QUOTE ONE OF THE DAY: “She was a crusader for him,” says (Director) Hill-Tout. “She was the one who said ‘This isn’t right.’ She was the Erin Brockovich of Canada in my mind. She was a woman who was very determined and someone who believed, ultimately, that the wrong would be righted.”
QUOTE TWO OF THE DAY: "I think it’s a totally unknown story,” says Hill-Tout. “It was the story of a woman behind this man who really was remarkable for her time. She was a housewife and she swore on (their) wedding day she was going to help him.”
QUOTE THREE OF THE DAY: (Marlene Truscott): "He is not Scot-free. He goes to bed as a convicted murderer, and he wakes up every morning as a convicted murderer. Why should that be?
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INTRODUCTION: When the idea of devoting a Blog to "Selfless Warriors' came to me, I immediately thought of Marlene Truscott. Marlene's husband, Steven, was just 14-years old when he was sentenced to hang for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old classmate named Lynne Harper, in the town of Clinton, Ontario in 1959. (I have enclosed a link to the a summary of the Truscott case published by Innocence Canada, formerly known as AIDWYC, The Association in Defence of The Wrongly Convicted, at the end of this post so readers can get an over-view of the case.) My thrust is rather on the remarkable role played by Marlene Truscott who became obsessed with Truscott's wrongful conviction long before she had even met him, never dreaming that someday she would marry him, have three children, and play a key role in his exoneration. Being an 18-year-old at the time of Lynne Harper's tragic murder, which riveted Canadians and haunts us to this day, I was already familiar with the Truscott case. But it was CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) investigative reporter Julian Sher's fifth estate documentary 'Steven Truscott: His word against history: The Steven Truscott Story,' (co-produced with Theresa Burke), and Sher's subsequently published book, 'Until you are dead: Steven Truscott's long ride into history," that brought the exceptional role played by Marlene Truscott in clearing her husband's name to my attention, as she had shunned the limelight for decades.
As the CBC described the production - which is widely acknowledged, paving the way for Steven Truscott's exoneration: "The case of Steven Truscott was the most famous child criminal case in Canadian judicial history, but Truscott himself disappeared into an anonymous existence, living under an assumed name and shunning all publicity for three decades. Then, in a 2000 episode of the fifth estate, Steven Truscott broke his 40-year silence for the first time, coming forward to maintain his innocence. The fifth estate’s investigation highlighted serious problems with the forensic evidence and showed that police were too hasty in laying charges, ignoring vital testimony of certain key witnesses and not allowing for the possibility of other potential suspects. Following the documentary and a book on the case, Truscott, his family and supporters launched a campaign, with help from lawyers from the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, to get the federal justice minister to re-open the case. On Aug 28, 2007 – 48 years later... the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously overturned Truscott’s conviction, declaring the case “a miscarriage of justice” that “must be quashed”. The Ontario Government awarded him $6.5 million in compensation for his ordeal.)
Several months ago, I called up Julian, a friend and colleague, ran the 'Selfless Warrior' idea by him, and was pleased to not only have an enthusiastic response to the idea, but to learn that a movie based upon his book was about to be released, directed by Wendy Hill-Tout, aptly called 'Marlene,' which was going to have its premiere on December 18 at the Whistler Film Festival. In his review of the film, which focused on Marlene Truscott's never-ceasing battle to prove her husband's innocence, Calgary Herald journalist Eric Volmers notes that, "while Steven's fight is fairly well known in Canada, her part in it is not." Hill-Tout tells Volmers: "I think it's a totally unknown story. It was the story of a woman behind this man who was really remarkable for the time. She was a housewife and she swore on (their) wedding day she was going to help him....“She was a crusader for him," said Hill-Tout. “She was the one who said ‘This isn’t right." She was the Erin Brockovich of Canada in my mind. She was a woman who was very determined and someone who believed, ultimately, that the wrong would be righted.”
According to the IMDB: "Marlene is a film inspired by Marlene Truscott, a housewife who fought to exonerate her husband from a crime he didn't commit. Marlene became involved in the fight for justice at a young age, when Steven was arrested at 14 and sentenced to be hung. When Steven was released from prison ten years later, she fell in love with him. Marlene's story is a story of hiding, living under an assumed name and protecting her children. He was free, but now she was in prison. Through it all Marlene was determined that Steven would get justice, that they would find light in the darkness, a darkness that buried the truth. Surrounded by boxes of files Marlene found a world of lies, cover-ups, and secrets. A very female story about an extraordinary woman, written and directed by women."
