For the first time in a long time, Joyce Milgaard is sitting in a courtroom without the heavy blanket of dread, knowing that her son is being wrongly targeted.

She says the current inquiry into the wrongful conviction of her son David is different than the other courtroom battles.

"They're not out to get David, isn't that nice?" she said, appearing on CTV's Canada AM.

"This is a culmination of years of work and effort," she said.

A national report released this week recommending more checks and balances to ensure innocent people aren't thrown in jail is also a good step forward, she said.

"It's a very lengthy report, and I'm amazed at what they have come up with."

The report released at a meeting of federal-provincial justice ministers says a crackdown on the use of jailhouse informants and closer supervision of Crown prosecutors would reduce the frequency of wrongful convictions.

It's the first attempt by both levels of government, senior prosecutors and police chiefs to cooperate and prevent miscarriages of justice.

But even more work needs to be done to ensure innocent people are never thrown into jail again, Milgaard said.

She called on the Canadian government to introduce an independent board for wrongful convictions as they have in England and Australia.

It was an uphill battle that started 35 years ago. David Milgaard was convicted in the 1969 murder of 20-year-old nursing aide Gail Miller, and some consider it one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Canadian history.

Milgaard spent 23 years in jail maintaining that he was innocent. But his appeals were denied and he even tried to escape prison twice.

In 1990, Joyce Milgaard approached then-justice minister Kim Campbell for help.

Campbell's rebuff was famously caught on tape.

She responded, "If you want your son to have a fair hearing, don't approach me personally. I'm sorry."

Milgaard said she has realized in hindsight that the public snub was the best thing that could have happened.

"It just enraged the populace and what was just a local story at that point, if you will, became a national story."

In 1991, when media reports implicating convicted Saskatoon serial rapist Larry Fisher in the crime prompted Campbell to request a Supreme Court review of the case.

A year later, Milgaard was freed when the top court overturned his conviction.

And five years later, DNA evidence exonerated Milgaard.

In 1999, the Saskatchewan government gave Milgaard an apology and awarded him a $10-million compensation package -- the largest of its kind in Canada.

Another two years later, a jury convicted Fisher of the murder.

Joyce Milgaard hopes her son won't be required to testify at the inquiry.

"I hope that won't happen because he's just being so good about being free of it and getting on and living his life," she said, "I don't want to see him dragged down into the depths again with this."

Indeed, she said he was spending time with his father who had undergone minor eye surgery.

"We tried to explain it was just minor surgery, but you know, he's missed so much of that type of thing in our lives that when anything comes up, he's right there."