Justice

The summer I turned 10 a fourteen-year-old named Steven Truscott in far off Ontario was accused, and convicted to hang for the rape and murder of his classmate Lynn Harper.  To a farmboy in Nova Scotia in 1959 rape was an unknown concept and murder was something that happened in sin cities like New York or Chicago.  In 1971 I read Bill Trent’s The Steven Truscott Story.  After learning the facts of the case I remained as mystified as I had been twelve years earlier. 

 

Fifty years later we may think the Young Offenders act allows teens to get away with murder but in 1959 Steven Truscott, an “army brat” from Clinton, Ontario came within a hair’s breathe of being railroaded to the gallows.  Had this been the hanging state of Texas this would all be history.  Since preserving fifty-year-old evidence was not the top priority of a small municipality such as Clinton we will never know whether Steven Truscott is guilty or innocent.  What we do know is that kicking and screaming Ontario’s judicial system this week finally had to admit that given today’s standards the case presented in 1959 would not stand up in a court of law and therefore it acquitted him of that murder.  They stopped short of declaring him innocent. 

 

In the past decade here in Canada the news has been full of prominent cases of miss-carriage of justice notably those of Donald Marshall, Steven Milgaard, and Robert Baltovich.  The latter is still unresolved and whether or not there is a connection to Paul Bernardo we may never know.  Miscarriage of justice works both ways mind you.  In California “the juice” has all but admitted that he got away with murder.  “Fracture” a movie just released on DVD shows that in theory it is possible to brazenly defend yourself against a confession of murder. 

 

What our Canadian cases have in common are police forces under pressure to make an arrest, prejudice, and young men in the wrong place at the wrong time who lack the financial resources to hire a lawyer such as Edward Greenspan.  Whatever the status of their innocence or guilt the trauma involved in being subjected to the legal system and incarerated during their formative years is such that only a very tough-minded individual could survive it or a pathological liar.  Regardless the experience is one that cannot possibly be repaid by financial recompense. 

 

When defending society trumps human rights we get Guantanimo.  To ensure the safety of consumer products we must now fight our way to them through safety seals.  To ensure airline flights are safe we consent to be collectively treated like criminals.  In an attempt to ensure their safety the rich live in “gated” communities and send their children to private schools so that they not be exposed to the wrong kind of people.  Right-wing conservatives may consider society soft on crime and advocate hiring more cops but can we deny the connection between Middle East refuge camps that have housed generations of many families and the desperation that has fueled terrorism.  Is it really cheaper to overfill our prison system with minorities than to give them an opportunity to better there socio-economic status.  Is it just that the minimum wage is kept so low that the working poor would be better off if they went on welfare?  Is it morally just to claim that crime is not a social problem?