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THE 'SELFLESS WARRIOR.' One of the most fascinating aspects of the Truscott story is that initially Steven did not share Marlene's compulsion to bring out the truth. To Marlene, as she explained to the CBC, "He is not Scot-free. He goes to bed as a convicted murderer, and he wakes up every morning as a convicted murderer. Why should that be? But as far as Steven was concerned the truth was out. He knew he was innocent. He didn't need confirmation from anyone that he was innocent. He just needed the people responsible for his ordeal to admit that they were wrong. Beside the family had been living under an assumed identity for years, he had a job and an everyday life - a far cry from the life that he and his wife and children would have when the public became aware of their identity. This had been one of the most publicised cases in Canadian history - and his story had become part of Canadian culture. The goal would be to persuade the government to reopen the case. But Steven was still, in spite of the completion of his parole, a convicted murderer. Who know's how it would turn out? And what if people looked on his sons as children of a convicted murderer? However, Marlene realised that Canada had changed from the country which condemned him to death four decades earlier. Because of several notorious wrongful convictions, people were much more suspicious of the criminal justice system - willing to accept that it could make terrible mistakes. (Like putting an innocent 14-year-old on death row?) Moreover, DNA was becoming a tool for freeing innocent people. Perhaps an investigation would find exhibits which might yield DNA for testing, even after that lengthy period of time. Marlene also realised that the press could play a useful role in gaining public support, and putting pressure on the government and the courts to recognise the truth - that Steven Truscott was an innocent man. After much discussion within the family, Truscott gave the green light to the CBC to put to launch an investigation, and also to AIDWYC, the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (now known as 'Innocence Canada') to use its legal knowledge and expertise in investigating wrongful convictions to come up with 'fresh evidence' that would hold up in court, and lead to his exoneration.
History proved Marlene to be absolutely right. As Sher notes in the book: "Across the country, the story reignited passions around the case that refused to die a quiet death. "Truscott issues Plea for justice - show makes strong case for his innocence," ran the headline in the Globe and Mail. "Truscott wants vindication - CBC documentary raises new doubts," said the Gazette in Montreal. "Stunning new proof in Steve Truscott's 1959 sex-slaying case," the Ottawa Citizen said on its front page. "Was there a cover-up?" The documentary would go on to earn the Canadian Association of Journalists top prize for best investigative report of of 2000, and was part of a package of fifth estate exposes on the justice system that won the prestigious Michener Award for "meritorious public service journalism. "Thank you, Steven Truscott, for having the courage to come forward after all these years," wrote Edmonton Journal columnist Duart Farquharson. "Your case has troubled a lot of Canadians. It shook my faith in our criminal justice system; it still does." It was, he said, "time for Truscott to get justice."
Not only had Marlene persuaded Steven to come out of the shadows and clear his name, she threw herself into helping the AIDWYC lawyers investigate the case. Perhaps a little too much at times: Per Julian Sher: "Marlene's hunt for clues also got the better of her as days of research turned into weeks, the weeks into months, the months stretching over a couple of years"..."You live and breathe those boxes, mom, but there's other things going around that you're missing," Ryan warned her when his sister Leslie was pregnant, "She's having a baby, she's very excited, and you sort of put her on the back burner."..."It was then that I realised I was putting too much into it," Marlene admits. She cooled her efforts, if only slightly. In general, though, the children were thrilled with the buzz around the case. Steve himself could sense the difference. "We were finally where Marlene wanted to be in the first place - we were finally talking about things," Steve says. "It was exciting. After all these years, we were finally out."
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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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Sher pays tribute to journalist Isabel LeBordais for her 1966 work 'The Trial of Steven Truscott' which remains a classic - for putting the trial back on the front pages and eventually in front of the highest court in the land. He also acknowledges the cooperation he got from Truscott's legal team: Lawyers James Lockyer, Phillip Campbell, Marlys Edwardh, Jenny Friedland and Private Investigator Brian King. What an extraordinary, experienced, brilliant, talented and committed group! The Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted played an important role in the exoneration too. HL.)
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CHRONOLOGY: (CTV:):
1959
June 9: 12-year-old Lynne Harper goes missing after taking a walk near the Lake Huron community of Clinton, Ont.
June 11: Harper's body is found on a farm and evidence suggests she had been raped and strangled. Steven Truscott, 14, a classmate, was the last person seen with the victim.
June 12: Truscott admits to police he was with Harper, but saw her get into a car as he rode away on a bike. Despite his claim, Truscott is arrested and charged with her murder the following day.
Dec. 8: After a 15-day trial, a jury finds Truscott guilty of the murder and sentences him to death by hanging.
1960
The Conservative government under then prime minister John Diefenbaker commutes Truscott's sentence to life in prison.
1966
Journalist Isabel LeBourdais publishes a book called "The Trial of Steven Truscott'' which raises questions about his case. It prompts the Supreme Court to re-examine the issue, but the justices vote 8-1 against giving Truscott a new trial.
1969
Ten years into his life sentence, Truscott is released from jail, but disappears into obscurity in Guelph, Ont. He marries and has three children, and remains out of the public eye for the next 20 years.
1997
Truscott agrees to the same type of DNA testing that exonerated Guy Paul Morin and David Milgaard of murder. But crucial evidence that may have helped clear him had been destroyed.
James Lockyer agrees to represent Truscott -- the same lawyer who helped overturn the wrongful conviction of Morin for the death of Christine Jessop in 1984.
2000
Truscott emerges from hiding and says he will do everything in his power to clear his name.
2001
Lawyers for the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted file an appeal to have Truscott's case reopened.
2002
Retired Quebec Justice Fred Kaufman is appointed by the federal government to review the case.
