PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "At a court hearing in May 2019, a year after the initial allegation, Carter's lawyer asked Woods about her background under oath. How did she become one of the state’s leading authorities in diagnosing child abuse? Had she received specialized medical training or passed a certification test? No, Woods replied, she hadn’t done the three-year medical fellowship that a doctor must complete in order to become a child abuse pediatrician, and, no, she hadn’t passed the exam required to become board certified in the field But, Woods added, neither have most doctors who specialize in identifying child abuse."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "But in her role as a child abuse medical consultant for Child Protective Services, Woods has made statements or recommendations that appear to go well beyond her role as a doctor, reporters found. In one 2018 case, Woods reported that two young parents didn’t display an appropriate emotional reaction when they learned that their baby had suffered several fractures, and she pointed to them as likely suspects. That goes against the guidance of leading child abuse pediatricians, who say their role is to identify abuse, but not who committed it. “Both parents remain concerning to me as either could have been involved or either could be protecting the other parent,” Woods wrote in her report to Child Protective Services. “In addition, neither parent behaved in a protective manner when child first presented with injuries.” In another case examined by reporters, from 2019, Woods reported to Child Protective Services and police that twin babies who’d suffered numerous fractures had to have been the victims of abuse. Woods told Bremerton, Washington, police that the only other possible explanation for the babies’ injuries would have been “a motor vehicle collision,” though it’s not clear what the basis for that statement was. Based on her report, police charged the mother, Baylen Armendariz , with felony child abuse, and Child Protective Services took custody of the children. Three outside medical experts reviewed the twins’ medical records on Armendariz’s behalf and concluded that their fractures were most likely the result of a mineral deficiency that can lead to weak bones and easy fractures, not abuse. But the children remain in state protective custody and in the care of their grandmother. Armendariz pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges, and the case is expected to go to trial in the coming months."
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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "I think just as a doctor, she should be held to a higher standard,” Carter said in a recent interview. “People should be able to expect that she tell the truth. And she just didn't.” The judge agreed. More than three weeks after the trial ended, she issued her order. In a scathing 26-page report, Amini both dismissed the state’s case against Carter and rebuked the doctor who’d initiated it. Most of Woods’ testimony, the judge wrote, was “without supporting factual basis.” Amini dismissed parts of Woods’ conclusions as “not plausible” and “speculation at best.”
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STORY: "Do No harm: "A doctor said she had extensive training in diagnosing child abuse. Her résumé shows otherwise," by Mike Hixenbaugh and Taylor Mirfendereski, published by NBC News in partnership with NBC affiliate King 5 (King-TV) on February 14, 2020. (Mike Hixenbaugh is a national investigative reporter for NBC News, based in Houston.)
SUB-HEADING: "Dr.
Elizabeth Woods' report of abuse helped separate a Washington mother
from her children. But a judge said Woods' testimony was “without
supporting factual basis.”
GIST: The doctor delivered her report to authorities with striking certainty. “Ellie
Carter is a victim of medical child abuse,” Dr. Elizabeth Woods wrote
in May 2018, indicating that Megan Carter had abused her 5-year-old
daughter by pushing for excessive and harmful medical treatments. “This
is life threatening, and she is at imminent risk if her mother is
involved in her care.” Based on that
warning, Child Protective Services took custody of Ellie and her
8-year-old brother, and authorities in Pierce County, south of Seattle,
opened a criminal investigation, though charges were never filed. For
months afterward, Carter was forced to live apart from her family — a
separation that she said traumatized her children and sent her into a
deep depression. Authorities
in Washington gave significant weight to Woods’ opinion. The
38-year-old pediatrician at Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma is
regarded as one of the state’s pre-eminent experts in identifying
subtle signs of child abuse. Nonetheless, a
review of court records and interviews by NBC News and KING 5 (KING-TV)
found that she lacks key medical training for assessing potential abuse
cases. At a court hearing in May 2019, a
year after the initial allegation, Carter's lawyer asked Woods about her
background under oath. How did she become one of the state’s leading
authorities in diagnosing child abuse? Had she received specialized
medical training or passed a certification test? No,
Woods replied, she hadn’t done the three-year medical fellowship that a
doctor must complete in order to become a child abuse pediatrician,
and, no, she hadn’t passed the exam required to become board certified
in the field But, Woods added, neither have most doctors who specialize in identifying child abuse. “There
are approximately 250 of us nationwide that function as child abuse
consultants,” Woods said that day in court, according to an audio
recording of her testimony. “And a very small minority of those have
received training, as the training just started about three years ago.
