Donald Marshall Jr. (13 September 1953 – 6 August 2009) was a Mi'kmaw man who was wrongly convicted of murder. The case inspired a number of questions about the fairness of the Canadian justice system, especially given that Marshall was Aboriginal; as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation put it, "The name Donald Marshall is almost synonymous with 'wrongful conviction' and the fight for native justice in Canada." The case inspired the Michael Harris book, Justice Denied: The Law Versus Donald Marshall and the subsequent film Justice Denied. His father, Donald Marshall Sr., was grand chief of the Mi'kmaq Nation at the time. Early life Marshall was born on 13 September 1953 on the Membertou First Nation in Sydney, Nova Scotia. He was the oldest of 13 children of Donald Marshall Sr., the Grand Chief of the Mi'kmaq, and his wife Caroline Googoo. Wrongful conviction Marshall was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering acquaintance Sandy Seale in 1971. Marshall and Seale, both 17 years old, a Mi'kmaw and a boy of African descent, respectively, had been walking around Wentworth Park in Sydney, Nova Scotia during the late evening with the intent to "roll a drunk" as stated in his trial. They confronted and panhandled Roy Ebsary and Jimmy MacNeil, two older men they encountered in the park. A short scuffle occurred and Seale fell, mortally wounded by a knife blow from Ebsary. Ebsary never admitted that he had stabbed Seale and then lied about his role to the police who immediately focused on Marshall, who was 'known to them' from previous incidents. Police speculated that Marshall, in a rage, had murdered Seale. Marshall spent 11 years in prison before being acquitted by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal in 1983. A witness came forward to say he had seen another man stab Seale, and several prior witness statements pinpointing Marshall were recanted. In this appeal, which acquitted him of the previous murder charge, Marshall was assumed to have lied in his first trial about his and Seale's activities on the night of Seale's death. The accusation was that he and Seale had actually approached Ebsary with the intention of robbing him when they were in the park that night. Ebsary was subsequently tried and convicted of manslaughter. When Marshall's conviction was overturned, the presiding judge placed some blame on Marshall for the miscarriage of justice, calling him "the author of his own