2004
Kaufman's report goes to the justice minister. But its conclusions aren't made public. Then federal justice minister Irwin Cotler sends the case to the Ontario Court of Appeal to consider if new evidence would have changed the outcome of the original trial.
2005
The Kaufman report is made public and it suggests there was a miscarriage of justice but there is not enough evidence to exonerate Truscott.
2006
After more than four decades, the body of Lynne Harper is exhumed. But no useable DNA is found on her remains. She is reburied four days later. Soon afterward, the Ontario Court of Appeal starts hearings in the case.
2007
August 28: The court acquits Truscott, calling his murder conviction a "miscarriage of justice.''
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READING MATERIALS;
IMDB page for 'Marlene.'
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12762096/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl
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Julian Sher: Until you are dead: Steven Truscott's long ride into history.https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/165818/until-you-are-dead-by-julian-sher/9780676973815
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Julian Sher: Toronto Star article:
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CBC: Home page for CBC fifth estate documentary:
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Calgary Herald Review of 'Marlene.' (Previously called 'Chasing Justice'):
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Innocence Canada summary of the case:
https://www.innocencecanada.com/exonerations/steven-truscott/
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Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Truscott
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Isabel LeBourdais book:
https://www.amazon.ca/Trial-Steven-Truscott-Isabel-LeBourdais/dp/B0006BPBIY
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INNOCENCE CANADA: SUMMARY OF CASE: (By Sarah Harland-Logan):
Introduction
In 1959, Steven Truscott was only fourteen years old when he was charged with the murder of his classmate Lynne Harper. After his wrongful conviction, Steven spent nearly 50 years seeking justice before he was acquitted by the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2007.
On the evening of June 9, 1959, Steven was seen giving Lynne a ride on his bicycle. They parted ways. Later that evening, her father reported her missing. Two days later, Lynne’s body was found in a nearby wooded area. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. On June 13, 1959, Steven was charged with Lynne’s murder.
Steven’s Trial
Despite his young age, Steven was ordered to stand trial as an adult. The Crown’s theory was that rather than dropping Lynne off as he claimed to have done, Steven turned off into the bush and killed Lynne at some point between 7:00 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. that evening. This theory was supported by conflicting testimony from various witnesses (some of whom claimed to have seen Steven near the area where Lynne’s body was found), testimony from the autopsy doctor – Dr. John Penistan – that Lynne had died sometime within this window, and lesions on Steven’s penis which, it was argued, could have been sustained by sexually assaulting Lynne.
Steven insisted throughout the proceedings that he was innocent. He testified that Lynne was unharmed when he dropped her off at the intersection of the County Road and Highway 8, and that he happened to stop his bike on a bridge and looked back in her direction, only to see her getting into a grey Chevy with a yellow license plate. Several witnesses supported Steven’s version of events, testifying that they had indeed seen Steven and Lynne riding toward the intersection where Steven said he had dropped her off, or that they had seen him standing on the bridge looking in her direction. Witnesses also noted that Steven seemed normal when they saw him on the school grounds at 8 p.m. that evening. No one had seen Steven entering or leaving the wooded area where Lynne was killed.
The defence led evidence from a specialist in internal medicine who testified that the method that the Crown expert used to determine Lynne’s time of death – examination of stomach contents – was not reliable, and that the lesions on Steven’s penis were most likely not caused by sexual intercourse.
Despite defence efforts, on September 30, 1959, the jury found Steven guilty, and recommended that he be sentenced mercifully. At that time, however, the Criminal Code required that a death sentence be imposed for murder. The trial judge sentenced fourteen-year-old Steven to death by hanging.
No Appeals Allowed
Steven appealed his conviction to the Ontario Court of Appeal, but the Court unanimously dismissed his appeal on January 20, 1960. He then applied to the Supreme Court of Canada for leave to appeal his conviction. On February 24 of the same year, that court also dismissed his application for leave to appeal.
At that point, Steven was out of legal options. Fortunately, the Governor General had ordered that his death sentence be commuted to a sentence of life imprisonment. Steven was therefore able to continue fighting for justice for several decades, rather than being executed for a crime he did not commit.
Six years later, author Isabel LeBourdais published a book entitled The Trial of Steven Truscott, which was highly critical of the police investigation and trial process that had led to Steven’s conviction. The book brought Steven’s case to the attention of the public and, in 1966, the Governor General requested that the Supreme Court determine whether or not it would have upheld Steven’s conviction if it had allowed him to appeal the trial court’s decision. On May 4, 1967, the Court concluded that it would have dismissed the appeal. Again, it seemed that Steven was out of legal options.
Steven’s Incarceration and Life in the Community
Steven remained incarcerated – first at the Ontario Training School for Boys in Guelph, and then, after turning eighteen, at the Collins Bay Penitentiary, in Kingston – until October 21, 1969. At that point, he had been in prison for ten years and was eligible to be released on parole. After his release at age 24, Steven moved to Guelph, changed his name, and worked as a millwright, a trade that he had learned in prison. In October 1970, he married his wife, Marlene, and they raised three children. He has never been charged with any other criminal offence
Fresh Evidence Presented to the Court of Appeal
Innocence Canada (formerly AIDWYC) first became involved in Steven’s case in 1997 when Innocence Canada Counsel, along with journalists from CBC’s the fifth estate, travelled to Steven and Marlene’s home in Guelph. Steven quickly gave instructions to commence a search for evidence that would establish his innocence once and for all.
