University of Guelph launches Truscott Initiative in Justice
Studies
November 6, 2009
Rob O'Flanagan
GUELPH - Steven and Marlene Truscott were the centre of attention
during Friday night's launch of the University of Guelph's Truscott
Initiative in Justice Studies. But the well-known Guelph couple
deflected that attention on to the many people who helped them
in their fight for justice and exoneration.
An audience of over 300 filed into a lecture theatre in Rozanski
Hall on campus to honour Truscott, his wife and their family,
and to be a part of a historic panel discussion that involved
two of Canada's leading legal minds and the man who first believed
in Steven Truscott's innocence.
The event was also a fundraiser for an educational initiative
dedicated to the study of wrongful conviction and focused on changing
the justice system so that miscarriages of justice don't happen.
Visit www.alumni.uoguelph.ca/cgi-bin/online_giving_secure_truscott.pl
to make a donation.
The Truscott family hopes the initiative can bring about policy
changes in Canada, son Ryan Truscott said, "so no one else
has to go through this."
In 1959, at the age of 14, Steven Truscott was wrongly convicted
of murdering his schoolmate Lynne Harper and sentenced to death.
His sentenced was commuted to life imprisonment in 1960 and he
spent 10 years behind bars before being granted parole.
But despite glaring evidence of his innocence, Truscott would
not have his name cleared until 2007, about three years after
Canada's Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler reached the conclusion
there had been a wrongful conviction in the case.
Cotler spoke frankly and passionately about the case during the
panel discussion. He acknowledged the widespread anger that followed
his decision to refer Truscott's case to the Ontario Court of
Appeal for review, when many were demanding a new trial.
"If I had ordered a new trial," Cotler told the audience,
"I knew a new trial would have never proceeded. Ontario would
have stayed the proceedings and a cloud of doubt would have always
lingered over this case. Exoneration would not have occurred."
Cotler admitted that when he first became minister of justice
wrongful convictions were not a priority for him. The Truscott
case enlightened him. He praised Marlene Truscott's efforts to
clear her husband's name.
"In my view, a heroine in all this is Marlene Truscott,"
he said to loud applause. "Steven had a wife who always advocated
for justice to be done."
Mac Steinberg was a prison chaplain and parole officer who helped
prepare a young Truscott for his first parole hearing. He cared
for him when he was eventually released.
"Steven didn't protest his innocence," Steinberg said
when asked why he came to believe that Truscott was innocent.
"But he confidently, calmly and quietly said he did not commit
the offence." He added that Truscott was "always the
consummate gentleman."
High-profile lawyer Hersh Wolch was part of Truscott's legal team,
taking up his case in 1986. He said he learned "never to
expect rational thought on the other side" of a wrongful
conviction case because the system is geared toward upholding
convictions, even in the face of irrefutable evidence of innocence.
When it comes to the wrongfully convicted, Wolch said financial
compensation is a necessary part of righting the wrong.
"Vindication requires compensation. Compensation takes away
that last stigma," he said.
When it came Steven and Marlene Truscott's turn to speak to the
audience during the panel discussion, they simply called out the
names of those in the audience who were instrumental in helping
them clear Steven's name. Among them were journalist Julian Sher,
CBC's the fifth estate producer and author of Until You Are Dead:
Steven Truscott's Long Ride Into History, and Win Wahrer, head
of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted.
Ryan Truscott said despite the emotional rollercoaster his family
lived through, his parents were also intensely supportive of their
children. "They were just always there … advocating
for our success," he said, adding that had the family not
"pulled together as a team" they would have never achieve
victory in the case.
