Canadian Imprisoned Longest Is Released

A man jailed for 23 years for a murder he said he never committed walked out of a Canadian prison on Thursday after his conviction was overturned.

David Milgaard, 39, was Canada’s longest-serving prisoner when he left a penitentiary after Saskatchewan declined to retry him.

Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that Milgaard, who had always maintained his innocence, was entitled to a new trial. It added that, taking into account the long sentence he had served, it would be a miscarriage of justice not to give him a pardon if a second trial found him guilty.

Milgaard was convicted for the 1969 murder of nurses’ aide Gail Miller, who was found raped and fatally stabbed in a snowbank.