In 2001 – thirty years after Steven’s release from prison – Innocence Canada prepared and submitted an Application for Ministerial Review of his conviction under what was then section 690 of the Criminal Code. As a result of this application, in 2002, the federal Minister of Justice retained Mr. Justice Fred Kaufman, a retired Justice of the Quebec Court of Appeal, to investigate the conviction.
In April of 2004, Mr. Kaufman released his investigative report to the Minister of Justice. He had found that there was “clearly a reasonable basis for concluding that a miscarriage of justice … likely occurred.” In light of this alarming finding, the Minister of Justice referred the case back to the Court of Appeal, the same Court which had refused to hear Steven’s appeal 1960.
In June and July 2006, a five-judge panel of the Court of Appeal conducted a three-week hearing where Steven and his Innocence Canada Counsel – James Lockyer, Philip Campbell, Marlys Edwardh, Hersh Wolch and Jenny Friedland – called the fresh evidence that they believed would acquit him of Lynne’s murder. They called several experts to testify that the lesions on Steven’s penis were not caused by sexual intercourse with a young girl. Importantly, several medical experts gave testimony regarding the significant advancements that had occurred in scientific knowledge of the gastric emptying process (i.e., how quickly food is broken down in the stomach) between the time of Steven’s trial in 1959 and the appeal 2006. These experts testified that at the time of Steven’s trial, the field was still “in its infancy,” whereas by 2006, scientists were aware that the rate at which stomachs empty varies widely and depends on a large number of factors (e.g., age, gender, diet, and stress level).
One of the experts, Dr. Michael Pollanen, examined the notes taken at Lynne’s autopsy as well as the slides containing samples of her preserved organs and tissues. Dr. Pollanen found that there was much less evidence of decomposition than he would have expected if Lynne’s time of death was really between 7:00 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. on June 9, 1959 (i.e., two days before her autopsy). He concluded that Lynne had probably died sometime on June 10th – when Steven could not possibly have killed her.
Even more troubling, the Court of Appeal was provided with two unofficial versions of Lynne’s autopsy report that had not been made available to the jurors during Steven’s trial. One of these versions appears to have been the original version that was drafted during the autopsy. In this document, Dr. John Penistan expressed the opinion that Lynne’s body was found “about 40 hours after death” – which would mean that Lynne had died at about 12:45 a.m. on the morning of June 10th. Steven had an unchallenged alibi for this time period. The other unofficial version of the autopsy report gives Lynne’s time of death as between 4:45 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. on June 10th. In other words, if Lynne’s death occurred during either of the timeframes that Dr. Penistan had originally noted, then Steven could not have been her killer.
In 1966, Dr. Penistan had submitted a review of his autopsy findings – which he described as an “agonizing reappraisal” – for the Supreme Court reference regarding Steven’s conviction. This document was not disclosed to defence counsel or to the Supreme Court at the reference. Had they been privy to Dr. Penistan’s review they would have learned that the Doctor concluded in 1966 that his findings were “not incompatible” with a later time of death than the definitive time window that he had given on the stand at Steven’s trial in 1959.
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.” 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. Soon afterward, the Attorney General for Ontario apologized to Steven.
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.
The Causes of Steven’s Wrongful Conviction
As in most wrongful conviction cases, several factors contributed to Steven’s wrongful conviction. First, the Crown’s failure to disclose the unofficial versions of Dr. Penistan’s autopsy report in 1959, caused the defence counsel and jury members to miss crucial exonerating information. Second, the Crown’s failure to disclose Dr. Penistan’s “agonizing reappraisal” in 1966, similarly played a role in frustrating a much earlier attempt to overturn Steven’s wrongful conviction. The Supreme Court has since helped to prevent potential miscarriages of justice caused by a lack of disclosure, by setting out guidelines in the 1991 case R v Stinchcombe [1991] 3 SCR 326, clarifying that the Crown must disclose any and all relevant documents to the defence (except for a few types of privileged materials).
A third factor leading to Steven’s wrongful conviction was the limited scientific knowledge available at the time. Scientific advancements in the intervening 45 years – most notably, a deeper understanding of the numerous factors that could affect the rate at which the stomach empties – shed light on problems with the Crown’s case that were not evident at the time of Steven’s trial. It is important to remember that Steven was originally sentenced to death, and he would have been executed many years before these scientific advancements had taken place. One of many reasons that Innocence Canada does not support the death penalty is that new scientific and technological developments have often played a key role in exonerating innocent people many years after they were imprisoned, as in Steven’s case.
A fourth factor in the wrongful conviction was that Dr. Penistan may have lost sight of his duty to play a dispassionate role in the court process, and help the trier of fact to seek the truth. His many shifting opinions about the time of Lynne’s death suggest that he was so eager to convict Steven for this horrific crime that he allowed his medical judgment to be affected.
