PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is part one of what appears to be an excellent series published by Global News on Canada's wrongfully convicted. I recommend going directly to the link for the post below to take advantage of several informative links within the post. Some of the Canadian cases are worthy of attention from people in other jurisdictions because they have led to public inquiries and recommendations for avoiding further miscarriages of justice. Issues such as mistaken eyewitness identification (Rob Baltovich) , false confessions, and flawed pathology (and flawed pathologists) and tunnel vision and hazardous cellmate testimony (Guy Paul Morin) have been explored in depth. I draw particular attention to the Maria Shepherd case - a Charles Smith case - which features in this opening salvo to the Five Part series..."Shepherd spent two years less a day in prison, eventually convicted on the flawed testimony from one-time-revered pediatric forensic pathologist Dr. Charles Smith. Complaints about his conduct led to a fresh investigation which found Shepherd’s stepdaughter died from natural causes." Looking forward to Part Two!
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "University of Ottawa professor of criminology Kathryn Campbell — who leads the student-run Innocence Ottawa project — says false confessions are often born out of intense interrogation. One such preferred technique is the Reid Interrogation Model, which involves withholding basic human needs such as food or water from a suspect. “Those things happen where your mind starts playing tricks on you, and you think, ‘I just want to get this over with,’ and people begin sometimes to question their own memory: ‘Maybe I did it?'” This controversial model of interrogation was used on Maria Shepherd in 1991. She was hauled before investigators and grilled about her involvement in the death of her three-year-old stepdaughter, Kasandra. She came under intense pressure to confess, after police threatened she would never see her other children again. "
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STORY: "Canada’s Wrongfully Convicted: Why do wrongful convictions happen?" by Pippa Reed and Niki Reitmeyer, published by CKNW (Global News 980) on April 29, 2019. (Part one of a five-part series examining wrongful convictions and why they happen.)
“These are just a few reasons why sometimes witnesses may make these serious mistakes.”Faulty eyewitness testimony helped convict Toronto man Robert Baltovich of murdering his girlfriend Elizabeth Bain in 1992. He spent eight years in prison and once released, spent 10 more years trying to clear his name. The Crown’s case relied heavily on the testimony of two people who claimed to have seen Robert and Elizabeth together on the day of her disappearance. Despite the witnesses having only fuzzy recollections and there being serious doubts about the reliability of the testimony, Robert was convicted, handcuffed and hauled off to prison. Elizabeth Bain’s body has never been found.
False confessions:
Would you ever confess to a crime in which you had no involvement? It’s easy to think that you wouldn’t, but it’s more common than you may think. Data from the Innocence Project reveals that in more than 25 per cent of cases where the individual was exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence, a false confession was given, and most people have trust in the justice system that it will prove their innocence down the track. University of Ottawa professor of criminology Kathryn Campbell — who leads the student-run Innocence Ottawa project — says false confessions are often born out of intense interrogation. One such preferred technique is the Reid Interrogation Model, which involves withholding basic human needs such as food or water from a suspect.
“Those things happen where your mind starts playing tricks on you, and you think, ‘I just want to get this over with,’ and people begin sometimes to question their own memory: ‘Maybe I did it?'”This controversial model of interrogation was used on Maria Shepherd in 1991. She was hauled before investigators and grilled about her involvement in the death of her three-year-old stepdaughter, Kasandra. She came under intense pressure to confess, after police threatened she would never see her other children again. Shepherd spent two years less a day in prison, eventually convicted on the flawed testimony from one-time-revered pediatric forensic pathologist Dr. Charles Smith. Complaints about his conduct led to a fresh investigation which found Shepherd’s stepdaughter died from natural causes. Shepherd spent 25 years under a cloud of suspicion before being exonerated.
Tunnel vision
The dangerous and all-too-common phenomenon of tunnel vision occurs when investigators focus on one suspect to the exclusion of all others. Although most investigators affected by tunnel vision don’t have sinister intent, they’re often under intense pressure to bring someone to justice, and pursue one line of inquiry. It was a key factor in the wrongful conviction of Guy Paul Morin, who spent 18 months in prison for the 1984 rape and murder of his nine-year-old next-door neighbour Christine Jessop, north of Toronto. Police narrowed in on Morin after he was described as a “weird-type guy” who played the clarinet. It was from that point on that police became fixated on Morin as a suspect. It took him a decade to clear his name. The subsequent Kaufman inquiry found investigators had relied all too heavily on the prospect that Morin may be guilty, instead of treating him like an innocent person first. Startlingly, it also found those involved in the prosecution of Morin continued to show signs of tunnel vision at the inquiry proceedings, despite the fact that he had been acquitted by irrefutable DNA evidence.In Part Two of ‘Canada’s Wrongfully Convicted,’ a special series from the Jon McComb show on 980 CKNW, we dig deeper into Robert Baltovich and Maria Shepherd’s stories, and their ongoing quest for justice.
The entire post can be read at:
https://globalnews.ca/news/5206654/canada-wrongly-convicted-why-do-wrongful-convictions-happen/#
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. 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/c
