Ballad of Justice
In a warm summers eve on the ninth day of June
In the torrid year of fifty nine
A young girl was assaulted and a young girl was killed
Her torn and broken body left behind
Who killed Lynne Harper the town of Clinton cried
Find us a man that we can send away to die
It’s so horrid for a twelve year old to have to die this way
Somebody surely has to pay
A young boy who was with her on the night that she was slain
Was arrested on the day that she was found
Fourteen years old, Steven Truscott was his name
And he became the victim of a town
You killed Lynne Harper you took her for a ride
You might say you are innocent but we say that you’re lyin’
For at Lawson’s Bush you stopped and then you raped her on the ground
That’s where the girl you killed was found
On the sixteenth of September after three months in a cell
They impaneled a jury of twelve men
The Judge’s name was Furgeson, a man of learned years
And in Goderich the beginning of the end
For without a confession or a bloodstain on his clothes
Eyewitnesses of fingerprints or something he had torn
There was no direct evidence, just circumstantial say
But they found the youngster guilty anyway
For seven long years minds forgot about the crime
Until Isabel Lebourdais wrote a book
And once again the doubts were raised, the public asking why
Maybe we should take another look
A review was finally granted and the public had to smile
They’d made up their minds he wasn’t guilty after all
The Supreme Court of Canada, the highest in the land
Took Steven Truscott’s life into their hands
And for three long months they would hear it once again
All the evidence that showed the years before
And the doubts were still raised and the country was amazed
This was one case we all were fighting for
But still no one proved of his innocence or guilt
Some thought he should stay in jail and others thought he wouldn’t
But the law says to prove beyond a reasonable doubt
When will they let the young man out
For even of the judges they could not make up their minds
Although eight of them had held that he should stay
But one judge descended; there are thousand more behind
While that boy is in a prison cell today
And what of the laws of this great land of ours
If they can’t prove him guilty why is he behind the bars
And why is Steven Truscott made to suffer out the pain
When the system of our justice is to blame
