Steven Murray Truscott (born January 18, 1945) is a Canadian man who, at age fourteen, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1959 for the rape and murder of classmate Lynne Harper.
In the early evening of Tuesday, June 9, 1959, Truscott had given Harper a ride on the crossbar of his bicycle and proceeded from the vicinity of the school northwards along the County Road.
Truscott maintains that when he arrived at the bridge, he looked back toward the intersection where he had dropped Harper off and observed that a vehicle had stopped and that she was in the process of entering it.
He told Hobbs that while standing on the bridge, he saw Lynne get into a "late model Chevrolet" and there "was a lot of chrome on the car and it could have been a Bellair [sic] version.
All the evidence presented in court against the accused was circumstantial, and centred on placing Harper's death within a narrow time frame which implicated Truscott.
Key to this narrow window was the autopsy doctor's testimony that the decomposition of Lynne's body and the state of partially digested food in her stomach indicated she had died near the precise time she was acknowledged to have been with Truscott.
After the commutation of his sentence he was transferred to the Kingston Penitentiary for assessment and he was incarcerated at the Ontario Training School for Boys in Guelph from February 1960 to January 1963.
After a two-week hearing before the Supreme Court, Canada’s top judges ruled 8-1 against Truscott getting a new trial, and he was returned to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Together with a subsequent book by journalist Julian Sher, they suggested that evidence in favour of Truscott's innocence had been ignored in the original trial.
The documentary suggested that Harper's real killer may have been Alexander Kalichuk, a Royal Canadian Air Force Sergeant who had a history of sexual offences and was suspected of two additional murders, and who had died in 1975.
On October 28, 2004, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler directed a Reference pursuant to section 696.3(a)(ii) of the Criminal Code to the Court of Appeal for Ontario to review whether new evidence would have changed the 1959 verdict.
[5] The Court of Appeal heard evidence, including earlier versions of draft autopsy reports, that contradicted the supposed narrow window for Harper's time of death.
[9] In addition, an elderly couple had told investigators soon after the murder that they had spotted a young girl hitchhiking at the time and place where Truscott stated he had left Harper.
"[14][15] Attorney General of Ontario Michael Bryant apologized to Truscott on behalf of the provincial government, stating they were "truly sorry" for the miscarriage of justice.
[17] The 1975 film, directed by Murray Markowitz, called Recommendation for Mercy, was based fully on the Truscott case,[18] though different names were introduced into the plot.
The plot of Ann-Marie MacDonald's 2003 novel The Way the Crow Flies is based on a fictionalized version of the Truscott case, and the surrounding community's reaction to the incident.
In protest of the harsh sentence, notable Canadian writer Pierre Berton wrote a poem, Requiem for a Fourteen-Year-Old.
[19] Canadian rock band Blue Rodeo recorded a song, "Truscott", which referenced the case, on their 2000 album The Days in Between.
Laurier LaPierre, co-host of a CBC news show, This Hour Has Seven Days, was fired after shedding a tear in response to an interview with Truscott's mother, Doris.
LaPierre's reaction – quickly wiping away tears under one eye and speaking in a shaky voice – infuriated CBC president Alphonse Ouimet.