PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Maria Shepherd was not the only innocent person- 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 started 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. Brenda Waudby's exoneration - including an unequivocal apology by Crown Counsel Alison Wheeler of the Attorney General's ministry - was reported by Sarah Death in an article which ran in the Peterborough Examiner on June 27, 2012, under the heading, "Judge overturns Waudby's 1999 child abuse conviction." (Of particular concern is Waudby's allegation - denied by prosecutors - that she was told that they would not withdraw the murder charge (of which she was utterly innocent) unless she entered a guilty plea to the child abuse charge, as detailed below. Both charges were based on the flawed evidence of none other than former doctor Charles Randal Smith. HL);
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
GIST: "Brenda Waudby is no longer a perpetrator of a violent crime against a child. She is no longer a criminal. She is now simply the mother to a young woman and a young man, and the grieving mother of a child whose violent murder was the event that set off her long legal nightmare. On Wednesday morning Madam Justice Michelle Fuerst overturned Waudby’s 1999 child abuse conviction, acquitting her of the charge. The ruling capped a 15-year ordeal for Waudby, the last step in a long, hard journey to clear her name. During the emotional Superior Court proceeding, Waudby heard something she’s waited 15 years for: an apology, issued by Crown attorney Alison Wheeler, who acknowledged that Waudby’s conviction was a miscarriage of justice. “The Crown apologizes to Brenda Waudby,” Wheeler said. Her child, 21-month-old Jenna, was the victim of a homicide, Wheeler said. “Ms. Waudby should have been treated as a grieving parent. She was not,” Wheeler said. Instead, Waudby became the prime suspect, interrogated by police and eventually charged with murdering her child in 1997. She was stigmatized by the community, Wheeler said, and her two children were taken from her by the Children’s Aid Society. It was wrong, Wheeler said, and it’s taken a long time to set it right. “For all of this, the Crown is deeply and sincerely sorry,” she said. It was an apology Waudby said she accepted whole-heartedly.........Police charged her former babysitter with second-degree murder in 2005. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2006 and was sentenced to 22 months in custody in 2007. In his confession to police he admitted that he hit Jenna several times that fateful night, angry that he had to babysit. Waudby’s murder charge was dismissed in 1999. At the time she was facing the prospect of losing her two children for good, Waudby told court, and she took the only option she thought she had. Her understanding was that she could plead guilty to having abused Jenna prior to her death and the murder charge would be withdrawn. That, she said, would get her two children back. And it worked. Both children were returned to her following the guilty plea. But the ordeal didn’t end. Mistakes were made, she said, again and again and compounded over time. “It was like a freight train that couldn’t be stopped,” she said. The basis for both the child abuse and murder charge lay in the shoddy work of disgraced former child pathologist Dr. Charles Smith, who told investigators Jenna was injured while she was in Waudby’s care. Smith also said he discovered “old” rib injuries, which he said were an indication of previous abuse. Smith was later found to have given false testimony in a series of child death cases. He was stripped of his medical licence last year. Wheeler conceded that if the forensic pathology was done correctly in the first place, Waudby never would have been charged with anything. When the babysitter pleaded guilty Crown attorney Brian Gilkinson told court the sitter admitted that his blows to Jenna’s abdomen “would’ve” caused rib injuries. But there was an error in the official court transcript, and Gilkinson’s statement read, “wouldn’t have.” The transcript was entered into proceedings during the Goudge Inquiry, a 2007 hearing that examined Smith’s work and child pathology in the province. The error became part of the public record. It wasn’t discovered until (Waudby's lawyer Julie) Kirkpatrick sought a court order allowing her to listen to the taped recordings of the babysitter’s proceedings. The babysitter’s confession was never disclosed to Waudby, nor was a medical report that indicated Jenna’s injuries may not be old, or notes written by investigators that indicated they realized Waudby may not be guilty of child abuse. Waudby’s lawyer, Julie Kirkpatrick, (a brilliant, wonderful lawyer who fought tooth and nail for Brenda's exoneration; HL) hammered on these facts in her submissions to the court. As she put it, the babysitter’s confession and a new pathology report fit together like a hand and glove. “All of the injuries occurred in the same time frame, and occurred under the babysitter’s watch,” Kirkpatrick said. “It is now an incontrovertible fact that Jenna did not have any old injuries when she died,” Kirkpatrick said."
The entire backgrounder on this case - written by Sarah Harland-Logan for AIDWYC's web-site - can be found at the link below;
http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/2012/06/27/crown-apologies-to-brenda-waudby
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/
