The situation was not improved by the revelation that the Canadian system of justice was hardly very just, at least not when it came to Indigenous people or accused murderers. The Indian Act had had a number of amendments that prevented those under the Act from hiring lawyers, while the ways in which the system failed Donald Marshall Jr (1953-2009), who spent 11 years in prison from 1971 to 1982 for a murder he did not commit, were not new. The illumination of the systemic failures, however, was particularly instructive for the country as a whole regarding the shortcomings of the justice system.