By Arthur Weinreb
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Almost immediately after five justices of the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously quashed the 1959 conviction of Steven Truscott for the murder of 12-year-old Lynne Harper, Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant announced the appointment of retired justice Sydney Robins to examine the issue of compensation.
Within what seemed like minutes after his appointment, Robins was telling the media that the issue of whether or not the 62-year-old, who had spent the vast majority of his life as a convicted murderer, will be compensated was dependent upon the fact that Truscott was not exonerated by the judges. Rather the conviction was quashed and a verdict of acquittal entered. The court would have ordered a new trial if the passage of time had not made that exercise futile.
The speed at which Robins made those comments makes the cynical among us believe that perhaps the fix is in. The Ontario government of Dalton McGuinty, that is eager to throw big bucks to each and every special interest group whether they ask for the money or not, appears that they might be picking the case of Steven Truscott to show how fiscally prudent they can be. After all, how many votes can they possibly receive from Truscott and his ardent supporters?
Although his lawyers had asked the court to exonerate him for the murder of Lynne Harper, the court for obvious reasons declined to do so. Unlike other cases of which David Milgaard is the clearest example, there was no physical evidence that allowed a DNA analysis to prove conclusively that Truscott didn't do it. In Milgaard's case, the physical evidence not only proved that he didn't kill Gail Miller but provided DNA evidence that led to the conviction of Larry Fischer for the crime.
Even though Truscott was not exonerated, the appellate court did the next best thing. By entering a verdict of acquittal, he was put in the same position as he should have been in after his 1959 trial; he was acquitted. Since that acquittal was 48 years in coming, he deserves to be compensated for the 10 years he spent in prison and the last 38 years that he spent as a convicted murderer.
It may be tempting for the Ontario government to push Truscott around and either deny compensation to him or make the amount relatively low. Although he and his supporters worked extremely hard over the years to clear his name, Truscott himself shied away from the limelight. He never cried or whined in public about how he was victimized by the system. Nor did he ever demand, as is so common in today's society, that he has a right to be compensated. Add to that the fact that instead of sitting in a corner feeling sorry for himself, he maintained steady employment and had a stable family life with his long time wife and three children, he's easy pickings to attempt to deny a meaningful payout to. Besides that, he's just a white guy whose compensation won't add one iota to the never ending quest for the ethnic or special interest vote.
As far as the need to be exonerated in order to be compensated that was so quickly and strongly hinted at by Justice Robins, does anyone remember Maher Arar? He was never exactly "exonerated". In fact we are not even sure as to what Arar was supposed to have done in the first place, let alone know that he didn't do it. Like Truscott there was simply insufficient evidence of Arar's ties to terrorism. But that didn't stop the federal government from handing him $12.5 million. And it shouldn't stop the Ontario government from compensation Truscott, even though Steven Truscott will never be the darling of the media and the Canadian left as Arar was and still is. We can even argue what is worse; Arar spending a few months being tortured in Syria or a 14-year-old boy watching a judge don a black cap and telling him that he will be hanged by the neck until he is dead. But that should go to the amount of damages and not to the issue of compensation.
Like everyone in general and baby boomers in particular, Steven Truscott isn't getting any younger. He should be compensated and compensated quickly. And the government should not be allowed to get out of paying Truscott because it was impossible for him to be exonerated.
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