement story See also the folowing newstories: Falsely accused get cash | Top Judge calls for damages for wrongly accused: 'Horrendous impact' | B.C. Court awards foster Mom $122,000 (July, 95)

See Supreme Court decisions, Nov. 15, 2001 regarding the right of the press to report more thoroughly on police investigations and telling lower courts not to be so free with granting publication bans to the Crown.

We hope that reporters will use these rulings to do investigations of their own. Joyce Milgaard had to hire a private investigator to get to the truth.

Guy Paul Morin was freed with the publicity around Kirk Makin's book where he showed the flaws in the police investigation. Both these innocent men spent many years in jail which ended up in costly settlements. If the press had been more attentive at the time in these and other cases, and questioned more strenuously the police and crown spin on their "evidence" much grief could have been spared and money saved. Check out the media reporting on Leon Walchuk and compare it to what we have published on the internet.

For years, lawyers from both sides of the bar have been telling us that it is unlikely that anyone will win a case alleging malicious prosecution. But in September, 2001, such a case was won.

David Milgaard finally received a settlement from Saskatchewan but not until his mother wrote a book and promised to camp on the lawn at the Regina Legislature. They also led the public to believe that they had already paid Milgaard a large amount when in fact Milgaard or his family had not received a cent -- it had all gone to the lawyers.

As if the damage done to Milgaard during 23 years of incarceration -- as a convicted sex-murderer -- was not enough, he has had to contend with the Saskatchewan Justice System which has managed to convince a fair number of people in Saskatchewan that he was "implicated" in the crime if comments to talk-shows in Saskatoon following the Larry Fisher conviction are any indication of public opinion. Any damages which the government pays out in the current $10M lawsuit it now faces -- and make no mistake, it will have to pay -- must take the stonewalling into account. And the system should realize that if it had settled up with Milgaard in the first place -- when it first realized it had made mistakes and convicted an innocent man -- it would have cost a lot less.

David Milgaard should receive another million dollars from the Saskatoon City Police which continue to spread the rumour that those "in the know" and "who were there" are utterly convinced of his guilt. This is malicious, it is defamatory, it is libellous and it is endemic to the Saskatoon Police Department. (news scrapbook of Milgaard's compensation fight)

The only way to stop them is to make them pay!

 Calculating the Costs

How can we calculate the damage? Is it worse to be branded a child rapist or a murderer? In prison, convicted child rapists do not do well. Using the figures in Judge Klebuc's award, a reasonable settlement for is $910,000 a year per person. Multiply this by seven or eight or nine years and we have a sum aproaching $10 Million per person!

Judge Hrabinsky. during his sentencing of John and Johanna Lucas, went on at some length about the value of a man's name and reputation. Of course he was talking about Brian Dueck and he was deceived. But an ordinary person leading an ordinary life who suddenly finds he has been branded as a child rapist -- how do we measure how that changes his or her life? Think about it. Imagine it was you. A convicted murderer who has served his time will have an easier time of it.

This 1998 article in Alberta Report gives a rundown of claims settled with governments in Canada. Read also Extreme Measures from University of Regina Carillon about the doctor who ran Alberta sterilization campaign and was stripped of his honours. Lielana Muir, a normally intelligent person, received three quarters of a million dollars after having been diagnosed at 14 as mentally defective and sterilized in 1972. This led the way to the settlement of claims of hundreds who were similarly treated under the Alberta Sterilization program -- which was legislated BEFORE Nazi Germany started doing it -- and the Alberta government having to back down after trying to use the constitutional notwisthstanding clause to avoid payment.

The question of whether the economy can handle settlement of these claims is answered simply yes, it must. Holocaust survivors worked for fifty years to recover the money and property stolen from them by the Nazis and placed in Swiss banks. For years the Swiss denied the accounts existed; when caught redhanded they tried to claim it was unfair to have to cough up the stolen money generations later. Now they are paying.

Another group of people who we should expect to receive large amounts for damage done to them are Fetal Alcohol damaged persons who were raised by the government, either in foster care or institutions, and then cut loose at the age of 21, given minimum welfare payments (which we all know it is impossible to live on) and no hope of ever being able to attain full independence. Some, like Serena Nicotine, have got into deep trouble and shown themselves to be true menaces to society. Others form a large portion of the "revolving door" population which is in and out of jail and keeps regular pay cheques being deposited into the bank accounts of useless hacks. Judge Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond has tried to address this problem from the bench.

The Ross children are severely damaged, both by alcohol while in the womb and by the justice system which cynically used them to tell lies in court. They and others like them call themselves "throw-away foster kids" and that is exactly what they are. Social Services gives them as little as it can get away with. Social workers regularly lecture them about how they should conduct their lives, while collecting their own healthy paychecques and doing nothing to set in place reasonable and humane structures into which they can fit. In their frustration, some turn to violence, like Nicotine, some commit suicide and others get involved in petty crimes which turn into more serious charges. Almost all of them peddle their flesh on the streets and most of them have problems with alcohol and drugs. A program must be worked out whereby they can receive enough money to live self-respectful lives and get access to meaningful guidance and training. Many fetal alcohol damaged people are intelligent and capable and would happily pay their own way if they were given an even break. The social costs of dealing with the fallout from refusing to deal with this problem are far higher than some of the obvious solutions which are open to us right now.

Sask Energy boss spends $100,000 on travel

cbc May 10 2002

REGINA - Opposition politicians are asking questions about the travel bill of the president of SaskEnergy.

The chief executive officer of the Crown corporation spent $100,000 on travel outside of Saskatchewan last year.

. . . Clark's travel also outstrips that of all other Crown corporation executives. Officials at Sask Power, for example, spent $36,000 on out-of-province travel. That amount, however, was enough for the expenses of seven people. Clark's $100,000 dollar bill was for him, alone.

Lawuit of Peter Klassen and Michael Ross | Lawsuit of John Lucas | Map to the first $10M lawsuit (QB 271/94) | Sheila Steele's notice of intention to City Hall | Wrongfully convicted | B.C. Pigbarn tragedy | Shannon Murrin | Damages |