"An inquest jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing on Tuesday after seeing a video showing a police officer pushing Tomlinson who fell forward on to the pavement in the City of London.
It is understood that the GMC has begun its inquiries into Patel's performance during his controversial autopsy.
The disciplinary panel has also been approached by other families who are pressing for inquiries into Patel's role as a pathologist in other deaths. The families of those affected have begun banding together to raise concerns about the way postmortems have been conducted."
REPORTERS OWEN BOWCOTT AND PAUL LEWIS: THE GUARDIAN;
REMINDER: EXECUTION BY FIRE Friday, May 13, 10PM (9PM Manitoba/Sask.)
(In 1991 three little girls died in a fire that gutted their home in a small Texas town. Sympathy turned to rage when their father was charged with murder by arson. After a thirteen-year battle to prove his innocence and despite new evidence casting doubt over the conviction, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed by lethal injection in 2004. Since Willingham’s death, leading fire scientists have challenged the underpinnings of the case, concluding it was an accidental fire. Today, Willingham’s family is still battling to clear his name and for the first time Texas may be forced to admit to executing an innocent man. Another documentary by renowned Canadian journalist Julian Sher. “What can be more crushing than the nightmare of losing your child,” asks Sher. “And then the nightmare gets unimaginably worse when the police accuse you of the murder and you know you’re innocent? These were compelling human dramas and trials that grabbed the headlines. We tried to look at the toll these cases took not only on the accused but also on their families—their loved ones, the other children. It’s also about how communities turn against the guilty suspect in our midst – how we are all guilty of jumping to conclusions.”)
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Charles Smith saga - called by the Globe and Mail a series of earthquakes which exploded under Ontario's criminal justice system - has underlined the enormous harm that can be caused by an incompetent pathologist who is used to investigate criminal cases by the State. One of its lessons is that medical licensing bodies such as the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons in Ontario and the British Medical Council must scrutinize allegations made against such pathologists extremely carefully and hold them strictly to account where misconduct is found - that's what protecting the public is all about..
HAROLD LEVY; PUBLISHER; THE CHARLES SMITH BLOG;
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"The General Medical Council is investigating the suspended pathologist Dr Freddy Patel for the way he conducted a postmortem examination on Ian Tomlinson," the Guardian story by reporters Owen Bowcott and Paul Lewis published on May 5, 2011 begins, under the heading, "Pathologist Freddy Patel investigated over Ian Tomlinson postmortem: General Medical Council looks into findings which were criticised by other pathologists at Ian Tomlinson inquest."
"Patel carried out the first autopsy on the body, suggesting that the newspaper seller had died of a heart attack during the G20 demonstrations in London on 1 April 2009<' the story continues.
"His findings were criticised by three other pathologists who subsequently conducted examinations of Tomlinson and concluded that the 47-year-old father of nine had died from internal bleeding.
An inquest jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing on Tuesday after seeing a video showing a police officer pushing Tomlinson who fell forward on to the pavement in the City of London.
It is understood that the GMC has begun its inquiries into Patel's performance during his controversial autopsy.
The disciplinary panel has also been approached by other families who are pressing for inquiries into Patel's role as a pathologist in other deaths. The families of those affected have begun banding together to raise concerns about the way postmortems have been conducted.
Among those who have been in correspondence with the GMC are the relatives of Richard Chang, who died in 2004 after a fall inside the atrium of a London finance office. Patel conducted the postmortem examination.
The courtroom-style hearings at the GMC's high-rise offices on London's Euston Road must, by now, be a painfully familiar ritual to Patel: the 63-year-old pathologist has been disciplined three times in the past decade and is serving his second term of suspension from the profession.
At the end of the last examination, counsel for the GMC urged that he be struck off the medical register.
Patel has had a chequered career. In 2002, he was found to have breached patient confidentiality by telling journalists that Roger Sylvester, a 30-year-old who died after being restrained by police, had been taking drugs. The GMC issued him with a reprimand.
Last summer, Patel appeared before a fitness-to-practice panel to face charges that four of his postmortems were "not of a standard expected of a Home Office-registered forensic pathologist" and that one case "was liable to bring the profession into disrepute".
One of his postmortems was on a five-year-old girl who had been admitted to hospital after her parents claimed she had suffered a serious fall. Patel failed to spot signs of abuse and was suspended from practice for three months.
The publicity generated by the Tomlinson case has stirred up several allegations against Patel. Between December last year and March this year, Patel was called by the GMC to answer fresh allegations of incompetence and dishonesty.
He was found to have falsified his CV and to have conducted a botched autopsy on the body of 31-year-old sex worker Sally White, who was the first victim of the "Camden Ripper" Anthony Hardy. Patel suggested she had died from a heart attack during consensual sex despite evidence of blood-stained clothing and bedding.
His findings discouraged police from launching a murder investigation. Hardy went on to murder two more women. In March, the GMC suspended Patel for a further four months.
On Patel's status, a spokeswoman said: "The GMC argued very strongly for erasure [striking off the register] but we have independent panels and they went with suspension. It's frustrating for the GMC."
The GMC says it cannot confirm whether it is investigating the Chang family's complaint. Chang, 48, was found dead on 13 July 2004 on the ground floor of Abbey National's office. He was a risk analyst and had been working on corporate governance.
He had fallen from a fifth-floor internal balcony shortly after being interviewed by a private investigation company about accusations of sending malicious, anonymous documents to the Financial Services Authority. The inquest returned a verdict of suicide.
His family has never accepted the official version of events and has challenged the thoroughness of the postmortem conducted by Patel, questioning whether he examined certain marks on the body. Lawyers for Patel were passed the complaints from the Chang family but did not respond."
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The story can be found at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/05/freddy-patel-investigated-ian-tomlinson-autopsy
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be accessed at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
For a breakdown of some of the cases, issues and controversies this Blog is currently following, please turn to:
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=120008354894645705&postID=8369513443994476774
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;
