# data[].attributes.body
This document contains the answers for the given case study questions

# data[].attributes.headline
Steven Truscott - His Word Against History 

# data[].attributes.subject
Steven Truscott - His Word Against History 

# data[].attributes.body
Very interesting video that takes a deep dive into the wrongful conviction Steven Truscott.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Steven Truscott - His Word Against History - the fifth estate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It was a hot, muggy evening in 1959 when 14-year-old Steven Truscott gave his schoolmate Lynn Harper a ride on his bicycle near an air force base outside Clinton, Ontario. Two days later, the girl's body was found in a wooded grove near the town. She had been raped and strangled.

# data[].attributes.body
Very detailed article about the wrongful conviction of Steven Truscott  and how it happened. It explains how the investigators used tunnel vision, how mistaken testimonies took place, and how the flawed forensics happened.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Author: Sarah Harland-Logan

Introduction

In 1959, Steven Truscott was only fourteen years old when he was charged with the murder of his classmate Lynne Harper. After his wrongful conviction, Steven spent nearly 50 years seeking justice before he was acquitted by the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2007.[1]

On the evening of June 9, 1959, Steven was seen giving Lynne a ride on his bicycle. They parted ways. Later that evening, her father reported her missing. Two days later, Lynne's body was found in a nearby wooded area. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. On June 13, 1959, Steven was charged with Lynne's murder.[2]

Steven's Trial

Despite his young age, Steven was ordered to stand trial as an adult. The Crown's theory was that rather than dropping Lynne off as he claimed to have done, Steven turned off into the bush and killed Lynne at some point between 7:00 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. that evening. This theory was supported by conflicting testimony from various witnesses (some of whom claimed to have seen Steven near the area where Lynne's body was found), testimony from the autopsy doctor - Dr. John Penistan - that Lynne had died sometime within this window, and lesions on Steven's penis which, it was argued, could have been sustained by sexually assaulting Lynne.[3]

Steven insisted throughout the proceedings that he was innocent. He testified that Lynne was unharmed when he dropped her off at the intersection of the County Road and Highway 8, and that he happened to stop his bike on a bridge and looked back in her direction, only to see her getting into a grey Chevy with a yellow license plate. Several witnesses supported Steven's version of events, testifying that they had indeed seen Steven and Lynne riding toward the intersection where Steven said he had dropped her off, or that they had seen him standing on the bridge looking in her direction. Witnesses also noted that Steven seemed normal when they saw him on the school grounds at 8 p.m. that evening. No one had seen Steven entering or leaving the wooded area where Lynne was killed.[4]

The defence led evidence from a specialist in internal medicine who testified that the method that the Crown expert used to determine Lynne's time of death - examination of stomach contents - was not reliable, and that the lesions on Steven's penis were most likely not caused by sexual intercourse.[5]

Despite defence efforts, on September 30, 1959, the jury found Steven guilty, and recommended that he be sentenced mercifully. At that time, however, the Criminal Code required that a death sentence be imposed for murder. The trial judge sentenced fourteen-year-old Steven to death by hanging.

No Appeals Allowed

Steven appealed his conviction to the Ontario Court of Appeal, but the Court unanimously dismissed his appeal on January 20, 1960. He then applied to the Supreme Court of Canada for leave to appeal his conviction. On February 24 of the same year, that court also dismissed his application for leave to appeal.[6]

At that point, Steven was out of legal options. Fortunately, the Governor General had ordered that his death sentence be commuted to a sentence of life imprisonment. Steven was therefore able to continue fighting for justice for several decades, rather than being executed for a crime he did not commit.[7]

Six years later, author Isabel LeBourdais published a book entitled The Trial of Steven Truscott, which was highly critical of the police investigation and trial process that had led to Steven's conviction. The book brought Steven's case to the attention of the public and, in 1966, the Governor General requested that the Supreme Court determine whether or not it would have upheld Steven's conviction if it had allowed him to appeal the trial court's decision. On May 4, 1967, the Court concluded that it would have dismissed the appeal. Again, it seemed that Steven was out of legal options.[8]

Steven's Incarceration and Life in the Community

Steven remained incarcerated - first at the Ontario Training School for Boys in Guelph, and then, after turning eighteen, at the Collins Bay Penitentiary, in Kingston - until October 21, 1969. At that point, he had been in prison for ten years and was eligible to be released on parole. After his release at age 24, Steven moved to Guelph, changed his name, and worked as a millwright, a trade that he had learned in prison. In October 1970, he married his wife, Marlene, and they raised three children. He has never been charged with any other criminal offence.[9]

