Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser has ordered the courts to reopen the case of two Saskatchewan sisters who spent almost three decades in prison for what may be wrongful murder convictions.
Fraser says he is sending the case of Odelia and Nerissa Quewezance back to an Appeal Court for a review.
Fraser, in a statement Thursday, cited reasonable grounds to conclude that a miscarriage of justice occurred in the 1994 convictions.
“My decision does not decide guilt or innocence, as that will rest with the courts,” Fraser said.
“Our responsibility is to make sure Canadians can trust their justice system, and that means, in rare cases, returning cases to the courts.”
Fraser noted there is new information that was not before the courts during the trial or during the appeal.
The sisters were granted bail in 2023, but have since been returned to custody for breaching bail conditions.
They said in a statement Thursday that they’re encouraged by the decision, but added that the battle continues.
“We have never stopped fighting,” Odelia said in the statement on behalf of her and her sibling.
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“Thank you to all those who have kept the faith in us.”
The statement was issued through Innocence Canada, an organization that fights for those it believes were wrongfully convicted. It assisted the sisters in this case.
James Lockyer, a lawyer with Innocence Canada who argued on the sisters’ behalf in court, noted it has been a five-year-fight to get the case reopened.
He said the Quewezance sisters’ case was flagged to Innocence Canada by David Milgaard, who spent 23 years in prison for the 1969 murder of a Saskatoon nursing student before his conviction was overturned. He died in 2022.
“It’s been a long wait,” Lockyer said in a statement about the Quewezance case. “But what (Fraser) has done today makes it all worthwhile.”
The two sisters were found guilty of second-degree murder in the 1993 stabbing death of 70-year-old farmer Anthony Dolff near Kamsack, Sask., about 270 kilometres northeast of Regina.
The women from the Keeseekoose First Nation have always maintained their innocence. Another person, who was a youth at the time, confessed to the killing.
Court has heard the sisters and the youth were drinking with Dolff at his farmhouse that fateful night when he was killed.
Innocence Canada launched their bid for Ottawa to review the case in 2021. The next year, the federal Justice Department launched the review, saying there may be a reasonable basis to conclude there was a miscarriage of justice.
In 2023, while that process played out, a Saskatchewan judge granted the sisters bail while citing concerns surrounding the convictions. Before the bail decision, Lockyer argued in court that the women were victims of racism in the justice system and false confessions.
Lockyer told court at the time that the sisters encountered “a police station full of white men” after their arrest. He said they were held in the Kamsack police station for days despite court orders to have them moved, and their alleged incriminating statements were never recorded.
In granting bail, Justice Donald Layh noted those concerns.
“For example, they were young Indigenous women who had engaged in substantial drug and alcohol consumption within hours of their statements,” Layh said at the time.
“Their statements were neither audio nor video recorded.”
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