Another factor leading to Steven’s wrongful conviction might have been that police and prosecutors focused too early on Steven as the only suspect in Lynne’s murder; this phenomenon is known as “tunnel vision.” The Court of Appeal did not decide whether or not Steven was unfairly targeted in this way. The Court did comment, however, that Steven’s lawyers had argued that tunnel vision negatively affected his case. The Court also stated that “it is true … that police ‘tunnel vision’ is a feature found in many miscarriages of justice.”
Wounds that Innocence Canada Cannot Heal
The Court of Appeal commented that Steven had spent “his entire adult life in the shadow” of his wrongful conviction. In response to Steven being awarded $6.5 million in compensation, the Truscotts issued a statement explaining, “Although we are grateful for the freedom and stability this award will provide, we are also painfully aware that no amount of money could ever truly compensate Steven for the terror of being sentenced to hang at the age of 14, the loss of his youth or the stigma of living for almost 50 years as a convicted murderer.” It is extremely fortunate, and worthy of admiration, that Steven has been able to rebuild his life and start a family but the Truscotts will likely never be able to step out fully from the long, dark shadow of Steven’s wrongful conviction.
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I will post information on the distribution of 'Marlene' as it becomes available.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Selfless Warriors Blog.
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Sunday 27 December 2020
Marlene Truscott/Steven Truscott; According to the IMDB (an online film database): "Marlene" (premiered on December 18 at the Whistler Film Festival) is a film inspired by Marlene Truscott, a housewife who fought to exonerate her husband from a crime he didn't commit. Marlene became involved in the fight for justice at a young age, when Steven was arrested at 14 and sentenced to be hung. When Steven was released from prison ten years later, she fell in love with him. Marlene's story is a story of hiding, living under an assumed name and protecting her children. He was free, but now she was in prison. Through it all Marlene was determined that Steven would get justice, that they would find light in the darkness, a darkness that buried the truth. Surrounded by boxes of files Marlene found a world of lies, cover-ups, and secrets. A very female story about an extraordinary woman, written and directed by women." IMDB Summary of 'Marlene' - based on the book "Until you are dead: Steven Truscott's long ride into history," by Julian Sher.
Sunday 20 December 2020
Selfless Warrior: Laura (Williams) Mattan/Mahmoud Hussein Mattan: 'Killed by injustice': A true story of the deep love shared by a Somali Muslim sailor named Mahmoud Hussein Mattan, a Welsh woman named Laura Williams (his wife), the racism that tainted their lives in Wales and permeated Mahmoud's parody of a trial on a charge of murder of which he was innocent, the damaging stigma of being the wife or son of a 'hanged man' and Laura's extraordinary battle against the British Government (no easy task) to posthumously clear Mahmoud's name.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: In an interview in 2001, (Son) Omar spoke about how the family still misses Mattan. He confessed "She [Laura] still sits in the armchair speaking to him. Quite often she tells him: 'See? You should have listened to me. If we'd stayed in Hull like I wanted, then none of this would have happened and you'd still be here."
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SECOND QUOTE OF THE DAY: (The Times: Reporter Adrian Lee; Feb, 25, 1998;) "Widow wins fight."..."A widow's unceasing campaign to clear the name of her husband ended in triumph yesterday 46 years after he was hanged for the murder of a shopkeeper..."
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
The story of Laura Mattan, this week's 'Selfless Warrior,' saddens me to no end. Her beloved husband Mahmoud, who had been wrongfully convicted of killing 41-year-old Lily Volpert, an unofficial moneylender, was dead at the end of a hangman's rope, after a trial tainted by racism. This is the story of a loving woman, who spent almost half a century (46 years), honouring his wish to have his body exhumed from its felon's grave at Cardiff jail in Wales, and reburied in consecrated ground - and to clear his name. It is also the story of Laura's wish to be buried by his side.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Selfless Warriors Blog.
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PART ONE: THE CRIME:
Mahmoud Mattan, a Somali, was convicted of slitting the throat of Lily Volpert, a pawnbroker and moneylender on March 5, 1952.
PART TWO: ARREST, TRIAL, APPEAL, EXECUTION: (All within 6 months!):
Mattan, 28, was arrested within hours of the murder in March, 1952. Despite having alibis backed up by four separate witnesses, he was convicted at Glamorganshire assizes in Swansea in July, 1952. An appeal was rejected and he was executed in September.
But in the 46 years between his execution and exoneration new evidence emerged that the seaman, who only spoke halting English, was the victim of a miscarriage of justice inflicted by a racist police force and intolerant community. Even his defence lawyer called him "a half child of nature, a semi-civilised savage".
At his trial the prosecution case relied on the evidence of Harold Cover, a Jamaican, who was jailed for life in 1969 for trying to kill his daughter.
He claimed to have seen Mattan in the area where Volpert was killed but the jury was never told that he was paid to give evidence or that four witnesses had failed to pick out Mattan in an identity parade.
Vital information about another Somali, Tehar Gass, who had also been seen by Cover in the area at the time of the murder was also withheld from the court. Two years later Gass was tried for murder and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. The judge said Gass was prone to violence against women and was obsessed with knives.