Fresh Evidence Presented to the Court of Appeal

Innocence Canada (formerly AIDWYC) first became involved in Steven's case in 1997 when Innocence Canada Counsel, along with journalists from CBC's the fifth estate, travelled to Steven and Marlene's home in Guelph. Steven quickly gave instructions to commence a search for evidence that would establish his innocence once and for all.[10]

In 2001 - thirty years after Steven's release from prison - Innocence Canada prepared and submitted an Application for Ministerial Review of his conviction under what was then section 690 of the Criminal Code. As a result of this application, in 2002, the federal Minister of Justice retained Mr. Justice Fred Kaufman, a retired Justice of the Quebec Court of Appeal, to investigate the conviction.[11]

In April of 2004, Mr. Kaufman released his investigative report to the Minister of Justice. He had found that there was "clearly a reasonable basis for concluding that a miscarriage of justice ... likely occurred." In light of this alarming finding, the Minister of Justice referred the case back to the Court of Appeal, the same Court which had refused to hear Steven's appeal 1960.[12]

In June and July 2006, a five-judge panel of the Court of Appeal conducted a three-week hearing where Steven and his Innocence Canada Counsel - James Lockyer, Philip Campbell, Marlys Edwardh, Hersh Wolch and Jenny Friedland - called the fresh evidence that they believed would acquit him of Lynne's murder. They called several experts to testify that the lesions on Steven's penis were not caused by sexual intercourse with a young girl. Importantly, several medical experts gave testimony regarding the significant advancements that had occurred in scientific knowledge of the gastric emptying process (i.e., how quickly food is broken down in the stomach) between the time of Steven's trial in 1959 and the appeal 2006. These experts testified that at the time of Steven's trial, the field was still "in its infancy," whereas by 2006, scientists were aware that the rate at which stomachs empty varies widely and depends on a large number of factors (e.g., age, gender, diet, and stress level).[13]

One of the experts, Dr. Michael Pollanen, examined the notes taken at Lynne's autopsy as well as the slides containing samples of her preserved organs and tissues. Dr. Pollanen found that there was much less evidence of decomposition than he would have expected if Lynne's time of death was really between 7:00 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. on June 9, 1959 (i.e., two days before her autopsy). He concluded that Lynne had probably died sometime on June 10 th - when Steven could not possibly have killed her.[14]

Even more troubling, the Court of Appeal was provided with two unofficial versions of Lynne's autopsy report that had not been made available to the jurors during Steven's trial. One of these versions appears to have been the original version that was drafted during the autopsy. In this document, Dr. John Penistan expressed the opinion that Lynne's body was found "about 40 hours after death" - which would mean that Lynne had died at about 12:45 a.m. on the morning of June 10 th. Steven had an unchallenged alibi for this time period. The other unofficial version of the autopsy report gives Lynne's time of death as between 4:45 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. on June 10 th. In other words, if Lynne's death occurred during either of the timeframes that Dr. Penistan had originally noted, then Steven could not have been her killer.

In 1966, Dr. Penistan had submitted a review of his autopsy findings - which he described as an "agonizing reappraisal" - for the Supreme Court reference regarding Steven's conviction. This document was not disclosed to defence counsel or to the Supreme Court at the reference. Had they been privy to Dr. Penistan's review they would have learned that the Doctor concluded in 1966 that his findings were "not incompatible" with a later time of death than the definitive time window that he had given on the stand at Steven's trial in 1959.[15]

A Miscarriage of Justice

Following the hearing in 2006, the Court of Appeal concluded that if defence counsel had known about the uncertainty of the medical evidence surrounding Lynne's time of death, as well as the many times that Dr. Penistan changed his opinion in this regard, they would have cross-examined him on his conflicting opinions. Perhaps he would then have retracted his opinion that Lynne died during the time window that supported the Crown's theory that Steven had killed her. The Court found that given "the nature of the changes" in Dr. Penistan's opinion about Lynne's time of death, his evidence was "reasonably open to the allegation that his opinion shifted to coincide with the Crown's case." [16] In other words, it is possible that he testified to help the Crown get a conviction, instead of helping the Court to find the truth.

