r the accurate and thorough collection of evidence. Ideally, obfuscation of evidence would carry heavier penalties under criminal law--those who withhold evidence or force a confession from a desperate witness would be held accountable by a judge. Lawyers whose defense of their client is at the mercy of the abilities of local police departments would be served by a judge's intervention, concurrent with stiffer penalties for bungling or withholding evidence. During the original trial in 1970, one of the police officers, Eddie Karst, denied any knowledge of another probable suspect, when, in fact, he knew that a rapist named Larry Fisher had been active in the area. Actually, Fisher was even living in the Cadrain's basement, just about a block from Gail Miller's murder.
More than two years after Asper and Wolch filed a petition for mercy and its limitations, in December 1988, with then justice minister Joe Clark, the Crown finally responded with a denial of petition. As Boyd and Rossmo observe (1994), "there is, after all, no requirement of timeliness
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