Forty-six years after Mahmoud was executed, an appeal court overturned his conviction, and declared him innocent after the judges ruled the case was "demonstrably flawed" and (noted) the complete absence of forensic evidence linking him to the murder.
Four and a half decades after Mahmoud's death, Appeal Court judges overturned his conviction and declared him innocent. The Guardian:
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PART THREE: A marriage sorely tested:
"Mrs Mattan, who is Welsh, endured years of abuse from the local community including taunts of "black man's whore" from neighbours who forced the couple to live apart.
"If Mahmood and I had been living in Biblical times we would have been stoned to death," she said after her husband was exonerated in the court of appeal.
"He was a lovely man. He was the best thing that happened to me. He was gentle. He loved this country, and he treated me like a human being, a queen." The Guardian.
The couple's relationship, steeled by the mutual hatred they were facing, is described by 'African Stories in Hull and East Yorkshire.'
PART 4: The prison/the execution/the cruelty of it all;
In case you are wondering why I was so saddened by the story of Laura and Mahmoud. 'The Times' Reporter Carol Midgley tells us that, "The weeks her husband spent on remand were traumatic for Laura, now a mother of three young boys. The family's house was so close to the looming prison that if she looked out of her window at an appointed time she could see her husband waving a handkerchief from the window."
"On the morning of September 3, Laura, still only 21, turned up at the jail as usual," reporter Midgley continues. "As she stood outside the gate in torrential rain an official came out and pinned a notice to the gate. It stated that the execution of Mahmoud Hussein Mattan had taken place at 8am and had "gone without a hitch". Laura had not even known it was going to happen. It was their son David's fourth birthday. Laura collapsed and was taken home by her mother. She was inconsolable and would not answer her door for nearly three weeks. Official reports say Mattan was 28 when he died, but the family insists he was only 24, having added four years to his age in Somaliland to enable him to go to sea."
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PART FIVE (A): : 'We don't need the sons of hanged men.'...The enduring stigma being the spouse or son of a hanged man.
Researching the Story of the Mattan family, I was struck by the minimal attention that is devoted to the harm caused to family and friends of people sent to prison, be they innocent or not. They get punished too. Reporter Midgley did an excellent job of relaying the punishment imposed on each of the members of the family after Mahmoud was hung.
""All I remember about that time is my grandmother looking after us and being told that mother wasn't well," says Omar, a painter and decorator," Midgley wrote. "Up until I was eight I was told that my father had died at sea, and I believed it. Then one day the Salvation Army band was playing near our house and I went out to sing with them," she continued. "One of the leaders said: ‘We don't need the sons of hanged men.' Until I was about 12 that knowledge felt like a cancerous growth in my head. I can still remember my Dad carrying me on his shoulders, and when he bought me a huge teddy bear."
Omar spoke to the Imam who spent the final hours with Mattan in his cell before the execution. "He told me that he'd said to my father: ‘Now is the time to make your peace with God.' My father replied: ‘I have no peace to make. My conscience is clear.' "
The boys had problems enough growing up as half-caste children in a racially intolerant era, but having a hanged man as a father increased the stigma. They lived in abject poverty. "We were incredibly poor. We had to rely on charity for our clothes and food and roll up pieces of cardboard for the fire because there was no coal," says Omar. But Laura always told her boys that their father was innocent and they fought a long campaign to clear his name.
Mahmoud's granddaughter Natasha Grech, talked about the searing backlash from the community, when she addressed a vigil held outside Cardiff prison to remember Mahmoud, as reported by ITV, in an article that ran on September 5, 2020, under the heading, 'Remember Mahmoud Mattan: The last man to be hanged for a crime he did not commit.'
"Everybody knew that my grandfather was innocent. My mum and dad always said the impact it had on the community was really awful," Natasha told the vigil." Mahmoud's sons were ridiculed, bullied, outcast. They couldn't do normal things. Everyone called them 'murderer's children', my dad hated that especially later on in life when they actually pardoned him."
All of those lost years, all of that time. Things could've been so different for the three sons. They grew up without a father.
Like his brother Omar, son Mervyn was torn by the British Government's wrongful taking of their father's life. After the Government announced the family would receive financial compensation, Mervin told the Guardian.
"The piece of my father that they have given back to me is in the form of a financial award. But the money cannot buy back his soul. They stole my father's life and no amount of money can change that."
Sadness upon sadness: The sizeable 725,000 pound payout in 1998 could not wash away the decades old wounds:
As a passage from one of Reporter Midgley's storyies shows, those wounds were always there.
"To this day Laura still talks to her husband. Omar says: "She still sits in the armchair speaking to him. Quite often she tells him: ‘See? You should have listened to me. If we'd stayed in Hull like I wanted, then none of this would have happened and you'd still be here.' " Shamefully for British justice, she is right.
The wounds were always there for Omar, Mervyn and David. As reported by Wales Online:
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PART FIVE (B): PERSEVERANCE: 'KILLED BY INJUSTICE.' Laura Mattan persuades the authorities to permit her to have Mahmoud's body exhumed and reburied: The Tombstone says: "Killed by Injustice.'
Once again, I turn to 'The Times' Reporter Carole Midgley - for her account of Laura's pursuit of permission to have Mahmoud's body exhumed and reburied.
