"THE COSTS OF PROSECUTORIAL ABUSE OR INVALID CONVICTIONS ARE RARELY EXPLORED IN DEPTH BY THE MEDIA (HERE). CANADA HAS ONE CASE THAT EVERYONE SHOULD READ. AS WITH SOME RECENT SCANDALS INVOLVING INCOMPETENT FORENSIC PROSECUTION EXPERTS IN THE UNITED STATES, CANADA IS DEALING WITH THE LEGACY OF DISGRACED FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST CHARLES SMITH, WHO SENT PEOPLE TO JAIL WITH FLAWED SCIENCE AND FALSE CONCLUSIONS. HOWEVER, FEW ARE SO UNSETTLING AS WHAT HAPPENED TO SHERRY SHERRET-ROBINSON, 34."
JONATHAN TURLEY: RES IPSE LOQUITOR;
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Sherry Sherret's case has come to the attention of Jonathan Turley, one of the most influential legal commentators in the U.S.A. Wikipedia tells us that: "Jonathan Turley is a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School where he holds the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law. He frequently appears in the national media as a commentator on a multitude of subjects ranging from the 2000 Presidential Election Controversy to the Terri Schiavo case in 2005. Some of Turley’s most notable non-academic work is his representation of the Area 51 workers at a secret air base in Nevada; the nuclear couriers at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Rocky Flats grand jury in Colorado; Dr. Eric Foretich, the husband in the famous Elizabeth Morgan custody controversy. He challenged Black Bag Operations authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in espionage cases against former CIA officer Harold Nicholson; and four former United States Attorneys General during the Clinton impeachment litigation. He has also represented defendants in terrorism cases including Dr. Ali Al-Timimi (the alleged head of the Virginia Jihad/Paintball conspiracy) and Dr. Sami Al-Arian (in a criminal contempt case). He also represented Larry Hanauer, a House Intelligence Committee staff member falsely accused of leaking classified information to the New York Times and David Faulk, a whistleblower who revealed abuses at NSA's Fort Gordon surveillance programs. He is also lead counsel in the litigation over the mass arrests at the World Bank/IMF protests in Washington. He testified on the Clinton impeachment as one of the constitutional experts on the standards and merits of the case. The conceptual thread running through many of the cases taken on by Turley is that they involve claims of Executive Privilege and national security exceptions to fundamental constitutional rights. He is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues as well as tort reform legislation. He lives in D.C. with his wife Leslie. He served as the consultant to the Florida House of Representatives on constitutional issues and also served as the consultant to the Puerto Rico House of Representatives on the impeachment of Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá. Professor Turley is also a nationally recognized legal commentator. Turley was ranked as 38th in the top 100 most cited “public intellectuals” in the recent study by Judge Richard Posner. Turley was found to be the second most cited law professor in the country. He was also ranked among the nation's top 500 lawyers in 2008. (He was previously ranked in the top ten military lawyers as well as one of the forty top lawyers under the age of forty). His articles on legal and policy issues appear regularly in national publications with over 500 articles in such newspapers as the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. He is on the Board of Contributors of USA Today. In 2005, Turley was given the Columnist of the Year award for Single-Issue Advocacy for his columns on civil liberties by the Aspen Institute and the Week Magazine. Professor Turley also appears regularly as a legal expert on all of the major television networks. Since the 1990s, he has worked under contract as the on-air Legal Analyst for NBC News and CBS News to cover stories that ranged from the Clinton impeachment to the presidential elections. Professor Turley is often a guest on Sunday talk shows with over two-dozen appearances on Meet the Press, ABC This Week, Face the Nation, and Fox Sunday. Prior to joining the George Washington University, he was one of the youngest professors to be offered tenure at the Tulane University Law School. Turley teaches torts, criminal procedure and environmental law and runs the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS), the Environmental Law Clinic and the Environmental Legislation Project. In the classroom, he is known for his self-deprecating humor, playing practical jokes on his students, and for his engaging teaching style in which he uses entertaining stories drawn from his real-world experiences. Turley received his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago and his law degree from Northwestern University School of Law in 1987. In 2008, he was also awarded a Doctorate of Law (Hon.) from John Marshall Law School in recognition of his career as an advocate of civil liberties and constitutional rights. Turley, in his capacity as a constitutional scholar, testified in favor of the Clinton impeachment. In October 2006, in an interview by Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, he expressed strong disapproval of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. In numerous appearances on Countdown and The Rachel Maddow Show, he has called for criminal prosecution of Bush administration officials for alleged war crimes, namely torture. Jonathan Turley was a House page from 1977 to 1978. His blog is found at www.jonathanturley.org, which was recently ranked as the top law professor blog and legal theory blog in the American Bar Association Journal's survey of the top 100 blogs.oh-canada-disgraced-pathologists-report-led-to-woman-losing-son-in-1996-wrongful-conviction/Res ipsa loquitur ("The thing itself speaks")
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"The costs of prosecutorial abuse or invalid convictions are rarely explored in depth by the media (here)," Turley's column begins, under the heading "Oh Canada: Disgraced Pathologist’s Report Led to Woman Losing Son in 1996 Wrongful Conviction."
"Canada has one case that everyone should read," it continues.
"As with some recent scandals involving incompetent forensic prosecution experts in the United States, Canada is dealing with the legacy of disgraced forensic pathologist Charles Smith, who sent people to jail with flawed science and false conclusions. However, few are so unsettling as what happened to Sherry Sherret-Robinson, 34.
Faced with Smith’s evidence, Sherret-Robinson’s lawyer struck a deal with the Crown in which she would plead not guilty to the lesser charge of infanticide but agreed to present no evidence in her defense. She was given one year in jail and ultimately forced to give up her other boy for adoption.
Sherret-Robinson’s baby boy died in a tragically familiar accident. She left him in a crib with heavy blankets and he smothered to death in 1996. Prosecutors decided to charge her and called on Smith to prove the case. He testified that the boy showed a fracture on his skull and was intentionally smothered. A later panel found the case was a classic example of Smith’s shoddy work. There was no fracture on Joshua’s skull — there was none — and the hemorrhaging on the neck noted by Smith was from his own actions in the autopsy.
Ontario’s highest court ruled that she had been wrongly convicted. It is a bit late. She was forced to agree to give up her other son, who has been raised by a different family. Rather than traumatize him further, she has only a small request that someone tell her son the truth and that she never wanted to give him up for adoption.
Justice Marc Rosenberg concluded that “[t]he appellant’s conviction was wrong and she was the victim of a miscarriage of justice” and “profoundly regrettable.”"
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/09/oh-canada-disgraced-pathologists-report-led-to-woman-losing-son-in-1996-wrongful-conviction/
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com
