Review: Sher, "Until You Are Dead" (2002)
Mar. 1st, 2020 08:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Despite its clunky title, this is a very good book about the Canadian Steven Truscott, who in 1959, at the age of 15, was sentenced to hang for the rape and murder of 12-year-old Lynne Harper---a crime he did not commit. (His sentence was commuted to life in prison.) The book is partly a biography of Truscott and partly an investigation of the investigation into Lynne Harper's murder, pulling all the evidence out and examining it carefully, including evaluation of witnesses. The prosecution built its case on two child witnesses who couldn't keep their own stories straight but whose evidence pointed to Truscott's guilt, while seeking to discredit child witnesses who told consistent stories that exonerated Truscott. Also, because the laws of discovery in 1959 didn't require them to, the prosecution did not turn over to the defense a BOATLOAD of evidence that pointed toward Truscott's innocence, choosing instead to harp on the cherry-picked evidence that did not contradict the theory of Truscott's guilt. The trial judge was also biased toward the prosecution, and his charge to the jury was both biased and factually inaccurate. And then, of course, the authorities doubled-down as the legal question became a political question, not was Steven Truscott innocent? but were the police wrong? Judging by this book, it's almost impossible for someone living in 2020 to imagine how infallible the police and the legal system were perceived to be in 1959 and how vitally necessary the government felt that perception to be. (Many people in power seemed to feel that admitting error in the case of Steven Truscott would be tantamount to approving the downfall of Canadian civilization.) The history of Steven Truscott's attempts to prove his innocence is also a cultural history of the paradigm shift that is the 1960s, as mainstream culture learned to distrust its authority figures.
The book was published before a decision was reached in Truscott's final appeal, but Wikipedia tells me his conviction was overturned in 2007---even though, even then he wasn't declared innocent. It was merely admitted, finally, almost 50 years later, that his guilt was not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
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