Reflections on the Truscott Affair

by John Anderson, Ottawa Independent Editorialist

	Steven Truscott [right] with his wife Marlene [left] in 2006.

There are two aspects of the Steven Truscott affair that really bother me.

1. The root cause of this entire tragic story is that the apparatus for gathering and presenting evidence in criminal cases is exclusively in the hands of the prosecution. The best that the defence can do is react to what the prosecution presents in court. If the prosecution chooses to hide evidence or misrepresent evidence, there is nothing that the defence can do about it.

Somehow, we have to arrange for the defence to have independent access to the evidence in these cases. This will be expensive, which is probably the major reason why this does not occur now. So maybe we have to arrange for government assistance to facilitate this. If David Milgard, and Donald Marshall, and Guy Paul Morin had had such access, maybe we could have avoided those miscarriages of justice as well.

2. There are reports this morning suggesting that Lynne Harper's father, Leslie Harper, is very disappointed that Steven Truscott has been finally acquitted of the murder of his daughter. I can understand Mr. Harper's disappointment in the fact that the murder of his daughter will now never be solved. But for him to insist that an innocent person must be found guilty despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary says that the objective of the justice system in his eyes is not justice but revenge.

To my mind, the appropriate reaction from Leslie Harper would have been acceptance of the fact that Steven Truscott was indeed wrongfully convicted, together with intense regret that the prosecution's single-minded pursuit of the wrong suspect means that the murder of his daughter will now remain forever an unsolved case.

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