Saturday, April 9, 2022

‘Marlene,’ the movie: As my former Toronto Star colleague, the excellent movie critic Peter Howell puts it, it's about the Steven Truscott wrongful conviction case (Ontario) which he describes, in his Toronto Star review) as, "both a detective story and romance. (Like most Canadians of my vintage, I have followed the Truscott saga for decades. HL)..."“He” is Steven Truscott (Greg Bryk), known to generations of Canadians as the southwestern Ontario man who in 1959 was sentenced to be hanged at age 14 after being wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of Lynne Harper, his 12-year-old classmate. “She” is Marlene Truscott (Kristin Booth), Steven’s wife. Her decades of work to clear her husband’s name is a lesser-known aspect of a case that spawned countless headlines and ultimately led to Steven’s exoneration in 2007, with an Ontario Court of Appeal acquittal, an apology from the province and a compensation package worth more than $6 million. Marlene’s determination, which brings devotion and real-life tension to this fact-based saga, was documented in “Until You Are Dead: Steven Truscott’s Long Ride Into History,” the 2001 book upon which the movie is based. Former CBC investigative reporter Julian Sher (a fantastic criminal justice investigative author and journalist HL)wrote it (assisted by CBC colleague Theresa Burke); he’s played in the film by Ryan Northcott."


PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "That’s as far as the Steven Truscott story goes for most Canadians and, indeed, for Steven Truscott himself, who wanted to just fade into obscurity.  His wife had other ideas. It’s here that the film becomes a detective procedural as well as a romance. Marlene tells Steven it’s not good enough to just be a free man: “I can’t let you go to your grave a convicted murderer,” she tells him. Flashbacks reveal how the teenage Marlene (Julia Sarah Stone) became fascinated with the Truscott case after reading the LeBourdais book and then assisted the author in fighting for his freedom. Along the way, Marlene fell in love with Steven and he with her. The story of the supportive spouse is usually relegated to the background in movies such as these, which makes “Marlene” a welcome departure from the norm.  Booth portrays Marlene as a character in constant motion, smoking cigarette after cigarette and staying up late at night as she plows through 20,000 pages of documents, searching for fresh evidence that might prompt Steven’s case to be reopened despite opposition from the legal establishment.  This actually happened with the 2007 breakthrough at the Ontario Court of Appeal, 48 years after Truscott was originally charged with Lynne Harper’s rape and murder."


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MOVIE REVIEW: '"Marlene,' about the Steven Truscott wrongful conviction case, is both a detective story and romance," by Movie Critic Peter Howell,  published by The Toronto Star, on April 7, 2022. 
(Peter Howell is a Toronto-based movie critic and a freelance contributor to the Star.)

SUB-HEADING: "There’s a reason “Marlene” is more about the wife of wrongly convicted Steven Truscott than about Truscott himself. It shows how love can conquer anything if it’s strong enough.

"GIST: "The boy-meets-girl part of “Marlene” will sound familiar to fans of romantic movies: he finds her shy but “so beautiful.” She thinks he looks like the actor James Dean, brooding and handsome.


Seems like a match made in heaven. “It was destiny,” one of them affirms. The docudrama “Marlene” is indeed a love story by producer/director Wendy Hill-Tout, who also co-wrote the screenplay (with Cathy Ostlere). But truth and a quest for justice greatly deepen the tale.


“He” is Steven Truscott (Greg Bryk), known to generations of Canadians as the southwestern Ontario man who in 1959 was sentenced to be hanged at age 14 after being wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of Lynne Harper, his 12-year-old classmate.


“She” is Marlene Truscott (Kristin Booth), Steven’s wife. Her decades of work to clear her husband’s name is a lesser-known aspect of a case that spawned countless headlines and ultimately led to Steven’s exoneration in 2007, with an Ontario Court of Appeal acquittal, an apology from the province and a compensation package worth more than $6 million.


Marlene’s determination, which brings devotion and real-life tension to this fact-based saga, was documented in “Until You Are Dead: Steven Truscott’s Long Ride Into History,” the 2001 book upon which the movie is based. Former CBC investigative reporter Julian Sher wrote it (assisted by CBC colleague Theresa Burke); he’s played in the film by Ryan Northcott.


The movie opens in June 1959 in rural Clinton, Ont., with a crime the cops consider an open-and-shut case: the raped and strangled body of 12-year-old girl Lynne Harper (Summer McBrien) is discovered in a farmer’s woodlot.


Two days earlier, she’d gone for a bicycle ride with her classmate Steven Truscott (Aidan Fink), a gangly young teen with a bashful grin. They’d cycled along rural roads, with Lynne sitting on the handlebars, until they reached a crossroads where Lynne dismounted and began hitchhiking.


Steven tells police he saw her being picked up by a man driving a late-model Chevrolet. The cops don’t believe him.


Neither does the jury when the case goes to trial several months later. It finds Truscott guilty of the murder but recommends mercy; a judge instead sentences him to death by hanging, making Truscott the youngest person in Canada facing execution.


 The federal government later commutes his sentence to life imprisonment. 


(The case would ultimately prove to be instrumental in the abolishment of capital punishment in this country.)


As Truscott languishes in jail, crusading author Isabel LeBourdais releases “The Trial of Steven Truscott,” a bestselling book damning police and other authorities for sloppy casework and a rush to judgment.


 Truscott is released on parole in 1969 and begins a new life under an assumed name, eventually marrying and raising three children in Guelph.


