After 30 years of incarceration, bail hearing for sisters who say they were wrongfully convicted begins | 24CA News

Two sisters who’ve spent practically 30 years in jail for what they are saying are wrongful homicide convictions hugged and smudged earlier than strolling right into a courthouse for a bail listening to Tuesday.

Odelia and Nerissa Quewezance had been convicted in 1994 of second-degree homicide within the dying of 70-year-old farmer Anthony Joseph Dolff, close to Kamsack, Sask.

Defence legal professionals are asking for the sisters to get a conditional launch whereas their case is present process a federal conviction overview. The federal Justice Department began the overview final yr, saying there could also be an affordable foundation to conclude there was a miscarriage of justice.

“I am a strong believer in my prayers and my culture,” Odelia Quewezance mentioned earlier than the listening to.

“I’m nervous, but I feel strong. I have nothing to hide.”

The sisters from the Keeseekoose First Nation have at all times maintained their innocence and one other particular person, who was a youth on the time, confessed to the killing.

A choose not too long ago overturned a ban that enables for media to publish what occurs throughout the two-day bail listening to in Yorkton, Sask., this week.

Odelia Quewezance was granted a short launch from jail to journey to Ottawa final yr to ask for justice. She mentioned on the time she sat in jail all these years questioning “why?”

“Thirty years is a long time,” she informed reporters. “That’s cruel and unusual punishment.”

Odelia Quewezance was 20 years previous and her sister was 18 when the pair was arrested for the 1993 stabbing dying of the farmer.

The Supreme Court of Canada declined to listen to their attraction three years later.

Their lawyer, James Lockyer, has mentioned the sisters had been current when Dolff was killed, however the youth who confessed to the killing has testified the sisters weren’t concerned.

“The two sisters, they need their lives back,” Lockyer mentioned.

The elder sister obtained day parole final yr with strict circumstances. Her sister’s parole was denied and he or she has remained behind bars in Fraser Valley Institution for Women in British Columbia.

“Odelia and Nerissa are the victims of a justice system plagued by racism and prejudice,” mentioned Congress of Aboriginal Peoples National Chief Elmer St. Pierre in a news launch Monday.

“The Saskatchewan government has spent 30 years repeatedly denying the sisters justice, so now they must be granted bail immediately.”

When the prison conviction overview course of is over, a report and authorized recommendation shall be ready for the federal justice minister. The minister can then order a brand new trial or attraction, or dismiss the appliance if he’s not satisfied there was a miscarriage of justice.

The sisters have additionally credited David Milgaard with championing their case and getting it on the radar of Innocence Canada, an advocacy group based by Lockyer.

Milgaard, who died final yr, grew to become an outspoken advocate for the wrongfully convicted after spending 23 years in jail for a 1969 rape and homicide he did not commit.