28-Aug-2007: Steven Truscott and Me
Steven Truscott was, today, acquitted of the murder of Lynne Harper.
I am sure that, to most of the folks reading this, this does not appear to be significant news. People are often acquitted of murder charges. However,
to me—and I am sure there are others out there who feel the same way—this is a vindication of a set of beliefs that have affected
my political and philosophical outlook and opinions since 1959. For forty-eight years Steven Truscott was a convicted murderer. He was
fourteen years old when he arrested and convicted of the murder of a schoolmate, then sentenced by a court of law to die by hanging. I was a year younger than he was.
The original story was a sensation. A twelve year old girl was found raped and strangled in a woody area. The Toronto Star, which I had read daily
since I was eight years old, blasted it across the front pages. Within days, a boy named Steven Truscott was arrested and charged with her murder. The newspaper
carried photographs of the area where Lynne's body was found and diagrams of the small town, showing where Steven claimed to have given her a lift on his
bicycle, then dropped her off near the main highway just outside of town. He last saw her as she began hitchhiking on the highway. Children reported seeing a grey sedan in the area shortly afterwards.
He went to trial with unusual speed for a capital offence. It was short, and brutal. The coroner claimed that, according to Lynne's stomach contents, she had been
murdered between 6:45 and 7:15 in the evening—which coincided with the time witnesses had seen Steven with her. (And which he admitted to have given her
a lift.) A forensic expert testified that Steven had an abrasion on his penis, consistent with forced entry. Steven's mother testified that he had that abrasion before
Ms Harper was murdered. A narrative, connecting the stories of various children who had been in the area around the time Ms Harper disappeared, was developed by the crown
prosecutor, who, it was later asserted, ignored parts of stories that did not fit his version of the events. Steven was found guilty and sentenced to die.
The effect of reading the stories about Steven Truscott on me was subtle, but devastating. I empathized with him. We were almost the same age. I had had run ins with the police earlier when I had run away
from home and knew how totally immoveable and implacable they could be. I knew, by trying to tell them my side
of things, that they thought all children were liars. It was clear in their manner and in everything they said. Adults could do no wrong. If the father of a boy
who was beaten so badly he could not go to school said that the child had a wild imagination and liked to make up crazy stories, then that was gospel as far
as the police were concerned. I instinctively felt, as I read the stories in the newspaper, that the reporters writing the stories and the adults they were quoting, shared the same attitudes
as the police and other officials—and most adults in general—that I had met during my brief life. They had made up their minds that Steven's story about
last seeing Lynne at the side of the highway and his mother's testimony about the abrasion were self-serving fabrications and that they, as experts with years of experience
and superior knowledge, saw right through them. After all, scientists and the police were never wrong. They were men, and men knew much more about "real" life than any woman or child.
The fact alone that you had been arrested was proof enough that you were guilty in the eyes of the adults around me.
I was quietly terrified.
And then I read a column by Pierre Burton, the Canadian popular historian who, at the time, had a regular column in the Toronto Star. The column was titled,
"Requiem for a Fourteen Year Old." It was deeply moving. It listed the doubts about the case, bemoaned the swift arrest, brief trial, and the lack of investigation into other leads,
and portrayed a picture of
child caught by the machinery of the adult world and condemned to die. The death of Steven Truscott would not serve justice.
And, naturally, many citizens were outraged by his column. What about Lynne Harper's life? they screamed. Why should we let murderers off with a slap on
the wrist? Steven Truscott deserves whatever he gets. And one asked Mr Burton: What if it was your daughter who was murdered, would you still feel the same
way? I was transfixed by the question. What answer could there possibly be? But Pierre Burton showed strength of conviction when he
wrote (I am paraphrasing from memory): I hope that through the unimaginable pain and darkness I would still be able to make out the beacon of truth and justice.
I was stunned by his answer. Truth and justice weren't just words— to Pierre Burton they were the anchors that hold everything in place. Without them, we
would all be living in a dark hell.
Within four months Steven's death sentence was commuted to life in prison. Many would think that was the end of the story. But it had hardly begun.
I left home shortly after and began my life anew. I sought out adults who would listen to a child and treat me with respect. I followed Pierre Burton's career with
a sympathetic interest—and I learned there were many journalists who shared his points of view. People like June Callwood, Peter Newman, Laurier LaPierre, and Patrick
Watson, among many, many others. I listened to them carefully through my formative years. Sometimes it seemed they were the only sane people on this planet with their
cool logic and knowledge, coupled with a passion for the truth.
The last hanging in Canada was in 1963. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, a staunch conservative, passed a law outlawing capital punishment for all cases
except for the murder of police officers and prison employees. Later, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, a flaming liberal, outlawed capital punishment altogether, though he
had to compromise by agreeing to a 20 year minimum for first degree murder. Steven Truscott must have loomed large in the minds of such men.
Steven was paroled in 1969 and went on to live a quiet life away from the spotlight. Then something very disturbing started happening in the late 1980's and 1990's.
A re-examination of evidence in some highly-publicized murder cases (often after attention was drawn to them by journalists like the ones I listed above) started to
reveal that innocent men had been sent to prison for murders they did not commit. Modern science demonstrated that the physical evidence showed they were innocent beyond a doubt.
The government was required to pay out millions in settlement of wrongful conviction cases—though how money could replace twenty years in prison is unimaginable. As
I write this, there is a group of about 30 such men in Canada, all having been convicted in fair and public trials of murders they did not commit. In earlier times, they would
all be dead long before evidence to exonerate them surfaced.
And then, Steven Truscott stepped back into the picture. It was not enough that he had been released on parole; he wanted his name cleared. As with other similar cases,
the forensic evidence that had helped convict him, now pointed to his innocence. Re-examination of the victim's stomach contents and the original coroner's notes
showed that Lynne had died after midnight—long after Steven was home and asleep in his bed.
And, today, his innocence has been officially noted—and all the arguments in favour of capital punishment (if the thirty or so widely reported Canadian cases
of innocent men condemned to a life in prison weren't enough) have been discredited. The police forces and court system are composed of human beings. Humans make
mistakes. Sometimes they see only what they want to see, not what is actually in front of them. Emotion clouds judgement. People can be persuaded to see what others want them to see.
Human memory is notoriously fallible and malleable. The brain constructs narratives around events. Consider the story of
the man in the black coat. It goes like this:
You see a man in a black coat walking
quickly down a street. Later you hear a newscast that a man in a black coat murdered someone in the area where you saw your man. Your brain connects the events,
and starts filling in the blanks so that you are convinced the person you saw was running, as if afraid, had a guilty look on his face, and had something in his hand that
could have been—no was beyond a doubt—a weapon. When you hear the suspect had a moustache you try to remember if the man you saw
had a moustache—and soon your mind convinces you that yes, he did have a moustache. You just hadn't remembered it before. Even after it was
clear that the man you saw could not have been the murderer, you will likely still tell the story to friends. You might add a disclaimer like, "The police
said he left the scene of the murder in a helicopter, but I know what I saw."
This is how we live our
lives. We constantly reinvent the past. Which is why the law requires us—demands—that we must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and why it
has procedures to review convictions and re-examine evidence. Truth and justice can be very obscure lights at times, but they are all that stands between us
and eternal darkness.