Wednesday, August 29, 2007

home

Ahhh. Home.
"Home" is a very strange concept to me, mostly because I feel I don't really have one. Moving around a lot when you're younger and being semi-estranged from your family does not exactly foster one's sense of belonging. However, for simplicity's sake, I say the city I currently reside in is my home, while the total rural farming country where my maternal family is from (and still resides in) is home. And I always miss it dreadfully as the seasons change, especially the one from summer to fall. Fall is my favourite season to be in the country, with all the trees changing colours and every farmer out haying and harvesting into the wee hours of the morning and the smells which permeate the air, the big full blood-red harvest moons....just everything. It's no coincidence that Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday.

I've been listening to tons of country music and feeling homesick a bit lately, so while I was walking out of McDonald's and spied the newspapers big front page headline, it put a huge smile on my face and warmed my heart to the nth degree. I snatched up the newspaper and practically skipped (well, I would have, if I hadn't had to cross seven lanes of traffic to get to my building, but you get the idea) across the road.
Finally, after forty-eight years


Steven Truscott is considered acquitted!!!

First, a little background history:

In 1959, 14 year-old Steven Truscott was the last person to see 12-year-old Lynne Harper alive when he gave her a bike ride to the nearby highway. Truscott was convicted of the rape and murder of Harper on Sept. 30, 1959, some three months after her body was found in a wooded area near the CFB Clinton air force base (Vanastra) in southwestern Ontario. Truscott maintained from the beginning he saw Lynne get into a car once they reached the rural highway and drive away.

At fourteen, Truscott was the youngest person ever sentenced to hang in Canada - a sentence that was commuted to life in prison in 1960. Six years later, a book by journalist Isabel LeBourdais - "The Trial of Steven Prescott" - was the first published document which poked holes in the police investigation and the prosecution's case, prompting a review by the Supreme Court of Canada.
But the conviction was upheld and Truscott spent 10 years in prison before he was released on parole in 1969. He later married his wife Marlene and moved to Guelph, Ont., where he raised three children in anonymity under an assumed surname.

In 2000, he finally went public with his case in a television documentary. His lawyers asked the federal justice minister to re-open the case. Retired Quebec justice Fred Kaufman was given the task, and upon reviewing it, concluded there was likely a miscarriage of justice.

The federal justice minister at the time sent the case to the Ontario Court of Appeal to determine if new evidence (mostly forensic) would have altered the outcome of the original trial.

Today, the Appeal Court decided that Steven Truscott should be acquitted on the basis of a miscarriage of justice, which is everything short of being declared innocent - which, given the passage of time and lack of factual evidence, is the best realistic outcome for this case. The Crown will not be appealing this decision, and has said that the government will fully co-operate if Steven Truscott decides to go for compensation.

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This particular story affects me because it happened right in my backyard of my home (figuratively speaking). I have probably been driven past the spot on the highway where Lynne Harper was picked up by that mysterious man in the car a million times in the three and a half years I lived there. I've always believed him innocent - there was just not enough evidence to construct a case about him, and the police moved and pointed fingers way too quickly in 1959. Small-town farming communities tend to be very tight-knit, and coupled with the fact that this kind of happening was totally out of the ordinary, they were scared...they wanted someone to pay for the murder and rape of a little girl, and Steven Truscott was their scapegoat. The only heart-breaking aspect of this case is that there will probably never be closure for the family of Lynne Howard in finding her killer after all this time. I'm truly saddened for her family. However, jailing an innocent man isn't the answer, and I'm glad to see at least one kind of justice was served today.

Thanksgiving is only 41 days away. I can't wait to go home.

3 comments:

Heather said...

They jailed a 14 year old and condemned him to death??? Oh they SOOO had to prove that beyond reasonable doubt and I doubt they even looked beyond him to begin with. :S

There is a similar case in NZ where a guy called Arthur Allan Thomas was convicted of murdering a husband and wife and then sneaking back to feed the toddler for three days until the bodies were discovered. A man named David Yallop wrote a book (called Beyond Reasonable Doubt) that helped eventually free him after ten years in jail. There is also a seriously boring doco-movie about it lol. In the end it was proved that the police planted the evidence to convict Arthur. I wonder if KB has read that book?

Heather said...

Oh and I forgot to say, my mum dated Arthur Allan Thomas while she was in nursing school...I think it woulda been in 1961 or 2? She always insisted he was innocent, said he didnt have that kind of evil in him.

Calamity Jane said...

My husband has the same love for harvest time and when we drive by combines he sniffs the air and says "I love that smell" I have heard it a million times in 15 years, I now love it too. Great post!