Bill C-40 will be called the David and Joyce Milgaard Act

Clarence Woodhouse was barely an adult when homicide detectives charged him with murdering a man in 1973.

A false confession and a life sentence changed the life of an Anishinaabe man for the worse.

“The time I spent in prison was absolute hell,” he said this week in a statement about his 50-year wrongful conviction, “mainly because of the correctional staff who were determined to force me to confess to a murder I did not committed or not having any part in.

“When I was released from prison (on parole) after 12 years in 1983, I was institutionalized and found it extremely difficult to make my way into society. I received no help or guidance.”

Woodhouse recorded a statement for the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which is considering Bill C-40 to establish a Canadian Mistrials Review Commission.

Clarence Woodhouse was acquitted and rehabilitated on October 3 in Winnipeg. Photo: APTN News

Woodhouse recorded the statement in his native Ojibwe language after he was denied the opportunity in Ottawa last week due to the lack of a “qualified interpreter.” He shared the English version with APTN News.

Now 72, he recalled after his arrest how Winnipeg police refused to provide him with an interpreter and how he was allegedly “brutally assaulted” by forcing him to sign a false confession.

“The prosecutor said that I made a confession in English, which I could not speak, read or write. I testified about it in court, but no one believed me.”

Woodhouse and two co-accused, Brian Anderson and Allan Woodhouse, all members of the Pinaimutang First Nation in Manitoba, have so far been acquitted. A posthumous application was made for the wrongful conviction of Russell Woodhouse (Clarence’s brother), who later died.

Acquittals, lawyers and legal scholars who testified before the committee over the past two weeks agreed that Canada needs a faster and simpler system to deal with cases where people believe they have been wrongly convicted.

The Criminal Convictions Panel at the Ministry of Justice currently takes up to six years to review applications and make recommendations to the Minister.

The new trial will be called the David and Joyce Milgaard Act, after the Winnipeg mother and son who pushed for reform after David was released in 1992 after serving 23 years in prison for wrongful homicide.

Woodhouse said Bill C-40 is needed in prison for people like him.

“If Bill C-40 is passed, there will be a group that will hear the cries for help from the innocent and they won’t have to wait 50 years for their names to be cleared like we did,” he said in a statement.

“It’s been 50 years of uncertainty, struggle and incredible pain that never seems to end.”

What is really important, Woodhouse said, is to replace the minister with an independent commission.

“The group is necessary because it will be separated from the system that has convicted and imprisoned me and many other innocent people across Canada,” he said.

The proposed law has already passed through the House of Commons. The Senate holds three readings of bills to become law.

Meanwhile, two sisters from the Keeseekoose First Nation in Saskatchewan have been waiting more than a year for a decision from the federal justice minister on whether their case judicial error. Odelia and Nerissa Kevezance spent 30 years in prison for the 1994 murder of farmer Anthony Joseph Dolph. Their cousin has already confessed to the murder.