The Court of Appeal concluded that this fresh evidence could reasonably be expected to have affected the jury's verdict. In light of this fresh evidence, Steven's conviction was clearly a miscarriage of justice. On August 28, 2007, the Court of Appeal finally quashed his conviction, which had been in place for over 45 years, and entered an acquittal.[17] Soon afterward, the Attorney General for Ontario apologized to Steven.[18]

In 2008, the Ontario government - recognizing that Steven had not only spent a decade in prison for a crime he did not commit, but had also spent nearly half a century as an innocent man stigmatized as a rapist and murderer - awarded Steven $6.5 million in compensation for this egregious miscarriage of justice.[19]

The Causes of Steven's Wrongful Conviction

As in most wrongful conviction cases, several factors contributed to Steven's wrongful conviction. First, the Crown's failure to disclose the unofficial versions of Dr. Penistan's autopsy report in 1959, caused the defence counsel and jury members to miss crucial exonerating information. Second, the Crown's failure to disclose Dr. Penistan's "agonizing reappraisal" in 1966, similarly played a role in frustrating a much earlier attempt to overturn Steven's wrongful conviction.[20] The Supreme Court has since helped to prevent potential miscarriages of justice caused by a lack of disclosure, by setting out guidelines in the 1991 case R v Stinchcombe [1991] 3 SCR 326, clarifying that the Crown must disclose any and all relevant documents to the defence (except for a few types of privileged materials).

A third factor leading to Steven's wrongful conviction was the limited scientific knowledge available at the time. Scientific advancements in the intervening 45 years - most notably, a deeper understanding of the numerous factors that could affect the rate at which the stomach empties - shed light on problems with the Crown's case that were not evident at the time of Steven's trial. It is important to remember that Steven was originally sentenced to death, and he would have been executed many years before these scientific advancements had taken place. One of many reasons that Innocence Canada does not support the death penalty is that new scientific and technological developments have often played a key role in exonerating innocent people many years after they were imprisoned, as in Steven's case.[21]

A fourth factor in the wrongful conviction was that Dr. Penistan may have lost sight of his duty to play a dispassionate role in the court process, and help the trier of fact to seek the truth. His many shifting opinions about the time of Lynne's death suggest that he was so eager to convict Steven for this horrific crime that he allowed his medical judgment to be affected.

Another factor leading to Steven's wrongful conviction might have been that police and prosecutors focused too early on Steven as the only suspect in Lynne's murder; this phenomenon is known as "tunnel vision." The Court of Appeal did not decide whether or not Steven was unfairly targeted in this way. The Court did comment, however, that Steven's lawyers had argued that tunnel vision negatively affected his case. The Court also stated that "it is true ... that police 'tunnel vision' is a feature found in many miscarriages of justice."[22]

Wounds that Innocence Canada Cannot Heal

The Court of Appeal commented that Steven had spent "his entire adult life in the shadow" of his wrongful conviction.[23] In response to Steven being awarded $6.5 million in compensation, the Truscotts issued a statement explaining, "Although we are grateful for the freedom and stability this award will provide, we are also painfully aware that no amount of money could ever truly compensate Steven for the terror of being sentenced to hang at the age of 14, the loss of his youth or the stigma of living for almost 50 years as a convicted murderer."[24] It is extremely fortunate, and worthy of admiration, that Steven has been able to rebuild his life and start a family but the Truscotts will likely never be able to step out fully from the long, dark shadow of Steven's wrongful conviction.

[1] "Steven Truscott to get $6.5M for wrongful conviction: Sentenced to hang at age 14 for murdering classmate" CBC News (07 July 2008), online: CBC News Canada http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/steven-truscott-to-get-6-5m-for-wrongful-conviction-1.742381.

[2] Truscott (Re), 2007 ONCA 575, 225 CCC (3d) 321.

[6] Jay Makarenko, "Truscott Case: Background" Maple Leaf Web, online: http://www.mapleleafweb.com/old/education/spotlight/issue_59/background.html.

[7] Supra note 2.

[9] Supra note 6.

[10] R v Steven Truscott, 2007 ONCA 575 (Factum of the Appellant at para 14).

[11] Ibid at paras 15-18.

[12] Supra note 2.

[18] Supra note 1.

[20] Supra note 2.

[24] Supra note 1.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Author: Sarah Harland-Logan In 1959, Steven Truscott was only fourteen years old when he was charged with the murder of his classmate Lynne Harper. After his wrongful conviction, Steven spent nearly 50 years seeking justice before he was acquitted by the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2007.[1] On the evening of June 9, 1959, Steven was seen giving Lynne a ride on his bicycle.

