False conviction

Those of you who live in Canada will have undoubtedly heard much about the Steven Truscott case in the news over the past weeks/months/years. For those of you who don't know, Steven Truscott was convicted at the age of 14 of the death of Lynne Harper, a classmate after he gave her a bicycle ride home to the air force base where she lived - her body was discovered two days later in a nearby wood. Truscott was sentenced to death but a year later his sentence is commuted to life in prison. During the investigation and trial several pieces of evidence were not disclosed to Truscott's defense attorneys, several witnesses who supported Truscott's innocence were discounted by the police and not interviewed for the record, many child witnesses were manipulated by the police into giving testimony that incriminated Truscott (much of which was later recanted) and several known pedophiles and dangerous offenders who lived in the area were never considered. In addition, the final nail in the coffin was the pathologist's report that Harper was killed between 7 and 7:45 pm on the day that she was with Truscott - a statement that was later revised by the pathologist himself to open up the time frame to a 12 hour window. Truscott served 10 years before being paroled.


In 2002, after Truscott lobbies the government for over 40 years for a new trial or acquittal, a federal review panel was assigned. After said review determined that the trial and conviction were a miscarriage of justice, recommendations are made for an acquittal. Two days ago, Steven Truscott was acquitted of the murder of Lynne Harper. He was hoping that there would be a statement of his "innocence" made but since courts don't declare people innocent (because they are innocent until proven guilty) he got a "not guilty" instead. Lots of people don't understand why they didn't declare him innocent, but really they can't do that because if this was the original trial and he was acquitted, he would have already been presumed innocent. Anyway, this is a good thing.


On the radio yesterday they were talking about the wrongful convictions appeal process in Canada and how far inferior it is to that of the UK because we don't have a full time review panel to deal with such complaints. I told this to Ben last night and he said to me "at least they don't turn around and charge the wrongfully acquitted room and board for being in jail". I thought he was joking until I read this article. Apparently this man isn't the only one to have the British Home Office charge him for room and board while being in jail on a false conviction. They will deduct this sum from any compensation he receives for being wrongly convicted. I'm not sure we should be aspiring to treating our wrongly convicted like this! I think it's probably an infringement on his civil liberties for being charged for something he A) didn't choose and B) couldn't change. Are convicted criminals charged for room and board upon their release from prison? I think not. And, in addition (according to Ben), those released from prison after it is found that they have been wrongly convicted have no access to the rehabilitation programs and other social services such as employment programs that are afforded to convicted criminals exiting the system. They are basically chucked out of jail with the clothes they came in with and told to re-integrate themselves into society... how unfair is that?