Steven Truscott

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Steven Murray Truscott (born January 18, 1945 in Vancouver , Canada ) is a Canadian justice victim . In 1959, at the age of 14, he was the youngest person in Canadian judicial history to be sentenced to death, released on parole after ten years in prison and acquitted 48 years after the verdict (2007) .

The Lynne Harper murder

On the evening of June 9, 1959, the twelve-year-old Lynne Harper (born August 31, 1946) disappeared. Two days later, she was found raped and strangled with her own blouse near the small town of Clinton, Ontario . Her classmate Steven Truscott was suspected. Witnesses had seen him taking the girl on his bike between 7:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Truscott denied having anything to do with the crime and said he safely dropped Lynne Harper at an intersection where she got into someone else's car.

Judgment, Term, and Release

On September 30, 1959, the Supreme Court of Ontario (now renamed Ontario Superior Court of Justice) found Steven Truscott guilty of rape and murder under adult criminal law and sentenced him to death by hanging . The execution was initially scheduled for December 8, 1959, but on November 20, a temporary stay was declared because Truscott had exercised his right to appeal to the higher court. On January 21, 1960, his appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal was rejected. A day later, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker , known as an opponent of the death penalty, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment . The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the convicted person's appeal on February 24, 1960, as the legal situation did not entitle the country's highest court to review the judgment.

After Isabel LeBourdais' book was published in 1966, the case came back up for discussion. The Canadian government commissioned a legal opinion from the Supreme Court of Canada. In January 1967 the Tribunal ruled, eight to one, that if Truscott filed an appeal, it would be unsuccessful.

Due to the personal efforts of lawyers and patrons, Steven Truscott was released from prison on October 21, 1969 with a five-year probationary period. He took up employment under a different name, married and had three children. In 1974 the judicial authorities declared the probation successful; Truscott was now officially a free man.

Retrial and acquittal

In 2000, the Canadian public television company CBC researched the case again and found evidence of investigative errors in the original trial. On this basis, Steven Truscott obtained a retrial in 2001 . It came to light that the public prosecutor's office had presented falsified incriminating evidence to the court in 1959 and apparently systematically suppressed exculpatory evidence. Due to the stomach contents of the murdered, the coroner had initially set the time of death at the early morning hours of June 10th. However, this information was arbitrarily dated back in the files to 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. the previous day. Only at this time could Truscott come into question as the perpetrator, for the morning of the following day he had a safe alibi . His defense lawyer and the court were not informed of this manipulation. Witness statements given to the police that exonerated Steven Truscott were withheld by the prosecution during the trial. His statement that he saw Lynne Harper get into a car was dismissed as implausible, although it was known that the girl had hitchhiked several times. Truscott was able to describe the make and color of the vehicle exactly, but this trace was not followed up in any way. A check of convicted sex offenders from the area - actually a criminal routine in such cases - did not take place either, as the criminal police had already determined Truscott as the perpetrator two days after the body was found.

In 2006 Lynne Harper's grave was opened, but no usable traces of DNA could be found. On August 28, 2007, the Ontario Court of Appeal called the 1959 guilty verdict against Steven Truscott a "miscarriage of justice" and overturned the verdict. However, the court also made it clear that this acquittal was based on lack of evidence and not on proven innocence. That same day, Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant apologized to Steven Truscott for the 1959 misjudgment and announced an investigation into possible redress for the injustice suffered. In July 2008, the Ontario government announced that Truscott would receive C $ 6.5 million in damages.

Public awareness of the case

Steven Truscott's death sentence in 1959/60 fueled the debate about the possible abolition of the death penalty in Canada. Both the young age of the delinquent and the public doubts about his guilt led to heated discussions. The last execution in Canada took place in 1962, in 1976 the death penalty for crimes in peacetime was abolished, in 1998 also in war criminal law. Out of dismay at the death sentence, the Canadian writer Pierre Berton wrote the poem Requiem for a Fourteen-Year-Old in the fall of 1959 . Several non-fiction and literary works have appeared on the Truscott case (see literature). The Canadian rock band Blue Rodeo processed the case in their title Truscott , which appeared on the album The Days in Between (2000).

literature

  • Isabel Le Bourdais : is Steven Truscott a murderer? Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1967 (original edition under the title: The Trial of Steven Truscott. Gollancz, London 1966).
  • Steven Truscott / Bill Trent: The Steven Truscott Story. Simon & Schuster, Richmond Hill 1971, ISBN 0-671-77468-9 .
  • Bill Trent: Who Killed Lynne Harper? Optimum Publishing, Montreal 1979, ISBN 0-88890-115-1 .
  • Julian Sher: Until You Are Dead. Steven Truscott's Long Ride Into History. Knopf, Toronto 2001, ISBN 0-676-97380-9 .
  • Ann-Marie MacDonald : Where the Crows Fly. Novel. Piper, Munich [ua] 2004, 2nd edition 2006, ISBN 3-492-04606-1 (original edition under the title: The Way the Crow Flies . Fourth Estate, London 2003, ISBN 0-00-717171-4 ).
  • Beverly Cooper: Innocence Lost. A Play About Steven Truscott. Scirocco Drama, Winnipeg 2009, ISBN 1-897289-36-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Judgment Her majesty the Queen vs. Steven Truscott. Truscott (Re), 2007 ONCA 575. In: Court of appeal for Ontario. Canadian Leagel Information Institute, August 27, 2007, accessed December 10, 2012 .
  2. ^ Ontario Compensates Steven Truscott. Ontario Ministry of Attorney General, July 8, 2008, accessed December 10, 2012 .
  3. ↑ Steven Truscott to get $ 6.5M for wrongful conviction. CBC News , July 7, 2008, accessed July 11, 2012 .
personal data
SURNAME Truscott, Steven
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Truscott, Steven Murray (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian justice victim
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Vancouver , Canada