So I was already well into my career prior to that being offered and
have established my credibility through extensive experience.” But
that wasn’t true. Among the small cadre of doctors who perform child
abuse assessments on behalf of Child Protective Services authorities in
Washington, Woods is the only one who both lacks decades of experience
in child abuse and also never completed immersive fellowship training
that’s now required of doctors entering the field, NBC News and KING 5
found. Contrary to Woods’ testimony, there are more than 375 child abuse pediatricians certified by the American Board of Pediatrics in the U.S., all of whom have either completed an extensive fellowship program
— first offered, not three, but nearly 15 years ago, while Woods was
still in medical school — or spent years examining cases of suspected
abuse prior to the creation of the medical subspecialty in 2009. The
doctors are trained to differentiate accidental from inflicted injuries,
which child abuse pediatricians say makes them better qualified than
other doctors to determine whether a child has been abused. At least
three physicians have met those qualifications and are practicing as
board-certified child abuse pediatricians in the state of Washington. Woods is not one of them.
Despite
her lack of fellowship training, state child welfare and law
enforcement officials in Washington have granted Woods remarkable
influence over their decisions about whether to remove children from
parents or pursue criminal charges, NBC News and KING 5 found. In four
cases reviewed by reporters, child welfare workers took children from
parents based on Woods’ reports — including some in which Woods
misstated key facts, according to a review of records — despite
contradictory opinions from other medical experts who said they saw no
evidence of abuse.
In one instance, a
pediatrician, Dr. Niran Al-Agba, insisted that a 2-year-old child’s
bruise matched her parents’ description of an accidental fall onto a
heating grate in their home. But Child Protective Services workers,
who’d gotten a call from the child’s day care after someone noticed the
bruise, asked Woods to look at photos of the injury. Woods
reported that the mark was most likely the result of abuse, even though
she’d never seen the child in person or talked to the parents. The
agency sided with her. To justify that decision, the Child Protective
Services worker described Woods as “a physician with extensive training
and experience in regard to child abuse and neglect,” according to a
written report reviewed by reporters. “That's
what bothers me so much about this whole case is that they wrote that
they took her opinion because she has extensive training,” Al-Agba said
in an interview. “Where's the extensive training? I'm still
dumbfounded.” When questioned about her
qualifications during Carter’s case, Woods stated that she worked on
cases of suspected child abuse when she was a doctor in the Army, from
2007 to 2017. And she said that she regularly attends conferences and
seminars focused on the detection of child abuse, though she
acknowledged she hasn’t published research on the subject. Woods
did not reply to emails seeking comment and did not answer detailed
questions from reporters. In a statement, a spokeswoman for Mary Bridge
said hospital leaders could not discuss individual cases because of
patient privacy rules, but defended Woods and the team she leads. “Dr.
Woods has specialized training and significant experience in the field
of child maltreatment,” the statement said. “She has practiced as a
child abuse consultant at several hospitals and has treated thousands of
children over her many years of dedication to this field. She routinely
completes continuing medical education, and is an ally to the
vulnerable children of our community.” Neither
Woods nor the hospital answered questions about Woods’ lack of board
certification or her incorrect explanation for why she never
participated in fellowship training. Dr.
