MORE DETAILS OF UP-COMING CBC TELEVISION PRODUCTION ON MULLINS-JOHNSON CASE: (WEDNESDAY JANUARY 7, 2009);

The new information about this much anticipated documentary was provided by The Sault Star under the heading, "Mullins-Johnson tragedy on TV special."

"What happens to a family when justice goes wrong?," the story begins.

"The CBC's the fifth estate will take a look at the damage inflicted on William Mullins-Johnson and his family by a wrongful conviction," it continues;

"On Jan. 7 at 9 p. m., the news magazine will tell of a Sault Ste. Marie family torn apart in "A Death in the Family."

Mullins-Johnson spent 12 years in jail after being convicted of raping and suffocating his four-year-old niece who died June 26, 1993.

He was exonerated in October 2007 after a review sparked by lawyers with the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted discredited the medical evidence used to convict him.

Several experts found no evidence to support disgraced forensic pathologist Dr. Charles Smith's conclusion that Valin Johnson had been sexually abused and asphyxiated.

That should have been the end of Mullins-Johnson's nightmare, but the fifth estate will examine how deep the damage caused by the wrongful condition went.

"Bill and his brother Paul, Valin's father, were once bound by love. After her death, their common bond became hatred and suspicion -- the belief of each brother that the other must have committed the crime,'' the program says in a press release.

"Their mother, Bill's advocate, was shunned by her own family. And still, so many years after her sister's death and her uncle's exoneration, Bill's niece Jean says . . . 'If I had a gun I would kill him,''' the show says.

A Death in the Families a co-production with CBC Radio's The Current.

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;