PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Re the nightmarish, horribly botched execution of Christa Pike. Message to the people of Tennessee, and to all other American's: You can make this botched execution the last execution ever in your country. Learn from us. We ended capital punishment in Canada after - and perhaps because of - the brutal botched execution of Arthur Lucas at Toronto's Don Jail, on December 11, 1962. I was parading outside Toronto's Don Jail that night, reporting a vigil protesting the back to back execution of Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas for The Pro Team - the new student newspaper of the recently opened York University - and protesting out of my own antipathy for the death penalty, having no idea that something terrible had happened inside those walls - something which ultimately may have ended the death penalty in Canada. Author Robert L Hoshowsky described the botched back-to-back execution and its aftermath, in his book "The last to Die: Ronald Turpin, Arthur Lucas, and the end of capital punishment in Canada. Per Hoshowsky: "What happened next is the stuff of nightmares. Turpin and Lucas never heard the end of the word salvation. The hangman sprung the trap, the platform falling beneath their feet with a deafening crash that echoed throughout the room as they plummeted to their deaths. No one who was at the hangings revealed what happened that night for many years, and newspapers at the time were not given the full story. "The hanging was bungled. Turpin died clean. But Lucas' head was torn off. It was hanging just by the sinews of the neck. There was blood all over the floor. The hangman had miscalculated his weight. What a way to die," said (Salvation Army Chaplain Cyril) Everitt in an interview published just before his own death many years later..... Toronto homicide detective Jim Crawford who attended the double hanging that cold December night. "Everybody was taken aback by the spray of blood that was literally like a water pipe had burst, and the walls were sprayed with blood." Howshowsky continues: " The Coroner's report made no mention of Lucas almost losing his head. Doubts about Lucas' conviction lingered even to 1976 - the year capital punishment was abolished. The deaths of Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas may have marked the end of capital punishment in Canada;" This is not about guilt or innocence. It is rather about a barbaric punishment, worthy of the middle ages, that has no place in a civilized state.
See May 2, 2014 post on 'The Last to Die' at:
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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. 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. 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; 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;
