YORKTON — A woman whose 1994 murder conviction is under review by the federal government as a possible miscarriage of justice appeared in Yorkton Provincial Court on July 28 to face new charges.
Odelia Quewezance, 54, was remanded in custody and is scheduled to return to court on Aug. 26 to have her matter spoken to. She is charged with impaired driving and breaching court-ordered conditions.
Odelia, and her sister, Nerissa, were granted day parole at Yorkton Court of King’s Bench in March 2023, pending a federal Justice Department review of their 1994 second-degree murder convictions. In June 2022, then-federal Justice Minister David Lametti said that there may be a reasonable basis to believe a miscarriage of justice had likely occurred in the case.
Two retired federal judges involved in creating Canada’s wrongful conviction review commission have said that the sisters’ case has the “signs of a miscarriage of justice.”
The judges, Harry LaForme and Justice Juanita Westmoreland-Traore—appointed by Lametti to lead consultations for the establishment of the independent Criminal Case Review Commission—were made aware of the sisters’ case.
“It strongly suggested to us that this had many indicia of a miscarriage of justice given that the sisters were still imprisoned while someone had confessed to the crime, served his sentence, and was now free of prison,” said Justice Harry LaForme in a 2022 interview with SaskToday.
The sisters’ cousin, who was a youth at the time, has publicly confessed on APTN to actually committing the murder—yet he received only a four-year sentence and the sisters were sentenced to life. During the sisters’ 1994 trial, he testified that Nerissa had tried to talk him out of the murder.
Both sisters pleaded not guilty and continue to insist on their innocence.
They have the support of Senator Kim Pate and the late David Milgaard.
ljoy@sasktoday.ca
