Wrongful Convictions Culminating Activity - Steven Truscott A Case Overview On June 9, 1959 near Clinton, Ontario, fourteen-year-old Steven Truscott gave his twelve-year-old classmate Lynne Harper a ride his bicycle from school to Highway 8 (Ontario Justice Education Network Timeline of Events for the Steven Truscott Case). This one event would be the one that would change his life forever. The next day Lynne's body was discovered near Lawson's bush (near the area where he had left her) where she had been strangled, sexually assaulted and subsequently killed. That day Officer Hobbs conducted a lengthy seven-hour interview with young Steven Truscott in which he asked him for a number. Then he changed his name and continued to marry and have children. Decades later, in 2001, AIDWYC (Association for the Defense of the Unjustly Convicted) became actively involved in the case and asked for it to be reopened. After retired Judge Fred Kaufman's review of the case and the submission of a 700-page report, then-Judge Irwin Cotler found in 2004 "that there was reasonable basis to conclude that a miscarriage of justice had probably occurred " (Timeline of the case Timeline of the Truscott Truscott case). Furthermore, Irwin Cotler forced the Ontario Court of Appeal to rehear the Truscott case as if it were new, with new evidence. In 2006 the Court of Appeals heard from witnesses who said they saw Truscott with Harper on his bicycle crossing a bridge toward Highway 8 years ago, on the day of the 1959 murder. After Truscott's lawyers argued to prove his innocence at the Ontario Court of Appeal on August 28, 2007, after some 48 years of living as a convicted murderer, Steven Truscott was finally acquitted of murder (Roberts). He got the news from a phone call with his lawyer while he was on Highway 401 in which they told him: “You're free. No more parole. You were acquitted by the court” (Swan 140). Having given the verdict, they formally apologized and stated that what happened to Truscott was in fact an accident. As I researched this case I came across many others and realized how many people have suffered from the injustice of being found guilty. While reading portions of the book “Real Justice: Fourteen and Sentenced to Death the Story of Steven Truscott” I learned that the police played a large role in why 14-year-old Truscott was found guilty of murder. The book showed that they forced witnesses to change their story to further “prove” Truscott's guilt for the crime. This led to the conclusion that in this case (as in many others) the police had exclusively and unfairly targeted one person