Julian Sher.com

Few people realize it, but to this day Mr. Truscott remains -- in the eyes of the justice system, though not to most Canadians -- nothing more than a convicted murderer out on parole.

Same murder. Same victim. Same accused. But a very different kind of trial. What a difference a new century makes.
The recent Ontario Court of Appeal hearing into the Steven Truscott case bears little resemblance to the courtroom proceedings back in 1959 that condemned a teenager from Clinton, Ont., to the gallows for the murder of a 12-year-old classmate.
When Steven Truscott was just 14, the justice system put him on trial with little regard for his rights, much less the truth.
Fifty years later, Mr. Truscott in effect has put the justice system on trial, challenging it to own up to its mistakes.
It has been a long time coming.
When I first met Mr. Truscott a decade ago, he was living a quiet life of self-imposed anonymity, a father and grandfather, raising his family in Guelph. He told me he wanted to clear his name. But he also wanted the system to clear the air.
"What they did was wrong. And that's all I want them to do. Say that they were wrong," he said. "I'm not asking for the world. Go over all the information. Investigate it. Let the people know all the evidence, and let them judge for themselves, not just what the police want you to hear, but all of it. I'm not afraid of that. Why are they?"
At the Court of Appeal, Canadians finally got to hear a lot of evidence that was kept from the jury -- and even Mr. Truscott's lawyers -- in 1959.
But the breathtaking speed at which Steven Truscott the boy was arrested and sentenced to hang is matched only by the agonizingly slow pace at which the justice system has addressed the complaints by Steven Truscott the man.
In the summer of 1959, the police jailed Mr. Truscott just 24 hours after the body of Lynne Harper was found in the woods near an airbase in Clinton. Within three months he was put on trial for his life; it was all over in two weeks as a terrified boy stood in a hushed courtroom to hear the judge intone the words that he "be hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul."
After his death sentence was commuted to life in prison, Mr. Truscott spent 10 years behind bars before he was paroled at age 24. Few people realize it, but to this day Mr. Truscott remains -- in the eyes of the justice system, though not to most Canadians -- nothing more than a convicted murderer out on parole.
The county road down which Steven Truscott gave Lynne Harper a lift on his bicycle was only a mile long. His road to exoneration has seemed endless.
It took us two years to make the CBC documentary that thrust Mr. Truscott's story back into the limelight. Another year to write my book about the case. Lawyers from the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) filed a brief to the justice minister on Mr. Truscott's behalf in November 2001; it was not until 2004 that a judge named by Ottawa to review the case filed his report. In October, 2004, the justice minister -- noting there was a "strong likelihood of a miscarriage of justice" -- opted to send the case to the Court of Appeal.
When the Court of Appeal finally began hearing witnesses last summer and then listened to arguments from the lawyers last month, more than a decade had passed since Mr. Truscott decided to try to clear his name.
That court's decision is expected sometime this spring -- 48 years after a flawed trial condemned a teenager to hang.
This time, at least, the trial was fair. Mr. Truscott had one of the most capable defence teams in the country. They had access to government files, police reports and coroner's notes that we investigative journalists, Mr. Truscott's tireless wife, Marlene, and his legal team had uncovered slowly over the past few years, documents that were never made available five decades ago: the coroner's files that show he kept changing his estimate of the time of death; conflicting affidavits from the key witnesses against Mr. Truscott; statements from other witnesses supporting Steven's story that were never released to the defence.
Mr. Truscott's defence lawyers also benefited from two things sorely missing back in 1959 -- critical media and a concerned public.
When I began researching the Truscott story, it struck me that back in the 1950s, it was not just TV that was black and white, but our values as well. No one questioned the police, the courts or judges. Back then, Steve McQueen played a bounty hunter on TV in a popular show called Wanted: Dead or Alive, and that is how the Ontario attorney general announced a reward for the capture of Lynne Harper's murderer.
Now, in the wake of so many wrongful convictions in recent years, we realize that our justice system is as imperfect as the people who run it. No better, no worse.
The only question now is whether the justice system will own up to its mistakes. Will Canada right a wrong that has haunted us for generations?
The jury is still out.
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Julian Sher is the author of Until You are Dead: Steven Truscott's Long Ride into History, newly released from Vintage in a revised and updated version. Contact: www.juliansher.com.

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The long road to justice

The county road down which Steven Truscott gave Lynne Harper a lift on his bicycle was only a mile long. His road to exoneration has seemed endless.