Lauwer's Supports Calls For Review of 142 "Shaken-Baby Deaths."

Dr. Albert Lauwers has added his voice to calls for a review of 142 "Shaken-Baby" deaths that occured in Ontario.

As noted by Globe and Mail reporter Kirk Makin in today's Globe and Mail: "The Ontario government has a moral duty to re-examine the deaths of 142 Ontario children diagnosed over the past 20 years as victims of shaken baby syndrome, a senior official with the Office of the Chief Coroner told the Goudge commission yesterday."

"Any "moral, ethical and just society" would undertake an extensive review to be sure that innocent parents were not wrongly charged with or convicted of killing their children, acting deputy chief coroner Albert Lauwers testified," the story continues.

'Dr. Lauwers noted that scientific doubt has steadily grown about whether children once thought to have been violently shaken by their caregivers actually died from short falls.

"To be frank with you, if it's happening in Ontario, it is certainly happening in every province and territory in Canada - and probably in vast jurisdictions of the United States and the rest of the world as well," he told Mr. Justice Stephen Goudge.

'The Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted and other legal associations called for a full review of SBS cases last fall, when the issue first arose at the inquiry.

The probe is looking into how Charles Smith maintained his status as a top pathologist despite a long series of damaging mistakes. Yesterday, Dr. Lauwers became the first government official to take up that call.

He also proposed that the review be conducted by an external agency that has no direct links to Ontario's Office of the Chief Coroner.

However, Judge Goudge expressed concerns that, with the Office of the Chief Coroner perennially short of pathologists, those available are too "badly needed" to be diverted into an extensive review of SBS cases.

"The questions are asked with a sense of desperation," Judge Goudge added.

But Dr. Lauwers and regional coroner James Edwards assured him that some cases could potentially be reviewed by retired pathologists.

In other cases, Dr. Edwards added, there may have been evidence that corroborated a finding of foul play, making detailed scrutiny unnecessary. "Not every one of them would need to be screened by a forensic pathologist," he said.

Dr. Lauwers said the justice system faces a growing dilemma about how to deal with cases where individuals were convicted of crimes based on pathology evidence that has since come into question, indicating possible miscarriages of justice.

He cited the famous Steven Truscott case, in which the Guelph, Ont., man was convicted in 1959 of murdering his school friend, Lynn Harper. The state of digestion of Lynn's stomach contents was a key piece of evidence used to determine the time of her death and help convict Mr. Truscott.

"It was the current thinking of the day," Dr. Lauwers said. "At the time, it was not controversial, but it has clearly been refuted. My question is, where do we stop?"

Judge Goudge acknowledged the difficulty of the issue, and remarked that shaken baby syndrome lies close to its "centre of gravity. That's something I will have to grapple with."

At the height of its popularity in the pathology world, SBS was diagnosed virtually any time an autopsy revealed a series of symptoms that became known as "the triad" - brain swelling and retinal bleeding combined with tissue damage to the linings of the brain.

Testifying last December, chief forensic pathologist Michael Pollanen said that 142 children have been diagnosed with SBS since 1986.

"One of the factors to put fuel on the fire in the U.S. is that traditionally, sentences have been robust in these kind of cases - the death penalty or life imprisonment," Dr. Pollanen said at the time."

(See earlier posting: Goudge Inquiry: Opposition parties call for review of more than two hundred cases);

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com'