COUNTDOWN: 23 DAYS TO GO: DR. SMITH'S DEFENCE: MERELY "ERRORS" AND "MISTAKES"; WILL JUSTICE GOUDGE BUY INTO THESE SEMANTICS?

THESE "ERRORS" ARE SO EXTRAORDINARY THAT THEY SUGGEST DR. SMITH MAY ACTUALLY HAVE WILFULLY OBSTRUCTED JUSTICE. HIS REPEATED APOLOGIES DURING HIS MONDAY TESTIMONY AND LATER IN THE WEEK OFFER NO SOLACE TO THE FAMILIES WHOSE LIVES HE SHATTERED. INDEED, SOME OF THE VICTIMS MAY WELL SUSPECT THAT BEHIND HIS CONTRITION IS A CONSCIENCE RENDERED GUILTY BY TRULY DARK -- AND NOT JUST ACCIDENTAL-- ACTIONS.

THE NATIONAL POST;

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Throughout his testimony at the Goudge Inquiry Dr. Charles Smith would only admit to having made "errors" and "mistakes" and nothing more.

Although Justice Goudge cannot make findings of civil and criminal liability it will be interesting to see if he accepts Dr. Smith's benign characterization of his actions in his report which is to be issued October 1.

The National Post certainly had trouble accepting Dr. Smith's semantics (as do I) in an editorial which ran on Saturday, February 2, 2008, under the heading "The disgrace of Charles Smith."

"That Dr. Charles Smith was professionally unfit in his former capacity as a forensic pathologist has now been clear for months," the editorial began.

"An Ontario coroner's inquiry into his practices, released last April, found that Dr. Smith had come to questionable, or downright incorrect, conclusions in 20 of the 45 cases reviewed by the coroner's office," it continued.

"On 13 occasions, his testimony was key to wrongful convictions. And in some cases, his expert evidence led to children being taken away from parents falsely accused of foul-play or homicide.

But what originally appeared to be a simple -- if appalling -- case of an incompetent medical practitioner took a bizarre twist this week when Dr. Smith spoke before an Ontario government-sponsored public inquiry into his actions.

Explaining how and why he came so often to such incorrect conclusions, Dr. Smith offered a panoply of excuses: He lacked proper training; he was under the impression that his role was to support Crown prosecutors, not offer impartial testimony; the loss of his own infant child clouded his judgment in dealing with cases. These admissions may help explain some of the more disturbing of Dr. Smith's botched cases.

In January, 1997, for instance, Dr. Smith testified that Brenda Waudby had beaten her two-year-old daughter to death. Five years later, a crucial piece of forensic evidence (described in news reports as a "pubic-like hair") that had gone missing during the investigation turned up in his desk drawer.

In another case, an autopsy done by Dr. Smith led prosecutors to charge Louise Reynolds with second-degree murder for having killed her seven-year-old daughter. Ms. Reynolds was held in jail for two years, until further investigation revealed that the child had been mauled to death by a pit bull.

In 1996, Sherry Sherret was convicted of infanticide in the death of her four-month-old son on the basis of Dr. Smith's testimony that the boy had a skull fracture and had been smothered. Ms. Sherret was jailed and another of her children was sent to Children's Aid and eventually adopted by another family. In 2006, the boy's body was exhumed and a new autopsy showed that there had been no skull fracture and that Dr. Smith himself had been the cause of marks on the boy's neck.

These "errors" are so extraordinary that they suggest Dr. Smith may actually have wilfully obstructed justice. His repeated apologies during his Monday testimony and later in the week offer no solace to the families whose lives he shattered. Indeed, some of the victims may well suspect that behind his contrition is a conscience rendered guilty by truly dark -- and not just accidental-- actions.

The public inquiry into Dr. Smith's record must now dig deeper -- both into what Dr. Smith did, and the reasons that such a pitiful specimen would be entrusted with the fate of those accused of some of the most horrible crimes imaginable."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com