"It took 46 years and a dogged family campaign before the Appeal Court overturned Mattan's conviction and allowed his Welsh widow, Laura, to exhume his quicklimed body from its felon's grave at Cardiff jail and rebury it in consecrated ground," Midgley reports.
"But Laura always told her boys that their father was innocent and they fought a long campaign to clear his name," this report continues. "Their first attempt to have the conviction overturned was refused in 1968 by the then Home Secretary, James Callaghan. But in 1996 they achieved their first breakthrough when permission was granted to have the body exhumed and reburied.
Even then, however, there was little dignity for the Mattans. "They wouldn't let us have a hearse," says Mervyn bitterly. "My father's body was carried in a dirty blue Transit van for the journey to the cemetery and his coffin was made of cheap plywood. The Home Office wanted it to be as low-key as possible. When they brought out the bodybag I touched it because I just wanted to feel close to him for a moment." In a further slight, the family, not the Home Office, had to meet the £1,400 cost of the exhumation.
(I would think that it must have brought the family some satisfaction in itself to see this miserly government that couldn't even provide Mahmoud's remains with a decent coffin being required to fork over 725,000 pounds.)
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PART SIX: PERSEVERANCE: Exoneration at last:
Laura Mattan did not give up - even though two Home Secretaries in the 1950's and 1960's had refused to refer the case to appeal.
However, she managed to have her husband's case brought before the newly created 'Criminal Cases Review Commission' which had been set up to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice.
Mahmoud's case became the first referred by the Commission to the Court of Appeal, where in 1998, three justices threw out the conviction.
Laura told a reporter, "I feel that I have waited forever for this day. I still can't believe it."
The reporter notes in her 'justice at last' story that, "Her main emotion was one of anger that it had taken such a short time yesterday to destroy the case against her husband." (As will be seen by the Wikipedia entry below, by the time the case reached the court of appeal - the prosecution's case against Mahmoud had been demolished - not that there had been any evidence whatsoever against this innocent man to begin with.)
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PART SEVEN: COMMENTARY: Laura Mattan's monumental battle for justice for her husband was well captured by Wales Online, in an obituary, published on March 29, 2013. "The wife of the last man ever to be hanged in Cardiff has died (age 78) after dedicating her life to overturning her husband's conviction." The newspaper paid tribute to Laura, noting that, "the great-grandmother and her family campaigned to clear his name and have him buried in a human fashion" and that, she "always stood by her illiterate husband's side as he protested his innocence." The more I learned about the case - and the lives of the other members of the family which were so damaged by their mutual ordeal - the angrier I became about the death penalty, and the racism that had tainted - and continues to taint - so many of the ugly miscarriages of justice I have been exposed to in many jurisdictions around the world (including my own), and have written about over the years. I pay tribute to Laura Mattan as well. She had the strength, courage, wisdom, and dedication to her husband, to take on the British government in her quest for justice, and win. May she rest in peace. In my books, she truly is a 'Selfless Warrior."
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Thanks to my daughter Kyra (Jolliet) for her stellar editing assistance.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Selfless Warriors Blog.
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PART EIGHT: CHRONOLOGY: (More detailed chronology on Wikipedia entry at link below):
Mahmood Hussein Mattan (1923 – 3 September 1952) was a Somali former merchant seaman who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Lily Volpert on 6 March 1952. The murder took place in the Docklands area of Cardiff, Wales, and Mattan was mainly convicted on the evidence of a single prosecution witness. Mattan was executed in 1952 and his conviction was quashed 45 years later on 24 February 1998, his case being the first to be referred to the Court of Appeal by the newly formed Criminal Cases Review Commission.[1]
Early life
Mahmood Hussein Mattan was born in British Somaliland in 1923 and his job as a merchant seaman took him to Wales where he settled in Tiger Bay in the docks district of Cardiff. There he met Laura Williams, a worker at a paper factory. The couple married just three months after meeting, but as a multiracial couple they suffered racist abuse from the community. The couple had three children, but in 1950 they separated and afterwards lived in separate houses in the same street. Mattan had left the merchant navy in 1949, and by 1952 had done various jobs, including working in a steel foundry.[2][3]
Conviction for murder
Murder and investigation
Lily Volpert, a 42-year-old woman who owned a general outfitter's shop in the Cardiff Docklands area, was murdered on the evening of 6 March 1952. After closing the shop at around 8.05 p.m., she was about to have supper with her family in the back room when the doorbell rang. Her sister and mother saw a man outside the shop door and Lily went to deal with him. A few minutes later her niece saw her talking to an apparently different man at the door. Soon afterwards her body was found in the shop by another customer. Her throat had been cut with a razor or sharp knife, and it seemed that at least £100 (equivalent to £2,899 in 2019) had been stolen.[4]
The Cardiff City Police investigated a number of local men, including Mattan. About two hours after the murder two detectives visited his lodgings and questioned him. They searched his room but discovered nothing suspicious. There was no evidence of any blood-stained clothing, the missing money or anything that could have been the murder weapon. Later, other witnesses contradicted Mattan's alibi and the police interrogated him at length, and organised an identification parade attended by Lily Volpert's sister, mother and niece, but they did not identify him.[5]
They also questioned two women, Mary Tolley and Margaret Bush, who had been at the shop immediately before it closed. They gave detailed statements but did not mention having seen anyone else in the shop. After Mattan had come under suspicion, they were shown a photograph of him and they said they knew him by sight but had not seen him for about a month. But following further intensive questioning, Mary Tolley made another statement in which she said Mattan had come into the shop while they were there and had then left. But her companion, Margaret Bush, still said she had seen no one there. Mattan was arrested immediately after this and on the following day, ten days after the crime, he was charged with Lily Volpert's murder.
