Steven Truscott
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Steven Murray Truscott (born January, 1945) is a Canadian who was convicted of murder in 1959. Since his release on parole in 1969, he has maintained that he was wrongfully convicted, and has recently campaigned to have his name cleared.
Although no court has overturned Truscott's conviction, the government has made some moves to review the case.
On June 9, 1959, 12-year-old Lynne Harper disappeared from the air force base near RCAF Clinton in Ontario, Canada. (The former base was renamed Vanastra, Ontario after the air force decommissioned it.) Two days later, her body was discovered on a nearby farm.
Truscott, then 14 and a classmate of Harper's, gave her a ride on his bicycle shortly before she was reported missing. Truscott stated that he had seen Harper get into a car as he was riding away after dropping her off, but on June 12, Truscott was charged with Harper's murder.
On September 30, Truscott was found guilty and sentenced to death. Several months later, however, the government of John Diefenbaker commuted his sentence to life in prison.
In 1966, journalist Isabel LeBourdais published a book about the Truscott case, championing his innocence of the crime. The Supreme Court of Canada held hearings to review the case and upheld the original verdict.
On October 21, 1969, Truscott was released on parole and began living under an assumed name in Guelph, Ontario. He maintained a low profile until 2000, when an interview on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's the fifth estate revived interest in his case. The fifth estate segment and a subsequent book, by journalist Julian Sher, both suggested that significant evidence in favour of Truscott's innocence had been ignored in the original trial.
On November 28, 2001, lawyers for the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, led by James Lockyer, filed an appeal to have the case reopened. On January 24, 2002, retired Quebec Justice Fred Kaufman was appointed by the government to review the case.
On October 28, 2004, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler sent the case to the Ontario Court of Appeal to review whether new evidence would have changed the 1959 verdict.
On April 6, 2006, the body of Lynne Harper was exhumed by order of the Attorney General of Ontario, in order to test for DNA evidence. There was hope that this would bring some closure to the case, however, no useful, useable DNA was recovered from the remains of Lynne Harper. She was interred again in a private ceremony on April 10, 2006.
On June 19, 2006, the Ontario Court of Appeal began hearings that are scheduled to continue, off and on, through January of 2007. A decision is expected in the spring of 2007. In one of the most notable days of testimony so far in the hearings, two women separately testified that one of the key witnesses in the original trial had privately confided to them that she lied in her original testimony.
Cultural Aspects
The plot of Ann-Marie MacDonald's 2003 novel The Way the Crow Flies is based on a fictionalized version of the Truscott case, and the surrounding community's reaction to the incident. (MacDonald herself was raised in the same region, during the same time period as the Truscott case.)As well, Canadian rock band Blue Rodeo recorded a song about the case, "Truscott", on their 2000 album The Days in Between.
Related links
A few Canadians previously convicted of murder have had their convictions overturned after having had their cases reviewed due to similar claims of wrongful conviction. See also:
- Robert Baltovich
- Donald Marshall
- David Milgaard
- Guy Paul Morin
- Thomas Sophonow
External links
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