For years Humberview Secondary School students focused part of their academic efforts on upturning a first-degree murder conviction against a man who spent the better part of his youth behind bars. That man was Steven Truscott. As a 14-year-old boy he was accused of killing his 12-year-old schoolmate, Lynne Harper, in 1959.

Following his release from prison in 1969, Truscott virtually disappeared from public life. He assumed another name and eventually settled in Guelph, Ontario, where he hoped to lead a normal life and raise a family, free from public scrutiny.

He eventually resurfaced in 2000 following a CBC documentary where he proclaimed his innocence, something he’d never faltered on over the years, and with assistance from a team of lawyers with the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted, set about on a mission to clear his good name.

The doc caught the eye of Humberview teacher George Allain, who immersed his students in court dockets, asking them to explore whether or not police and Canada’s court had convicted the right man.

In 2008, not only did students’ efforts pay off after the Ontario Court of Appeal admitted a miscarriage of justice had occurred, but Truscott himself, now a grandfather, was compensated for that very miscarriage of justice which saw a child sentenced to hang at 14. For his pain and suffering and Ontario’s lapse in judgment, Truscott received $6.45 million for a crime he did not commit, and yet was robbed of his youth for.

But this isn’t the case for Robert Baltovich and Anthony Hanemaayer.

Chris Bentley, Ontario’s Attorney General, announced last week that the two wrongfully convicted men would not receive a dime for the time they each spent behind bars.

In fact, the pair have been informed they will have to take on civil court cases if they hope to receive money from the government.
These men were imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, something the court is willing to admit, and yet not make right.

Have these men not been forced to suffer in the same way Truscott did? Baltovich spent nine years after the court found him guilty of murdering his girlfriend Elizabath Bain. A new trial was ordered in 2007. The prosecution dropped all charges. Baltovich was found not guilty.

Hanemaayer served two years in jail after agreeing to plead guilty to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl in 1987. It was later learned that the infamous Paul Bernardo admitted to the crime in 2007.

Instead of spending his life in prison, Hanemaayer chose to take a plea bargain and was granted his freedom for a crime he didn’t commit.

When innocent people are backed into a corner in order to avoid spending their lives in captivity, it’s evident our justice system is not always as black and white as it claims to be.
The Attorney General’s decision not to offer compensation to these men for their pain, humiliation and suffering, not to mention a great chunk of their youth and livelihoods, is nothing more than an embarrassment in itself and a bright red stain on our justice system.