[4] In 1986, he was appointed to serve on a three-person commission of inquiry examining the wrongful conviction of Donald Marshall, a member of Nova Scotia's Mi'kmaq community who served eleven years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
[5] The commission's seven volume report, released in 1990, described Nova Scotia's justice system as plagued by racism, unprofessionalism, and unfairness.
The commissioners concluded that Marshall was "convicted and sent to prison, in part at least, because he was a native person," recommended an independent review process to investigate alleged cases of wrongful conviction, and called for more members of visible minority communities to be appointed to the bench and hired for correctional services.
The Government of Quebec appointed Poitras to lead a public inquiry into the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) in October 1996, following accusations of corruption and evidence tampering within the force.
[7] The 2,700-page report, issued in 1999, accused the force of abusing its powers of arrest, being more concerned with protecting its image than investigating misconduct, and having an "unhealthy air of solidarity, expressed through the law of silence and retaliations" against dissident officers.