14-year-olds and murder: two very troublesome cases

Without a doubt, Steven Truscott's murder conviction as a 14-year-old and the 48 years he spent serving a life sentence (initially in jail and latterly on parole), certainly deserved the label given them by the Ontario Court of Appeal, a "miscarriage of justice."

But it may be many years before the same label is applied universally to the treatment accorded another for his alleged actions as a14-year-old, Omar Khadr.

In 1959, Truscott was convicted and sentenced to be hanged for the rape murder of a schoolmate, 12-year-old Lynne Harper. His conviction and nearly half a century of limits on his freedom stemmed from a blinkered police investigation that was based mainly on the assumption that the last person seen in the victim's company was no doubt her killer.

Although Steven denied any involvement in her death and insisted that he saw her getting into a car on Highway 8, it now seems that the OPP didn't even consider the possibility that she was the victim of a sexual sadist, much less actively search for other possible suspects.

As for Khadr, only six years have passed since the incident in Afghanistan that has led to him facing what some would see as an officially sanctioned miscarriage of justice - trial before a U.S. military tribunal where he stands accused of murdering a U,S. military hero and trying to murder other U.S. soldiers by throwing a grenade in their direction from a hut that was being attacked by U.S. forces.

All we know for a fact is that he was 15 at the time, was severely wounded and had no business being in Afghanistan, having been taken there by a now-dead father who was undoubtedly close to Osama bin Laden.

A new military appeals court in Washington, D.C., reserved judgment on a bid by the Bush administration to have the trial take place without the government having to first establish that he is an "unlawful" enemy combatant, as required by Congress under new rules written last year.

The prosecutor, retired Colonel Francis Gilligan, argued that it's a technical matter and Khadr isn't entitled to protections offered to regular prisoners of war. "It's very clear he's an al-Qaida fighter who was engaged in hostilities against the United States," he told a three-judge panel that was hastily assembled after the Khadr case was thrown out in June.

Defence lawyers contend the "unlawful" designation is a critical element of guilt or innocence in what is a fundamentally flawed military tribunal system. They questioned the legitimacy of the court itself, saying it didn't exist a couple months ago, and officials didn't follow proper procedures when they set it up."

As the only Canadian citizen being held at Guantanamo Bay, his plight has been ignored equally by the Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin Liberal administrations as well as by the Stephen Harper Conservatives.

If the appeals court agrees with the defence lawyers, he might have to spend a lot longer before even going to trial, since the case might have to go back to square one while the government gets his designation changed.

The stakes Khadr faces are incredibly high, since a conviction could led to the death penalty in a country that even has state murders of alleged accomplices of killers who themselves haven't hurt anyone.

Even the Truscott case is far from past history. There remains the difficult task of deciding the issue of compensation.

Other victims of wrongful murder convictions, such as Guy Paul Morin and David Milgaard, have been appropriately compensated, but their innocence was fully established because of the advent of DNA evidence that excluded them as the killers.

Attorney General Michael Bryant has asked Sydney Robins, a former member of the Ontario Court of Appeal, to recommend an appropriate compensation package, and we suspect it will be based mainly on the sad fact that Truscott spent a decade of his youth behind bars.

As for Khadr, it was interesting to see the Canadian Bar Association ask the federal government to follow the example of Britain and Australia and ask the U.S. to send him home to be dealt with by our justice system.

Even if Khadr were to plead guilty to all the charges he now faces in the U.S., and even if he were tried as an adult (a most unlikely situation) the maximum penalty he would face would be a life sentence with no more than six years in "closed custody."

If time spent at Guantanamo would count, he'd be immediately eligible for parole, instead of lethal injection.