Columnist Lynn Cockburn's comparison of Robert Latimer and Dr. Charles Smith which appeared in the Edmonton Sun on Feb. 1, 2008, under the heading "A Pathology Of Lies" is a worthy read.
At the outset I wondered what connection there could possibly between the two men - Latimer who is serving a life sentence in a British Columbia prison for killing a 12-year-old daughter suffering from cerebral palsy and Smith, a pathologist who left a lot of innocent wrecked lives in his wake,
Cockburn hones in on the character of the two men.
"Robert Latimer refuses to apologize and so, in December 2007 was refused day parole. The parole board says he shows no remorse for killing his severely disabled daughter Tracy in 1993," the column begins.
""He hasn't developed any insight into his crime," is the way the board put it," it continues.
"His sister, Pat Latimer-Martin, sees it differently. "They want him to lie," she said, and "he will never lie."
He remains unapologetic because he still believes he did the right thing in killing his daughter. The 12-year-old girl had cerebral palsy, functioned at the level of an infant and suffered five or six seizures daily.
She was in constant pain and weighed 40 lbs. She'd already had four major surgeries and was scheduled for a fifth.
It may have been the thought of that fifth operation that pushed Robert Latimer to put his daughter in his truck, pump exhaust in and let her die.
Since that time, Latimer has been sentenced to life without parole - twice. He remains in jail in William Head Institution in B.C. where he refuses to take part in the contrition game.
The man ought to take lessons from Dr. Charles Smith, former Ontario pathologist, who has been apologizing for days now and doesn't even need to. He's not trying to get out of jail. In fact, so far, he has not been incarcerated for a single day.
It may be true that Smith felt moments of remorse for his part in putting William Mullins-Johnson in jail for 12 years, or perhaps he truly experienced a brief frisson of contrition over the other 19 people falsely accused because of his arrogant and sometimes deliberately erroneous testimony.
He apologized and apologized, never looking at his victims.
But on Wednesday, under pressure from lawyer James Lockyer to offer a direct apology to Mullins-Johnson, Smith finally looked at one of his victims. And maybe the catch in his voice, the near tears were real, just for a second, when he said "I'm sorry."
Smith had a lot to apologize for - Mullins-Johnson spent a dozen years in jail for supposedly sodomizing and strangling his niece. Pathologists have now termed that death a natural one.
When it comes to apologies, I'll take Latimer, the man who refuses to lie in order to get parole. He refuses to take the easy way out in order to get out. And so there he'll stay, a prisoner in a Kafka novel, until he smartens up and learns to lie properly.
On the other hand, Smith has done nothing but lie for years. He lied and lied and lied. He excused himself by saying his training in pathology was minimal and that he was ignorant.
And, worst of all, he said he did not understand until recently that a pathologist is supposed to be impartial. According to Smith, he thought his job was to back up the prosecution's case.
As an aside, after a review of Smith's work began in 2005, he resigned from Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto and decamped to Saskatoon where he got a job as a pathologist. Seems he did not bother to admit he was the person under review in Ontario. He was fired three months later.
Smith is unlikely to spend a single day in jail. More's the pity. It would not be unjust if he were to be sentenced to 12 years for Mullins-Johnson, 19 for the others he victimized, five years for stupidity, five for incompetence and five for arrogance. To run consecutively.
But it is Mullins-Johnson who must get the last word.
When Smith offered his tearful apology on Wednesday, Mullins Johnson responded: "You destroyed my family.... They hate me because of what you did to me.
"I'll never forget that, but for my own healing ... I must forgive you.""
Harold Levy: hlevy15@gmail.com
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