Stephen Truscott Case

Back in 1959, fourteen year old Steven Truscott was convicted for the rape and strangulation of a 12-year-old girl named Lynn Harper, near a town in southwestern Ontario. On December 8 of 1959, Truscott was scheduled to be hanged, making him the youngest person to be sentenced to death in Canada. After an appeal, on January 22, 1960, Truscott’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In August 2007, after review of nearly 250 fresh pieces of evidence, the court declared that Truscott's conviction was a miscarriage of justice. The court thus orders that Truscott should stand acquitted of the murder of Lynne Harper. I believe that justice was not served in Truscott’s case. It is because Truscott was sentenced to death at the age of fourteen, though he was completely innocent and had nothing to do with his schoolmate Harper’s death. After the first trial, Truscott had appealed multiple times to prove his innocence, but all the appeals were dismissed. It left Truscott with no hope, but to face the unjust reality. After spending about thirty years in prison, including his youth and teenage years, the most precious time of one’s life, he was finally released from jail. It was not until nearly five decades later after his first trail, in August 2007, his charge of murder had finally been acquitted after the review of nearly 250 fresh pieces of evidence. It was to be said that during the original trial in 1959, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Harper's remains, testified she likely died between 7:15 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. on June 9, 1959. Because Truscott had admitted that he had being with Harper during much of that period,