A new advocacy group for Canadians jailed for crimes they didn’t commit has taken up the cause of a Kamloops man who spent 26 years behind bars for first-degree murder of a woman more than 30 years ago.

Ontario-based Miscarriage of Justice Canada is urging the B.C. government to hold a retrial in Gerald Klassen’s case as ordered in 2022. Without a retrial, the group said, Klassen can’t prove his innocence or get compensation.

Then federal justice minister David Lametti ordered the B.C. Supreme Court to retry the case, about two weeks after a ministerial review determined Klassen’s murder conviction was a “likely miscarriage of justice.”

It was thanks to UBC’s law school’s Innocence Project that worked on the case for years and found prosecutors didn’t fully disclose evidence to the defe

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