PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Maria Shepherd was not the only innocent, grieving parent - to plead guilty to an offence in order to avoid having to face former doctor Charles Smith. What is extraordinary is that I am aware of five cases in which innocent parents pleaded guilty to avoid what they had been assured would be an almost certain conviction - and much harsher sentence - all because of one prosecution expert. This is extraordinary. The police and prosecutors loved Charles Smith for his ability to extract guilty pleas, close the case, and keep the public calm. (Until the stacked deck of cards began collapsing); All the police officer had to do was hint to the 'suspect' that the Crown's expert pathologist was renowned throughout the province and beyond - and the guilty plea was almost assured. The second post in this series is the case of Dinesh Kumar which was documented on the AIDWYC site by author Sarah Harland-Logan. I am enclosing excerpts. The entire account can be found at the link below.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
GIST: "Dinesh Kumar immigrated to Canada from India with his wife, Veena, and their son, Saurob, in 1991. Their second child, also a son, was born on February 11, 1992. They named him Gaurov. Unfortunately, Veena had a seizure on the day of Gaurov’s birth and was diagnosed with a brain tumour. She had to stay in hospital for a month, but the tumour was successfully removed, and she returned home to her family on March 3. The family would only be able to spend a few weeks together before tragedy struck again.[1] In the early morning hours of March 18, 1992, Gaurov woke up crying. Dinesh fed his son milk from a bottle, burped him, and put him back in his crib. At 12:30 a.m., Gaurov woke up again, this time with a scream. Horrified, Dinesh saw that his son had stopped breathing and was turning blue. He told Veena that something was wrong, and performed CPR, to no effect. Dinesh and Veena – recent immigrants who were not yet fluent in English – were unfamiliar with the 911 system, so Dinesh phoned his brother-in-law to ask for help. His brother-in-law told him to call 911. Both Dinesh and Veena spoke to the 911 operator, who sent paramedics to their apartment.[2] The paramedics rushed Gaurov to the hospital, but it was too late: he had suffered irreversible brain damage and had to be placed on life support. Dinesh would later recall seeing his son “in bed, breathing and alive. For me as his father, I could not believe he was really dead.”[3] Tragically, Gaurov continued to show no brain activity, and on March 20, 1992, he passed away.[4] Dinesh and Veena’s tragedy was made still worse by the fact that coincidentally, Saurob had also suffered an episode of turning blue when he was an infant – although thankfully, Dinesh had been able to revive him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He mentioned this incident while in the hospital with Gaurov. Children’s Aid, fearing that Dinesh had caused these incidents, took Saurob away to stay with Veena’s brother, just as Gaurov’s life support was being removed. At first, neither of Saurob’s parents could see him and he would not be returned to Veena for over three months.[5] Gaurov’s Autopsy and Dinesh’s Arrest: Children’s Aid was not the only authority to suspect that Dinesh had played a role in Gaurov’s death. The day after Gaurov passed away, his autopsy was performed by the now disgraced ex-pathologist Charles Smith, who enjoyed a stellar reputation at the time. Smith concluded that Gaurov’s injuries were consistent with Shaken Baby Syndrome, meaning that Dinesh had caused his son’s death by violently shaking him.[6] On June 26, 1992, Gaurov was arrested and charged with the second degree murder of his son. He later described his arrest as “a great shock”: “I was confused, frightened, humiliated and ashamed before my family and my community." Dinesh's guilty plea: Dinesh knew that he had done nothing to harm his son. However, he also knew that if convicted, he could face a lengthy prison term. Moreover, the prosecution would call Smith as their star witness, and Dinesh’s lawyer, Mr. David Gorrell, had informed him that Smith was seen as “a God” in the courtroom.[8] If Dinesh were found guilty and imprisoned, he would be abandoning his wife and remaining son, who depended on him for financial and personal support, especially since Veena had not yet recovered from her surgery. On top of everything else, he might be deported.[9] However, Dinesh had another option. The Crown offered him a plea bargain that would change his situation completely. If he pled guilty to criminal negligence causing death, then he would only spend 90 days in jail, to be served on weekends, and the police would not report his case to immigration officials. Instead of his family being torn apart, Dinesh would be allowed to live with Veena and Saurob. Both his lawyer and his wife encouraged him to take the deal so that the family could try to move on with their lives.[10] As Dinesh described it, “We were all scared of the murder charge. My lawyer told me that we did not have any way to challenge the testimony of Dr. Smith. So I agreed, after much discussion with my family, to plead guilty…. It was the hardest decision I ever had to make. I do not want my guilty plea to ever be interpreted to mean that I did anything to harm Gaurov. I did not. My wife knows this too.”[11] On December 3, 1992, Dinesh pled guilty to criminal negligence causing his son’s death. He was sentenced to 90 days imprisonment and two years probation. After his conviction, Dinesh’s life eventually “returned to normal,” but he never lost his “sense of shame that … [he] had had to admit to causing Gaurov’s death,” despite knowing that he was innocent.........Dinesh's acquittal; On May 28, 2007, AIDWYC Senior Counsel James Lockyer visited Dinesh, and they agreed to try to reopen his case. In light of the Goudge Inquiry’s finding, the Crown agreed with AIDWYC that the case should be reopened and that Dinesh should be acquitted.[17] Five experts testified before the Ontario Court of Appeal, all of whom agreed that Gaurov’s cause of death was undetermined, rather than due to being shaken. In fact, several experts noted that the diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome had become much more controversial since Dinesh’s conviction in 1992, and that there was no longer any consensus in the medical community as to whether this condition even existed. The experts concluded that there was no evidence suggesting that Dinesh had harmed his baby. One possibility is that Gaurov suffered a fatal hemorrhage caused by a head injury that he sustained during his birth.[18] On January 20, 2011, the Ontario Court of Appeal set aside Dinesh’s guilty plea and entered an acquittal. One of the judges, Justice Rosenberg, commented on “the terrible toll this case has taken on you and your family over these last 20 years.” Outside the courthouse, Dinesh showed reporters a photo of Gaurov that he always carries with him, and said, “This will be with me until the day I die.”.........Causes of Dinesh's wrongful conviction: The main reason for Dinesh’s wrongful conviction was Charles Smith’s incorrect conclusion that Dinesh had shaken his son to death – an opinion that no one was willing to challenge. The results of the Goudge Inquiry definitively destroyed Smith’s once-stellar reputation. This comprehensive report found that Smith had no training in forensic pathology (his own field was paediatric pathology), which led to many horrific misdiagnoses that put many innocent people in prison.[20] Moreover, Smith was a terrible expert witness who often “provided unbalanced or emotive testimony, which tended to invite inappropriate and adverse conclusions.”[21] Smith was eventually stripped of his medical license.[22] Unlike his opinion in many other cases, Smith’s theory that Gaurov had died at the hands of his father was not unreasonable at the time. In fact, James Lockyer explained that he would “find it hard to be too critical of … [Smith] on this one, just because there were lots of pathologists who would have said the same thing back in 1992.”
The entire account can be found at:
https://www.aidwyc.org/cases/historical/dinesh-kumar/
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/