Desmond Runyan, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado
School of Medicine, played a leading role in establishing the child
abuse pediatrics subspecialty more than a decade ago. He and others in
the field said there’s a critical shortage of doctors with the expertise
and willingness to examine children for signs of abuse, and for that
reason, he said general pediatricians can and should testify in these
cases — even if they never received fellowship training. But,
Runyan said, in order to lead a hospital child abuse program or to
serve as a state’s primary medical expert, “I would absolutely prefer to
have someone who was board certified.” “And
certainly in the case you’re describing,” Runyan said, “it sounds like
one where you would want someone who is board certified.” But
Dr. John Leventhal, former medical director of the Yale-New Haven
Children's Hospital child abuse program in Connecticut, said he does not
believe new pediatricians necessarily have to complete fellowship
training before becoming experts in child abuse. He said Woods’ lack of
board certification did not raise a red flag for him, especially since
senior child abuse pediatricians at nearby Seattle Children’s Hospital
allow her to review cases and help train fellows. “It
means she’s got the expertise that’s good enough, probably excellent
enough, to provide that kind of training,” Leventhal said. Carter knew nothing about Woods’ background when the doctor first accused her of harming her daughter two years ago. “I
couldn’t understand why her opinion carried so much weight,” Carter
said. “It was like, whatever Dr. Woods said, everyone just accepted it
as fact.”
Show me proof:
The
hospital visit that nearly destroyed Carter’s family started with a
mysterious infection. Her typically spunky daughter, Ellie, then 4, had
been listless for days, leading to a series of visits to her
pediatrician but no answers. By the time Carter and her husband, Andy
Carter, brought her to the emergency room at Mary Bridge Children’s
Hospital in March 2018, the girl was deteriorating rapidly, medical
records show. Doctors connected her to a ventilator to pump air in and out of her lungs and gave her medicine to keep her blood pressure up. It
was the latest in a long line of hospitalizations for Ellie, who’d been
born severely premature, at 24 weeks, and as a result suffered from
developmental delays and chronic health problems, including serious
breathing and digestive difficulties, according to her parents and
medical records shared with reporters. Carter
had repeatedly credited Mary Bridge doctors with saving her daughter’s
life. When Ellie was 6 months old, she wasn’t gaining weight, so a
gastrointestinologist inserted a feeding tube in her abdomen to deliver
nutrition directly to her stomach — a medical intervention that also
left her prone to infections. Two months later, a pulmonologist ordered
oxygen treatments to assist her underdeveloped lungs, according to
Ellie’s medical records. Later, a neurologist prescribed anti-seizure
medication after Carter and medical staff members reported severe
shaking spells. Along the way, Ellie became
one of Mary Bridge’s most famous patients. The hospital put her image
on banners and shared her harrowing story in messages to donors. In
2017, when Ellie was 4, NFL star Richard Sherman visited her in the hospital after a marketing staff member invited him to meet his young fan — a touching moment that drew national media attention. Carter,
a former nurse and stay-at-home mom, committed to being Ellie’s primary
caregiver, managing her many medical treatments and appointments. But
a few days into her hospitalization in spring 2018, while Ellie was
still connected to life support, a worker for Child Protective Services
entered her room and told Carter that someone had raised concerns about
her ability to continue caring for her daughter. “Where
is this coming from?” Carter remembers asking, but she said the worker
did not answer her questions about who made the report or what was
alleged. And for weeks afterward, nothing came of it. Then
in early May, as Ellie’s body continued to fight the infection, Woods
asked to speak with Carter. As the head of the hospital’s child abuse
intervention team, Woods had come to inform Carter that, because of
unresolved concerns about Ellie’s medical care, Carter no longer would
be allowed to be alone with her daughter at the hospital. A nurse or
another member of the medical staff would supervise her at all times,
Woods explained, and the hospital room would be monitored by video. Carter said she was baffled by the monitoring requirements. “I’ve
always done everything in my power to take care of my children, yet now
I was being treated with suspicion,” she said. “But my main focus at
that time was getting Ellie healthy, because she was still really
struggling at that point.” For days
afterward, Mary Bridge staff watched Carter’s every move at her
daughter’s bedside, even as they slept, according to Carter and records. Then,
six weeks into Ellie’s hospitalization, just as the girl was starting
to show signs of recovery, two hospital social workers showed up. They
said they needed to speak privately with Carter and her husband. The
workers led them to another room, where two police officers awaited.
