PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Six years after Judge Stephen Goudge issued his report into the flawed child death investigations conducted by former Hospital for Sick Children pathologist Charles Smith, the Toronto hospital is under the spotlight once again. This time it's in connection with its Motherisk program - which was set up at the hospital to provide help to conduct research, and provide counselling to mother's on reproductive risk or safety of drugs, chemicals and maternal disease in pregnancy. But a recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision - and the decision of prosecutors not to proceed with a new trial against Tamara Broomfield who had been been convicted of giving her 2-year-old son a near lethal dose of cocaine based on hair analysis conducted by Motherisk raise the possibility that shoddy scientific techniques could have wrongly sent other women to prison be sending other women to prison or caused the loss of their children to child welfare authorities. Whether the Broomfield case was an exception can only be known after a thorough, independent investigation is conducted of all hair drug tests conducted by Motherisk in child protection and criminal cases. Public confidence in the administration of justice in Ontario - and in the Hospital for Sick Children - is once again at risk.
Harold Levy. Publisher. The Charles Smith Blog.
STORY: "'Crack mom' conviction tossed out. Prominent Toronto doctor's findings tossed after challenge by expert," by reporters Rachel Mendleson and Marci Chown Oved, published by the Toronto Star on November 1, 2014.
GIST: "When Tamara Broomfield was convicted in 2009 of giving her 2-year-old son, Malique, a near lethal dose of cocaine, she was branded Toronto’s “crack mom.” Based largely on evidence presented by a prominent Toronto toxicologist, the judge found that, for more than a year, Broomfield had regularly fed her baby doses equivalent to those recorded in adult addicts. She was sentenced to seven years in jail. Malique, who had a heart attack and almost died from a cocaine overdose in 2005, suffered permanent brain damage and behavioural problems.
In October, the court
of appeal overturned the cocaine convictions after fresh evidence cast
doubt on the science that all but sealed Broomfield’s fate. Gideon Koren, founder
and director of the Motherisk program at the Hospital for Sick Children,
delivered the findings that are now in question. Toronto criminal defence lawyer Daniel Brown,
who tried to get the trial judge to reopen Broomfield’s case in 2010 to
re-examine the medical evidence, said “everyone should be concerned
that faulty science helped convict (her).” “Scientific evidence
is often complicated and cloaked in a belief that reputable and
experienced doctors providing expert evidence in court can’t be wrong,”
he said. “The public too easily accepts these experts at face value. As
the Broomfield case shows, this can result in a miscarriage of justice
when the science underlying the opinion is faulty.”........Broomfield was released on bail last year after the Crown cross-examined the expert witness who cast doubt on Koren’s findings. Craig Chatterton,
deputy chief toxicologist in the office of the chief medical examiner in
Edmonton, challenged the methods used to prepare Malique’s hair sample
that Motherisk analyzed as well as the methodology used to analyze it. Chatterton also questioned “the validity of the results as given in evidence at trial,” the appeal court decision states. In a 2012 report filed
in court, Chatterton wrote, “It is not possible to determine whether
Malique Broomfield had ingested (or been exposed to) cocaine over an
extended time period, based on the results of the immunoassay analysis
conducted by Motherisk Laboratory.”......... Although the court of
appeal ordered that the Crown make Koren available for
cross-examination, the Crown instead agreed that Chatterton’s findings
should be admitted as fresh evidence and that the cocaine convictions
should be quashed.".........About a week after the
apparent cocaine overdose, a sample of Malique’s hair was analyzed by
Koren and his team at Motherisk, which he said found “extremely high”
levels of cocaine and its byproduct. In December 2005, Motherisk did a
segmented analysis of Malique’s hair, which Koren said showed chronic
exposure to cocaine each month for 15 months in levels that, for an
adult, would indicate “a very severe addiction and drug dependence,” the
court documents state. The highest levels of
cocaine were recorded in early 2005. However, as the appeal court
observed in its decision, the question of whether Malique showed “any
behavioural signs consistent with chronic exposure to significant
amounts of cocaine” before the overdose was “a live controversy” at
trial. At trial, the defence
argued that because Motherisk’s tests consumed the entire hair sample,
there was no chance for an independent assessment, but Justice Tamarin
Dunnet was not swayed. “Dr. Koren’s evidence
was vigorously challenged and on occasion, his demeanour was abrupt and
defensive,” Dunnet wrote in her decision. “Nevertheless, the salient
points were unshaken on cross-examination. His evidence was credible and
compelling.” In his response to
Chatterton’s evidence, Koren defended his findings, which he said have
been accepted by experts in the field and a leading scientific pediatric
journal. “Acute, one time
exposure to cocaine, cannot explain the hair test results,” he wrote in a
2013 letter filed in court. “All evidence indicate at very high medical
probability that the toddler was exposed to cocaine chronically as part
of an extreme case of chronic abuse and neglect.”.........In 2003, Koren was
reprimanded and fined $2,500 by the Ontario College of Physicians and
Surgeons for writing anonymous, harassing letters to colleagues during a
heated fight over research by another doctor. A panel described his
actions as “childish, vindictive and dishonest.” “Ironically for this
accomplished research scientist, it was only when confronted with
irrefutable scientific evidence of his guilt did he admit that he was
the perpetrator,” the panel found.........Koren’s resumé in the
court file is 147 pages long. According to the SickKids website, he has
trained pediatricians from more than 40 countries and published over
1,400 peer-reviewed papers in the area of pediatric pharmacology.
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2014/11/01/crack_mom_conviction_tossed_out.html?app=noRedirect
See also The Toronto Star article on lawyers concerns over the reliability of Motherisk drug testing at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children: "Toronto lawyers who regularly handle child protection cases involving hair-strand analysis from the Hospital for Sick Children say more information is needed about the reliability of the testing after a court of appeal tossed the 2009 cocaine convictions of a Toronto mother. Lawyer Tammy Law said the Motherisk program at Sick Kids is the go-to place for hair-strand analysis in family law cases where drug use is in question. She wants “to be reassured” the laboratory’s testing can be trusted, she said. “The stakes are so high,” said Law. “To potentially lose your kid, for fairness’ sake, it has to be accurate … You have to have faith in the result. If we don’t believe it, we have a huge problem.”
Sick Kids did not
respond to a request on Tuesday for a comprehensive list of cases that
have relied on the type of hair-sample analysis performed in the case of
Toronto mother Tamara Broomfield, or say whether Motherisk is still
using this technique. Motherisk’s
hair-strand drug tests are routinely submitted as evidence in courts
across the province “almost without question,” according to Anthony
Macri, a former lawyer for the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto who now
runs a family law firm. In the face of the
appeal court decision, Macri said it is “incumbent” on the government to
determine the “standard of reliability.
“It shouldn’t just be a
question floating in the air. It shouldn’t just be up to lawyers like
me to challenge it in every court for the next 20 years,” he said. “The
government needs to get ahead of this ball.” Several Toronto criminal defence lawyers are calling for a review of the cases that relied on Motherisk’s hair-strand analysis. The concerns come
after fresh scientific evidence prompted a court of appeal to overturn
Broomfield’s 2009 cocaine convictions for giving her 2-year-old son,
Malique, a near-lethal dose of the drug in 2005."
http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2014/11/05/reliability_of_motherisk_drug_testing_questioned.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
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 found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
