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The Pathologist's "Agonizing Reappraisal"
No
single piece of testimony was more crucial to the conviction
of Steven Truscott than Dr. John Penistan's determination
that Lynne Harper died between 7:00 and 7:45 pm. The Crown
prosecutor told jurors that medical testimony tightened "like
a vice on Steven Truscott and no one else."
But
in the spring of 1966, the pathologist was clearly having
serious second thoughts about his 1959 testimony. He wanted
to get those doubts off his chest by publishing a review of
his autopsy findings in a professional medical journal.
On
May 19 Penistan sent Harold Graham, now the assistant commissioner
of the OPP, a draft of his article with the following comment,
which must have unnerved even the normally unflappable OPP
veteran: "One is tempted to refer to it as an 'agonizing reappraisal'
in the current jargon: the adjective is probably better justified
here than in most cases."
In
a reversal of his trial testimony, Penistan widened the window
appreciably on the state of decomposition in Lynne's body,
sating that while it was fully compatible with death about
forty-eight hours prior to autopsy, "it is not incompatible
with death a day previously or a day later:"
In
another version of his draft, Penistan went even further:
"All findings are compatible with death within two hours of
Lynne's last meal. They are not incompatible with death at
a later time (up to twelve hours or even longer."
To
make a case for his innocence, Steve did not need the twelve-hour
time frame Penistan now seemed to outline for the time of
death-just twelve minutes would have put the boy in the clear.
In that courtroom in Goderich in 1959, if Penistan had stated
death could have occurred "twelve hours later" or "a day later"-as
he now wrote in his proposed article-more than one juror may
well have had a reasonable doubt about Steven's guilt.
The
Supreme Court justices and Steven's defence counsel would
not hear about Penistan's "agonizing reappraisal." A handwritten
list of witnesses on stationery from the Ontario attorney
general's office, dated August 9, 1966, indicates William
Bowman had already made up his mind to keep Penistan far away
from the courtroom.
Read
more about Penistan's agonizing reappraisal in Chapter 36
of "Until you are Dead".
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