They
were there to escort Carter out of the hospital. Woods had contacted
authorities and reported Ellie as a confirmed victim of medical child
abuse — a rare form of maltreatment in which a caregiver exaggerates or induces a child’s health problems
in order to harm her with needless medical treatments. In her message
to authorities, Woods reported that she had video evidence of Carter
tampering with her daughter’s medicine, though nobody explained that to
Carter or her husband at the time. Carter
wept as the officers walked her out of the hospital, and soon after, a
judge granted a request by Child Protective Services to place Ellie and
her older brother, Spencer, in protective custody. Under the court
order, Carter would not be allowed to live in the same home as her
children, and pending the outcome of the state investigation, she was
barred from being around them unsupervised. Once
Ellie was released from the hospital, her father would take her and her
brother to stay at his parents’ house nearby. The grandparents could
help care for the children while he worked as the sales manager of a car
dealership. But Woods wasn’t satisfied
with the arrangement, according to notes in Ellie’s medical records. She
reported writing messages to Child Protective Services officials and a
prosecutor assigned to the case, urging them to restrict Carter’s access
to her children even more, blocking her from seeing them altogether,
but state authorities refused. “My request was for a change in supervision to a no contact order which I was informed could not be granted,” Woods wrote. Woods
then tried another strategy to block Carter from seeing her children.
The doctor brought her concern directly to Andy, while Ellie was still
hospitalized. Woods told him that she had video proof of his wife
committing a crime, though she declined to elaborate or show it to him,
Andy said in an interview. Then she told
him that the hospital wouldn’t discharge his daughter into his care
unless he obtained a restraining order against his wife, blocking Carter
from seeing her children, Andy said. The
doctor told him the court order requested by Child Protective Services
wasn’t good enough, and that his wife was dangerous, Andy recalled.
Woods told him that, even while supervised, Carter could hurt Ellie with
a doctored glass of water or piece of candy, Woods wrote in her notes
describing the conversation. Andy said he
had a brief moment of doubt when Woods told him she had video of Carter
harming Ellie, but until he saw evidence, he wasn’t going to turn on his
wife.
“Until you show me proof,” Andy remembers telling Woods, “I’m going to go with the order the judge came up with.” Woods
started at Mary Bridge only a few months before reporting Carter to
Child Protective Services. She was hired to serve as the medical
director of the hospital’s child abuse intervention team in late 2017
after more than a decade in the Army, according to her résumé.
Woods
testified in Carter’s case that she became interested in child abuse
prevention while serving as a doctor in the military, and along the way,
she said she became an expert through firsthand experience. She said
she reviewed cases of suspected child abuse at multiple hospitals during
her career, including at Madigan Army Medical Center in Washington,
where she reports on her résumé that she founded the hospital’s child
abuse team in 2016. In order for physicians
to become certified as experts in specific areas of medicine, such as
performing surgery or treating cancer, they often must complete
immersive, yearslong fellowship training at academic hospitals and pass
board exams. But Woods testified that it was not essential for her to
attend a child abuse fellowship program or pass a certification exam to
become an expert in her field. Woods noted that she helps train those
who are completing the child abuse fellowship at Seattle Children’s
Hospital and is responsible for training medical residents at Mary
Bridge “on all aspects of child abuse.” Woods
and Mary Bridge officials did not answer specific questions about her
qualifications to teach child abuse fellows. Officials at Seattle
Children’s, which manages the state’s child abuse medical consultation
network, did not answer specific questions about Woods’ qualifications. “We
value the different nationally recognized paths in which experienced
medical providers can gain expertise in caring for some of our state’s
most vulnerable children,” a Seattle Children’s spokeswoman said in a
statement. “We fully support the qualifications of our providers who are
committed to improving the health and safety of children.”