# data[].attributes.body
An in depth article on the Steven Truscott case by CBC that breaks the case down.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Police charged 14-year-old Steven Truscott three days after finding his schoolmate's body.

In 1959, he was sentenced to be hanged at age 14 for a schoolmate's murder, becoming Canada's youngest death-row inmate. His case, one of the most famous and controversial in Canadian judicial history, helped spur Canada to abolish the death penalty. After the original conviction, Steven Truscott spent four months in the shadow of the gallows until his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Paroled in 1969, Truscott disappeared into an anonymous existence in a southern Ontario city.

On Aug. 28, 2007 - 48 years later - the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously overturned that conviction, declaring the case "a miscarriage of justice" that "must be quashed" and acquitted Truscott. The judges went on to say, however, that "the court is not satisfied that the appellant has been able to demonstrate his factual innocence."

Shortly after the decision was released, then Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant told reporters the Crown has no plans to appeal and offered an apology to Truscott.

In July 2008, the Ontario government announced it would pay Truscott $6.5 million in compensation for his ordeal. "We are doing what we can to bring to the conclusion this remarkable aspect of Mr. Truscott's life's journey," Chris Bentley, Ontario's attorney general at the time, said.

Case for acquittal

Steven Truscott, appearing on CBCï¿½s The National in 2001, has always said he is innocent.

After a public campaign calling for his exoneration ï¿½ buoyed by a book scrutinizing the conduct of his trial and a 2000 CBC's The Fifth Estate documentary where Truscott publicly proclaims innocence ï¿½ the Ontario Court of Appeal conducted a judicial review of his case. Witnesses took the stand between June 19, 2006, and July 7, 2006.

The review hinged on fresh evidence using forensic entomology ï¿½ pinpointing the time of 12-year-old Lynne Harper's death by the larval development of insects. In Truscott's 1959 murder trial, the time of death was pegged between 7 and 7:45 p.m., which pointed to Truscott as the murderer.

During the three week review, some of the forensic and pathology experts cast doubt on coroner John Penistan's key forensic evidence used to convict Truscott. Witness accounts not included in the original police case ï¿½ a strange car seen near the woodlot where Harper was found, the night she was murdered ï¿½ came to light. Old testimony by key witnesses in the Crown's original case were refuted.

But even before new testimony was presented to the Ontario Court of Appeal, a growing number of people had been persuaded that Truscott had been wrongfully convicted after a police investigation that critics say was too hasty and ignored some witnesses and possible suspects.

In Jan.-Feb. 2007 a panel of judges from the Ontario Court of Appeal again heard testimony as Truscott asked that he be cleared of the charges once and for all. The hearings were televised online by CBC.

Quick police probe, two-week trial

It was a hot, muggy evening on June 9, 1959, when Truscott gave his classmate, 12-year-old Lynne Harper, a short lift on his bicycle near an air force base outside Clinton, Ont.

Lynne Harper, 12, had been raped and strangled.

Two days later, searchers found the girl's body in a wooded grove near the town, about 180 km west of Toronto. She had been raped and strangled.

Truscott was the last known person to have seen her alive.

Within two days, police charged the teenager with her murder. After a trial that lasted only 15 days, he was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged.

Three decades later, Truscott remembered those days in a jail cell in Goderich, Ont., when he feared he would feel the noose before his 15th birthday.

"I woke up one day and somebody was building something outside the wall," he told The Fifth Estate.

"You could hear the hammering, and I thought they were building a scaffold. And it's just kind of living in terror, and every day you expect it to be your last."

Truscott's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he spent the next 10 years behind bars.

The case immediately provoked controversy, not only because of Truscott's tender years but also because some doubted his guilt.

Uproar leads to Supreme Court review

In the spring of 1966, a book written by Isabel LeBourdais – The Trial of Steven Truscott – attacked the rapid police investigation and trial, calling into question a justice system that many people then considered infallible.

Her argument that the court had erred and sentenced an innocent teen to death made front-page headlines and sparked public demonstrations. The resulting uproar in Parliament led Lester Pearson's Liberal government to order a Supreme Court review.

Canada's top court examined the Truscott case in 1966, not to determine his guilt or innocence but to decide whether he should have a new trial. The judges ruled 8-1 to uphold the verdict.

While Truscott remained in prison for three more years, many experts believe the controversy over his case led to Canada abolishing the death penalty in 1976.

Meanwhile, Truscott adopted a new name and settled in Guelph, Ont., where he worked as a millwright, married and raised three children.

2000 documentary raises more doubts

Steven Truscott talks with Linden MacIntyre, from the CBCï¿½s the fifth estate.

Although the Truscott name was well known in Canada, he remained anonymous until March of 2000, when the CBC's The Fifth Estate broadcast a documentary about his case.

The program presented new evidence that, when added to that uncovered by LeBourdais and others since the original trial, built a case that police may have laid charges too quickly, while playing down some witnesses and ignoring other potential suspects.

Truscott said he dropped Harper off at a highway, then saw her hop into a strange car as he pedalled away. He said Harper, the daughter of an officer on the Clinton base, told him she had squabbled with her parents and planned to hitch a ride somewhere.

The police maintained that Truscott killed her before reaching the highway and left her nearly naked corpse in the woods.

Their case, built on purely circumstantial evidence, hinged on the testimony of a pathologist who testified that Harper died between 7:00 and 7:45 p.m. ï¿½ an extremely precise determination even by today's forensic standards.

In 1966, Penistan had second thoughts and published a review of his autopsy that opened the time frame to a 12-hour window.

The Fifth Estate found that police also dismissed testimony from witnesses, including some who insisted they saw Harper and Truscott reach the highway.

Other suspects ignored?

The police and military never seriously considered other suspects that should have been flagged, The Fifth Estate said.

Air Force Sgt. Alexander Kalichuk

For example, the journalists uncovered old military files on Alexander Kalichuk, a heavy drinker with a history of sexual offences who lived within a 20-minute drive of the base. The air force sergeant had come to police attention after trying to lure a 10-year-old girl into his car about three weeks before Harper disappeared.

Another man, an electrician with a conviction for rape, worked regularly at the base and knew the Harpers.

The program suggested the Ontario Provincial Police may have rushed to judgment with Truscott, in an echo of police actions that led to the wrongful convictions of David Milgaard and Guy Paul Morin.

While DNA testing helped overturn those convictions, no DNA evidence that can be analyzed exists in Truscott's case.

Campaign to exonerate Truscott

Truscott has always maintained his innocence, voluntarily submitting in prison to psychiatric probes that included truth serum and LSD.

When he went public in 2000, he said he wanted to clear his name for the sake of his children and grandchildren.

His case was taken up by the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, a group that includes lawyers who helped establish the innocence of Morin, Milgaard and Donald Marshall.

Truscott and the association's lawyers filed a formal appeal with the federal justice minister in November of 2001, asking for a formal review of the case. In a 700-page legal brief, they argued that the police used tunnel vision to zero in on Truscott, ignoring important witnesses and other suspects.

Two months later, the federal justice minister appointed a former Quebec judge, Fred Kaufman, to assess the claim under Section 690 of the Criminal Code.

Kaufman, who headed an inquiry into the wrongful murder conviction of Morin, can recommend that the case be retried or reviewed by an appellate court. He can also recommend a pardon.

Kaufman's report went to the justice minister in the spring of 2004. On Oct. 28, 2004, the federal Minister of Justice, Irwin Cotler, referred the case to the Ontario Court of Appeal for review.

"I have determined that there is a reasonable basis to conclude that a miscarriage of justice occurred in this case," Cotler said.

Ontario Court of Appeal review

Testimony in the three-week review supported some of the criticisms of the 1959 murder trial made in The Fifth Estate documentary, but not all of it pointed to Truscott's exoneration.

Retired OPP superintendent Harry Seyeau, who helped convict Truscott in 1959, testified that he and his police colleagues did not inquire about existing sexual predators with nearby OPP detachments, Crown offices, or the Royal Canadian Air Force. The farmer who owns the property where Harper's body was found, Bob Lawson, said he saw a strange car parked near his fence the night the 12-year-old disappeared. Lawson told the court he went to the guardhouse at the Royal Canadian Air Force, but the officer on duty wasn't interested. He also testified that Jocelyn Gaudet - a key child witness who said Truscott set a date to meet her in the woods on the night of June 9 - came to his farm and asked him to change his testimony to match hers.

Lawson wasn't the only witness who cast doubt on Gaudet's testimony, which gave ammunition to the prosecution. Sandra Stolzmann testified that Gaudet admitted to lying under oath in Truscott's trial to her and a group of fellow resident nurses in Montreal. Stolzmann also told the court that Gaudet suggested a man who was spotted driving a yellow car in the area should have been considered a prime suspect. Testimony from another nursing co-worker, Elizabeth Hulbert, echoed Stolzmann's account.

