When questioned, Dewey told police that he knew Taylor and had been to her apartment before, but maintained he had nothing to do with her death. Unfortunately for Dewey, police recovered a bloodstained shirt in his apartment and used it as the prime piece of evidence to build a case against him. He was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole. For 17 years he sat in his cell, missing out on the most precious, and heartbreaking moments of his life. It wasn’t until new DNA technology was used during one of Dewey’s appeals that he was exonerated of the murder and finally released from prison in April of 2012. Fortuitously enough, that same DNA test implicated another man in Jacie Taylor’s murder. HisScotia’s Court of Appeal cleared Marshall of the charges a year later, and declared him not guilty. The Court of Appeal proceeded, however, to ensure that Marshall knew that “he had contributed to his own conviction and that any miscarriage of justice was more apparent than real.”

The case was notorious enough that it prompted the government of Canada to open a royal commission to investigate the wrongful conviction. 8 years after the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal told Marshall that any miscarriage of justice was perceived and not real the Canadian government released a seven-volume report stating the exact opposite. Marshall was a member of the native Mi’kmaq tribe, and the report determined that systemic racism had contributed to his wrongful imprisonment. The commission blamed all involved in