After a two-month break, the public inquiry into the wrongful conviction of David Milgaard resumed Monday with final arguments from the groups and individuals that have appeared before it.

The Saskatoon-based inquiry, which began on Jan. 17, 2005, was established to find out why David Milgaard was wrongfully convicted of the 1969 rape and murder of Saskatoon nursing aide Gail Miller. He spent 23 years in prison before DNA evidence in 1997 exonerated him and convicted Larry Fisher of the murder.

Mr. Justice Edward MacCallum, who is presiding over the commission of inquiry, has since spent nearly 200 hearing dates gathering evidence from close to 200 witnesses and hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. 

The inquiry heard from its last witness on Oct. 4 before adjourning. The estimated cost of the inquiry to date is just over $10 million.

Starting Monday, 14 groups and individuals who have appeared at the inquiry will be given a half-hour to summarize their interpretations of the evidence, as well as highlight points they want MacCallum to consider in his deliberations.

On Monday morning, lawyers for Milgaard, his mother Joyce and the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted presented the possibility that Milgaard's 23 years behind bars came as the result of wrongdoing on the part of Crown prosecutors and police. At the same time, they said, they recognize that there's not much evidence to support wrongdoing.

Instead, they suggested there is evidence to support the idea of "tunnel vision," meaning authorities did not consider other possibilities once they had decided Milgaard was their suspect.

The Milgaards have argued that authorities should have realized Larry Fisher was a more likely suspect even before Milgaard's case went to appeal.

Those allegations were hotly denied by lawyers representing prosecutors and police, arguing there was little evidence of either tunnel vision or a conspiracy.

Rather, the lawyers said, police simply followed leads that were given to them. They added that there was no way police could have known then that a number of witnesses would be found to have been lying or simply not credible.

MacCallum's report is expected in the spring. But a court order has already prevented him from commenting on or making recommendations that would affect the federal Justice Department, since a provincial inquiry is barred by constitutional law from examining the work or policies of any federal agency or department.

To that end, Ottawa has refused to turn over to the inquiry thousands of documents relating to Milgaard's attempts to have his case reopened.