However, Karen Jutsi, who was nine years old when she testified in Truscott's trial, said her original statement was incorrect. At the murder trial, Jutsi, whose maiden name is Daum, said she was on a bridge when she saw Truscott on a bicycle giving a ride to Harper on a country road sometime after 7 p.m. on June 9, 1959. She told the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2006 that she was not on a bridge when she saw Truscott, but near Lawson's bush where Harper's body was later found. Jutsi said she was shocked when she read her statement years later, because it was wrong.

But the bulk of the witnesses focused on determining Harper's time of death, a detail that could either implicate or rule out Truscott as Harper's killer.

Both the prosecution and the defence presented pathology and entomology experts. Some backed up Penistan's original findings, some refuted them and the methods used. But all cast doubt on the narrow time frame of 7:00 to 7:45 p.m. on June 9 for Harper's death.

Renowned U.K. pathologist Bernard Knight - who wrote one of the standard textbooks for pathologists - criticized Penistan's use of stomach contents to determine when Harper died. "It's so inaccurate it is hardly worth doing," he said. "There are so many errors in it that it's impossible to give an accurate time of death." Ontario's chief pathologist Michael Pollanen testified that there wasn't enough evidence to pinpoint Harper's death, and that she could have died a day later than the original finding. Michigan pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz, with more than 50 years experience in the field, told the court Penistan wasn't equipped to evaluate the time of death. Spitz praised Penistan's methods for being advanced for the time, but said, "Maybe he was wrong."

Other expert witnesses used maggots collected from Harper's body in 1959 and today's expertise to establish when she died (larvae are deposited on the body shortly after death.)

Elgin Brown, a biologist working at the Ontario attorney general's crime lab at the time of the murder, told the court that maggots found on Harper's body probably hatched at 2:30 p.m. on June 10, 1959. He estimated that because the bugs were in the first stage of development, they were laid earlier that morning. Forensic entomologist Sherah VanLaerhoven estimated that insects started laying eggs or larvae on Harper's body between 11 a.m. June 10 and 8 a.m. the following morning. This time frame would rule out Truscott as her killer, but VanLaerhoven couldn't rule out the possibility that Harper died before sunset June 9.

Dr. Neal Haskell, a forensic entomology professor from Purdue University in Indiana, testified that larvae must have been deposited on the 12-year-old's body between 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. He said Harper could have died anywhere within a few minutes or two hours before this - giving weight to the time interval Penistan originally determined.

However, Haskell later re-evaluated his statements. Haskell said that a certain family of flies, flesh flies, do not land on a body less than 24 hours after a person died - a key part of his estimate of Harper's death. But Truscott's lawyers presented one of Haskell's reports on a 1992 murder where he concluded that flesh flies landed on a woman's body within the first 12 hours. Haskell was also questioned about a voicemail he left with Ontario Provincial Police in 2005, saying he would cast doubt on Truscott's innocence if he was put on the stand. Haskell did not deny leaving the message, but said he was only interested in pinpointing the time of Harper's death.

# data[].attributes.body
An image of Steven Truscott on the day of his acquittal 48 years after the murder of Lynne Harper

# data[].attributes.body
An image of Lynne Harper who was murdered at just 12 years old. The murderer to this day has not been found.

# data[].attributes.body
This article shows the complete timeline of the Steven Truscott case from the day  Steven was wrongfully convicted to the day of his acquittal 48 years after the death of Lynne Harper.

# data[].attributes.body
An image of 14-year-old Steven Truscott who was convicted of the murder of Lynne Harper, and later acquitted. Steven was the last person to see Lynne.

# data[].attributes.body
This video, Joseph Neuberger discusses the $6.5 million Steven Truscott received for being wrongfully convicted of murder and living with it for 48 years.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Steven Truscott's $6.5 Million Award for Wrongful Conviction

# data[].attributes.body
This video is the day Steven Truscott was acquitted for the murder Lynne Harper. He spent 48 years with the stigma of being wrongfully convicted of a rape and murder he did not commit.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.entities[].name
Worst Cases Of People Being Wrongly Accused

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A Canadian court acquitted Steven Truscott today and called his murder conviction "A Miscarriage Of Justice". http://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/think-and-grow-rich/198261