Mary Tolley later made a further statement in which she said she had not seen Mattan leave the shop. The police suggested that Mattan had hidden and murdered Lily Volpert immediately after the two women had left. They suppressed Tolley's earlier detailed statement which had not mentioned anyone being there. They also suppressed the original statements of Lily's family, which implied that she had been seen at the door twice after that. They then argued that this had happened earlier, before the women arrived.[6]
Committal proceedings
The prosecution case was presented at the committal proceedings in Cardiff magistrates' court on 16-18 April. Beforehand, the police confronted Mattan with another witness, a 12-year-old girl who had called at the shop at around 8 p.m. and had seen a dark-skinned man nearby. But she said Mattan was not the man she had seen. During the hearing, Mary Tolley changed her evidence again, failing to identify Mattan as the man who had come into the shop. But another witness, Harold Cover, a Jamaican with a history of violence, did identify him. He had walked past the shop around the time of the murder and had seen two Somalis outside. One was walking out of the porch and the other - a six-foot-tall man - was standing near the door. In court he said the first man was Mattan. In fact, he had earlier identified the first man as another Somali living in the area at the time, Tahir Gass, but this did not become publicly known until 1998. The outcome was that Mattan was committed for trial.[7]
Trial
The trial took place at the Glamorgan Assizes in Swansea on 22-24 July 1952. Harold Cover was the main prosecution witness. Another witness, May Gray, gave evidence that she had seen Mattan with a wad of banknotes soon after the murder. But Mattan's counsel suggested she was lying and motivated by a reward of £200 (equivalent to £5,797 in 2019) that had been offered by the Volpert family, of which Cover later received part. Evidence was also presented that microscopic specks of blood had been found on a pair of Mattan's shoes. But the shoes had been reclaimed from a salvage dump and there was no scientific evidence linking the blood to the murder. Although Mary Tolley gave evidence, the jury was not told that other witnesses had failed to identify Mattan.
Mattan's barrister succeeded in having a large part of the prosecution evidence ruled inadmissible because of the restrictions that then existed on questioning suspects in custody. But in his closing speech he described his client as "Half-child of nature; half, semi-civilised savage". These comments may have prejudiced the jury and undermined Mattan's defence. Mattan was convicted of the murder of Lily Volpert and the judge passed the mandatory sentence of death.[2][8]
Execution
Mattan was refused leave to appeal and to call further evidence in August 1952, and the Home Secretary decided he would not be reprieved. On 3 September 1952, six months after the murder of Volpert, he was hanged at Cardiff Prison. He was the last person to be hanged at the prison.[9][10]
Subsequent events
In 1954 Tahir Gass, the man seen outside Lily Volpert's shop by Harold Cover, was convicted of murdering wages clerk Granville Jenkins in a country lane near Newport, Monmouthshire. Jenkins had been stabbed to death in a frenzied attack. At Gass's trial, medical evidence was presented that he was suffering from schizophrenia and was delusional. He was found to be insane and sent to Broadmoor, but less than a year later he was discharged and repatriated to the protectorate of British Somaliland, later part of Somalia and now Somaliland.[11]
In 1969 Harold Cover was convicted of the attempted murder of his daughter in Cardiff, by cutting her throat with an open razor, and sentenced to life imprisonment.[12]
Mattan's middle son, Omar was found dead on a Scottish beach in 2003, and an open verdict was returned.[9]
Posthumous appeal
The first attempt to overturn Mattan's conviction came in 1969 after Harold Cover's conviction for attempted murder had raised concerns about the case in Cardiff. But the Home Secretary James Callaghan decided not to reopen the case. By this stage, three years had passed since the death penalty's abolition.[13][14]
In 1996 the family was given permission to have Mattan's body exhumed and moved from a felon's grave at the prison to be buried in consecrated ground in a Cardiff cemetery.[2] His tombstone says: "KILLED BY INJUSTICE."[15]
When the Criminal Cases Review Commission was set up in the mid 1990s, Mattan's case was the first to be referred by it. On 24 February 1998 the Court of Appealcame to the judgement that the original case was, in the words of Lord Justice Rose, "demonstrably flawed". The family were awarded £725,000 compensation, to be shared equally among Mattan's wife and three children.[9] The compensation was the first award to a family for a person wrongfully hanged.[16]
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READING MATERIALS:
ITV Story:
Carole Midgely: The Times:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160304031236/http://www.innocent.org.uk/cases/hhmattan/index.html
Guardian Story:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/may/14/jamiewilson
Times appeal story: