Breaking news ~ Misconduct of Head Pathologist ~ 1000 cases need review?!
Pathologist's work under review -
Innocent parents charged in deaths
Toronto Star, Sept. 12, 2005
HAROLD LEVY, STAFF REPORTER,
Dr. Charles Smith, a controversial pathologist
involved in several prominent cases
where innocent parents were charged
with killing their children,
has left the Hospital for Sick Children,
the Star has learned.
(See COMMENTS to this post for the rest of this article...)
Many innocent parents now being exonerated through the reviews of Dr. Smith's over zealous testimonies... it's not like he was incompetant - he was the HEAD of Pathology of Toronto's Sick Children's Hospital for years!!
Dr. Smith is not the only one...
it was the overly exuberant false evidence of a 'senior' pathologist that led to the wrongful charging and conviction of Darren Koehn.
To many 'experienced' pathologists, trained many decades ago, success means gaining convictions - not discovering the 'truth'... this is not CSI.
JUNE, 2005 ~ Chief Coroner orders review of a decade of cases...
~ Two minute feature CBC VIDEO of "Dr. Smith's false autopsies leading to false convictions..."
(the video is Well Worth the minute or two it will take to load up for Quicktime, and it will open in a separate window, so you can keep reading here) Audio introduction to above CBC newstory video clip: "As pediatric pathologists go, Dr. Charles Smith was considered among the best, helping prosecute and jail alleged killers of children... but now Ontario's Chief Coroner says 'he can't be sure Smith was right', so today he reopened more than a decades' worth of Smith's old cases..."
The CBC news story print version about Dr. Smith is available at the CBC website...
Innocent parents charged in deaths
Toronto Star, Sept. 12, 2005
HAROLD LEVY, STAFF REPORTER,
Dr. Charles Smith, a controversial pathologist
involved in several prominent cases
where innocent parents were charged
with killing their children,
has left the Hospital for Sick Children,
the Star has learned.
(See COMMENTS to this post for the rest of this article...)
Many innocent parents now being exonerated through the reviews of Dr. Smith's over zealous testimonies... it's not like he was incompetant - he was the HEAD of Pathology of Toronto's Sick Children's Hospital for years!!
Dr. Smith is not the only one...
it was the overly exuberant false evidence of a 'senior' pathologist that led to the wrongful charging and conviction of Darren Koehn.
To many 'experienced' pathologists, trained many decades ago, success means gaining convictions - not discovering the 'truth'... this is not CSI.
JUNE, 2005 ~ Chief Coroner orders review of a decade of cases...
~ Two minute feature CBC VIDEO of "Dr. Smith's false autopsies leading to false convictions..."
(the video is Well Worth the minute or two it will take to load up for Quicktime, and it will open in a separate window, so you can keep reading here) Audio introduction to above CBC newstory video clip: "As pediatric pathologists go, Dr. Charles Smith was considered among the best, helping prosecute and jail alleged killers of children... but now Ontario's Chief Coroner says 'he can't be sure Smith was right', so today he reopened more than a decades' worth of Smith's old cases..."
The CBC news story print version about Dr. Smith is available at the CBC website...
posted by ~Free Darren Koehn~ at 11:43 AM
5 COMMENTS:
1000 Convictions to Review Because of Head Pathologist's Incompetence!
Mar. 30, 2005. 07:38 AM
Pathologist lost vital evidenceTissue sample crucial for exonerationof man convicted in murder of 4-year-old
HAROLD LEVYSTAFF REPORTER
A controversial Toronto pathologist has misplaced evidence that lawyers believe could exonerate a man who has spent 12 years in prison for the murder of his 4-year-old niece.
Dr. Charles Smith's work investigating the deaths of children in Ontario has already been the subject of a review by the coroner's office. His findings have been questioned before, in cases where murder charges against mothers accused of killing their own children were later stayed or withdrawn.
Now an organization that fights to clear people who may have been wrongfully convicted wants to reopen another case that hinged on Smith's evidence. And it wants a probe into the more than 1,000 cases in which Smith was involved.