That’s as far as the Steven Truscott story goes for most Canadians and, indeed, for Steven Truscott himself, who wanted to just fade into obscurity.


 His wife had other ideas.


It’s here that the film becomes a detective procedural as well as a romance. Marlene tells Steven it’s not good enough to just be a free man: “I can’t let you go to your grave a convicted murderer,” she tells him.


Flashbacks reveal how the teenage Marlene (Julia Sarah Stone) became fascinated with the Truscott case after reading the LeBourdais book and then assisted the author in fighting for his freedom. Along the way, Marlene fell in love with Steven and he with her.


The story of the supportive spouse is usually relegated to the background in movies such as these, which makes “Marlene” a welcome departure from the norm. 


Booth portrays Marlene as a character in constant motion, smoking cigarette after cigarette and staying up late at night as she plows through 20,000 pages of documents, searching for fresh evidence that might prompt Steven’s case to be reopened despite opposition from the legal establishment. 


This actually happened with the 2007 breakthrough at the Ontario Court of Appeal, 48 years after Truscott was originally charged with Lynne Harper’s rape and murder.


We also see the stress of fighting a lengthy legal battle while living in fear and secrecy.


 The three Truscott kids find out about their dad’s past through school and friends, not from their parents. The secrets may be understandable, but they take a toll on the marriage and family.


A lot of information about the Truscott case is compressed within the movie’s 100-minute running time (and also this review). We get more of Marlene’s side of the story than we do of Steven’s, with the latter depicted as the stoic silent type.


We also see little of the pushback from legal and government authorities that made the Truscott case drag on so long. 

There are no big courtroom scenes and the only major legal figure in the film is Truscott lawyer James Lockyer (Dave Trimble), who serves as an explanatory figure about the steep odds against success that the Truscotts must overcome.


But there’s a reason why the film isn’t called “Marlene and Steven.” Let’s note, too, that it’s also not a miniseries. “Marlene” narrows the frame on a landmark legal story and in so doing brings it into sharper focus. It shows how love can conquer anything if the love is strong enough."


The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/review/2022/04/07/marlene-about-the-steven-truscott-wrongful-conviction-case-is-both-a-detective-story-and-romance.html

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Read my 'Selfless Warrior's Blog' (December 27, 2020)  post at:


In part: COMMENTARY:  In an interview, Reporter Sher  says Marlene Truscott is a classical 'Selfless Warrior'),   "because she makes a difficult choice to fight   a battle that seemingly has no end - and no guaranty of victory, at a tremendous personal cost to herself" - all the time motivated by a burning sense  of injustice which had to be righted.  "When I met her I didn't think that it was going to take more than ten years." Sher believes Marlene is a 'Selfless Warrior' because she "rocks the boat," pushing everybody to take up the battle, and then leads the battle year after year.  "She's the detective, she's the investigative journalist, she's talking with  the lawyers,  debating legal strategy - while at the same time also acting as the mother and the wife and having to deal with the ups and downs."  And he also admires her for "all the digging" -  which is quite a compliment coming from   such a highly regarded investigative reporter. I  couldn't agree more. But I will add my own view, that it took an exceptional individual to  battle for  a young boy charged with raping and murdering a classmate, in a small town permeated with fear and hatred. It took an exceptional human being to marry this convicted murder, bear his children, and then then to go into hiding for  years under an assumed identity working out an effective strategy for finally  clearing his name, and then working day and night to fulfill it while raising a family in these difficult, hard to imagine  circumstances. That was no mean task. As Julian  Sher points out in the book, "In the cases  of Canada's famous reversals of wrongful convictions - Marshall, Milgaard and Morin - defence lawyers had DNA, the real killer or both. With Steve's case they had neither.  Steve lost not only in front of a jury in 1959, but also at the Ontario Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court in 1960 and then at the full Supreme Court in 1967. In all, fourteen out of fifteen judges who heard the case sided against him."  (How's that for setbacks? HL)  In my books, only a 'Selfless Warrior' could have persisted as she did, and help win the  lengthy battle. A 'Selfless Warrior' name Marlene Truscott.

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Read the Innocence Canada backgrounder on the Steven Truscott case at: 


In part: 'A miscarriage of justice.'..."Following the hearing in 2006, the Court of Appeal concluded that if defence counsel had known about the uncertainty of the medical evidence surrounding Lynne’s time of death, as well as the many times that Dr. Penistan changed his opinion in this regard, they would have cross-examined him on his conflicting opinions. Perhaps he would then have retracted his opinion that Lynne died during the time window that supported the Crown’s theory that Steven had killed her. The Court found that given “the nature of the changes” in Dr. Penistan’s opinion about Lynne’s time of death, his evidence was “reasonably open to the allegation that his opinion shifted to coincide with the Crown’s case.” [16] In other words, it is possible that he testified to help the Crown get a conviction, instead of helping the Court to find the truth. The Court of Appeal concluded that this fresh evidence could reasonably be expected to have affected the jury’s verdict. In light of this fresh evidence, Steven’s conviction was clearly a miscarriage of justice. On August 28, 2007, the Court of Appeal finally quashed his conviction, which had been in place for over 45 years, and entered an acquittal.[17] Soon afterward, the Attorney General for Ontario apologized to Steven.[18] In 2008, the Ontario government – recognizing that Steven had not only spent a decade in prison for a crime he did not commit, but had also spent nearly half a century as an innocent man stigmatized as a rapist and murderer – awarded Steven $6.5 million in compensation for this egregious miscarriage of justice."
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;



SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:


https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985


FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;


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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;


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