"THERE IS NO WAY TO COMPENSATE SMITH'S LEGAL VICTIMS IN ANY ADEQUATE FASHION. THEIR LIVES HAVE BEEN RUINED BY HIS INCOMPETENT QUACKERY."
NATIONAL POST; JANUARY 12, 2009;
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"Richard Brant may be no angel, but that is no reason he should continue to be known as a baby-killer. Brant, who is currently serving out the end of a robbery conviction at a halfway house in New Brunswick, was granted an extraordinary appeal on Tuesday of his 1995 conviction for killing his two-month-old son Dustin in 1992," the powerful National Post editorial begins;
"His is yet another case of a life ruined by the fraudulent testimony of disgraced Ontario pathologist Charles Smith," the editorial continues;
When Dustin died, the neuropathologist who first examined him ruled his death was natural, the result of a respiratory blockage caused by pneumonia.
But Smith, considered at the time "the king" of child death investigators in North America, insisted the attending doctor had erred and concluded Dustin's death was due to shaken baby syndrome.
Brant now insists he took the Crown's plea offer of six months for aggravated assault because of Smith's reputation.
But now that Smith -- who was the subject of a public inquiry last year and a review by an international panel of pathologists
A review commission would help win justice for the wrongfully convicted -- has been discredited, Brant, rightly, wants his 14-year-old conviction overturned.
He deserves at least that.
There is no way to compensate Smith's legal victims in any adequate fashion.
Their lives have been ruined by his incompetent quackery.
Consider, for instance, the case of William Mullins-Johnson of Sault Ste. Marie, who spent 12 years in prison for the sexual assault and first-degree murder of his four-year-old niece Valin in 1994 -- a crime he did not commit.
Smith insisted there were signs of strangulation on Valin's body and that Mr. Mullins-Johnson was the most likely culprit.
Yet after the pathology experts had reviewed his case, Mr. Mullins-Johnson was acquitted of both charges in 2007.
At last year's inquiry into Smith's misconduct, Mr. Mullins-Johnson stated that the pathologist's actions "destroyed my family, my brother's relationship with me and my niece that's still left and my nephew that's still living."
These relationships can never be put back the way they were before Smith wrongfully and negligently concluded a trusted uncle had assaulted and murdered his tiny niece.
Nor can the hellish years Mr. Mullins-Johnson spent in prison ever be returned to him. (An investigation by John Chipman of CBC Radio's The Current, aired this week, shows that the man's life is still a mess: He has fallen in with drugs, and is having difficulty with personal relationships.)
Nor are Smith's victims the only Canadians to spend long terms in prisons for crimes they did not commit.
There are, of course, famous cases such as that of David Milgaard, who spent 23 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit, and Donald Marshall, who was imprisoned for life for murdering Sandy Seale in 1971, a crime he always insisted he was innocent of, and for which he was acquitted in 1983.
Thomas Sophonow, Guy Paul Morin, Steven Truscott, James Driskell and others have all spent years behind bars or living with the stigma of crimes they did not commit because there is no effective method within our system to deal with wrongful convictions.
We are not implying that our court system generates miscarriages of justice as a matter of routine, nor that police officers, pathologists or Crown prosecutors set out to convict innocent people.
But even scattered instances of wrongful conviction are grounds for societal soul-searching: It is an unconscionable abuse of a citizen's right to freedom to send him to jail when he is innocent of wrongdoing.
The infringement is especially egregious because it cannot be remedied: There is no way to give someone time back that has been taken from him.
Ottawa and the provinces should consider an independent public body that can review complaints of wrongful conviction and recommend meritorious cases to provincial appeal courts.
The U. K. has such a body, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which in its 14-year history has received more than 11,000 applications for review and referred just 395--fewer than 4% -- to an appellant court.
These numbers show that a panel could be structured in such a way that the truly guilty are not permitted to clog up the court system.
The advantage of such a review commission is that is takes the task of deciding who may have a legitimate grievance away from busy Cabinet ministers in charge of the justice system, and delivers it to experts with the time and resources to review them thoroughly.
Several royal commissions and inquiries in Canada have recommended such a body be formed. The case of Dr. Charles Smith serves to reinforce why one is essential.
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