Full article at: http://www.aidwyc.org/Johnson.htm
DEAD WRONG
How the faulty findings of an eminent pathologist led to erroneous murder charges and ruined lives
BY JANE O'HARA,
Macleans, May 14, 2001
" Dr. Charles Randal Smith... who since 1992 has run the Ontario pediatric forensic pathology unit at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children... [testified]... Louise Reynolds, a 28-year-old single mother ... killed her seven-year-old daughter, Sharon, by stabbing her more than 80 times with a pair of scissors... for having head lice... Smith's opinion was crucial... 10-page autopsy he performed ... was the linchpin of the second-degree murder case ... [Three YEARS later]... numerous experts ... concluded instead that... a powerful dog had mauled the girl. "
This full article is continued with MANY further examples of this doctor's questionable convictions... Please see the entire article and several others archived at: ~~
www.InjusticeBusters.com/05/Smith_Charles.shtml ~~
Pathologist's work under review
Innocent parents charged in deaths
HAROLD LEVY, STAFF REPORTER, Toronto Star, Sept. 12, 2005
Dr. Charles Smith, a controversial pathologist involved in several prominent cases where innocent parents were charged with killing their children, has left the Hospital for Sick Children, the Star has learned.
Smith tendered his resignation in July and left the hospital shortly thereafter, spokeswoman Helen Simeon confirmed last night.
She said she was unable to say why Smith resigned because that information is confidential.
On June 7, Dr. Barry McLellan, Ontario's chief coroner, announced an unprecedented review of all cases handled by Smith at the hospital since 1991 where he had performed an autopsy or provided an opinion.
McLellan said he felt compelled to order the review, which will revisit the deaths of more than 40 children, "in order to maintain public confidence in the coroner's office."
In 2001, Smith was removed from the roster of forensic pathologists permitted to conduct autopsies in suspicious deaths. A year later, three complaints to the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons relating to his work in suspicious death cases were upheld.
One complaint had been made by Brenda Waudby of Peterborough, once charged with murdering her 2-year-old daughter. She said Smith had kept in his office for five years a pubic-like hair found during baby Jenna's autopsy, which she said may have saved her from being charged and might have identified Jenna's killer.
Waudby said yesterday the hospital should have terminated Smith "years ago" after the first indication of any problems.
"He has caused so much harm to so many people," she added.
Finance ministry documents reveal Smith's hospital salary was just over $290,000 in 2004.
Smith is also identified with the case of Louise Reynolds of Kingston, who was accused in 1997 of killing her 7-year-old daughter. The charge was dropped after experts found she had been mauled by a pit bull.
Smith could not be reached for comment.
I too am one of Dr Smith's victims, and things I never understood while on trial make sense now.
W5, a canadian news show, just had a episode on this week where they interviewed a couple of Smith's falsely convicted. They also tried to interview Dr. Smith. - he refused, of course. What gets me is that he was not just another pathologist - he was THE TOP OF HIS FIELD at the time in ontario... the TOP EXPERT in the province. It is not that he was bizarely incompetent enough to send dozens of innocent and grieving people to prison - it's that up until recently, pathologists were trained to get CONVICTIONS - not objective truth. Dr. Smith is NOT the only doctor with this problem. The KOEHN case is the same, with a pathologist in BC Dr. Grace Norman
(who trained in Ontario in the same era as Dr. Smith)who was also considered the TOP of her field - further - she was getting govt contracts to train BC RCMP how to gather enough evidence in child abuse investigations to secure convictions. They purposely requested her for the KOEHN trial, and she obliged by conjuring up a false forensic report that sent an innocent father to prison for 12 years and counting... Just because she was an EXPERT, they believed her opinions over the testimony of a dozen defense witnesses, and two other doctors who disagreed with her and her methods. He slides were contaminated with foreign matter, and her report is full of errors that completely mislead the testimony - yet the court accepted it's entirety without hesitation as apparently they feel that her EXPERTNESS means that ALL the other witnesses were lying or mistaken. The power given to one person can be chilling. How many other innocent parents have served prison time because of Dr. Grace Norman's malicious methods? Please let me know of any cases you come across that she was involved in - she retired in the mid 90's, but has worked in BC and ON, and testified in 'thousands' of trials.
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