Nearly five decades after Steven Truscott (pictured) was sentenced to die for the murder of 12-year-old Lynne Harper in Clinton, Ontario, he has been acquitted by the Canadian province’s highest court. Truscott, who was only 14-years-old when he was sentenced to hang in 1959, was on death row for four months before his sentence was commuted to life in prison. The case was one of the most high profile cases in Canada’s history, and Truscott was the youngest person on death row. Two attempts to clear his name failed before he was granted parole in 1969, just seven years before Canada abolished the death penalty. Though he spent decades keeping a low profile, Truscott always maintained his innocence and began a new fight to clear his name in 1997. In the final chapter of that effort, the Ontario Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that new evidence in the case proved that Truscott’s conviction was a “miscarriage of justice,” and Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant apologized to Truscott as he announced the province has no intention of appealing the high court’s decision. Truscott told reporters, “I never in my wildest dreams expected in my lifetime for this to come true, so it’s a dream come true.”
(CBC News, August 28, 2007). See Innocence.