The
field of child abuse pediatrics was established more than a decade ago,
part of a nationwide effort to improve and standardize the detection of
child maltreatment and improve research on the subject. In 2009, when
Woods was two years out of medical school and still completing her
required residency program, the American Board of Pediatrics allowed
doctors who’d already spent years working informally as child abuse
consultants to take the certification exam, and if they passed, they
were grandfathered in as board-certified child abuse pediatricians. Any
pediatrician wishing to specialize in child abuse since then has been
required to complete a three-year fellowship, during which they receive
instruction on the evolving — and sometimes disputed — science that doctors rely on to differentiate accidental injuries from those that are inflicted. In a series of op-eds written in response to an NBC News and Houston Chronicle investigation
into the work of child abuse pediatricians, leaders in the field have
argued that skills learned during the three-year fellowship is what
makes certified child abuse pediatricians more qualified than other
physicians to assess children who may have been abused. “During
their training, fellows develop an understanding of the scientific
evidence involving the biomechanics of childhood injuries and the
physiologic and psychologic effects of trauma and neglect on a child,”
Dr. Amy Gavril wrote in a January article
published by the American Academy of Pediatrics. “This training allows
[child abuse pediatricians] to diagnose abuse in a scientific manner.
They are equipped to differentiate between accidental and inflicted
injuries, and have knowledge of medical conditions that may mimic
abuse.” The training also prepares child
abuse pediatricians to testify in court and offers guidance on what to
say — and what not to say — in reports to child welfare workers. But
in her role as a child abuse medical consultant for Child Protective
Services, Woods has made statements or recommendations that appear to go
well beyond her role as a doctor, reporters found. In one 2018 case,
Woods reported that two young parents didn’t display an appropriate
emotional reaction when they learned that their baby had suffered
several fractures, and she pointed to them as likely suspects. That goes
against the guidance of leading child abuse pediatricians, who say
their role is to identify abuse, but not who committed it. “Both
parents remain concerning to me as either could have been involved or
either could be protecting the other parent,” Woods wrote in her report
to Child Protective Services. “In addition, neither parent behaved in a
protective manner when child first presented with injuries.” In
another case examined by reporters, from 2019, Woods reported to Child
Protective Services and police that twin babies who’d suffered numerous
fractures had to have been the victims of abuse. Woods told Bremerton,
Washington, police that the only other possible explanation for the
babies’ injuries would have been “a motor vehicle collision,” though
it’s not clear what the basis for that statement was. Based on her
report, police charged the mother, Baylen Armendariz , with felony child
abuse, and Child Protective Services took custody of the children. Three
outside medical experts reviewed the twins’ medical records on
Armendariz’s behalf and concluded that their fractures were most likely
the result of a mineral deficiency that can lead to weak bones and easy
fractures, not abuse. But the children remain in state protective
custody and in the care of their grandmother. Armendariz pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges, and the case is expected to go to trial in the coming months. Al-Agba,
the pediatrician who clashed with Woods in 2018 over her claim that a
child’s bruise was likely the result of abuse, said it was insulting and
irrational for the state to give more credence to the opinion of a
doctor with fewer years of clinical experience and no fellowship
training in abuse. After reviewing the same
photos that Woods relied on to determine that someone had hit the
2-year-old child, a police detective agreed with Al-Agba, writing that
“the bruising appears to be very inconsistent, almost impossible to be
hand, finger, fingertip marks.” The officer added, in reference to
Woods’ report, “it is a little difficult for me to understand what the
medical professionals are talking about.” Notes
from the Child Protective Services worker assigned to the case indicate
that Woods reported having 14 years of experience related to child
abuse, and the agency cited that in its decision to formally classify
the child’s injuries as inflicted. Fourteen years earlier, Woods would
have been in her second year of medical school, according to her résumé. But
when Al-Agba questioned that claim and raised concerns about Woods’
lack of fellowship training with officials at both Mary Bridge and Child
Protective Services, she says they brushed her aside. “If
I ask, ‘Does this person have abuse training, or does this person have
extensive abuse experience?’ I think that's an important question,” she
said. “I don't think that makes me a quack.” In
an interview Thursday, Ross Hunter, secretary of the Washington
Department of Children, Youth, and Families, said Child Protective
Services relies on Seattle Children’s to vet the expertise of doctors
hired across the state to review cases of suspected child abuse. The
agency does not review the qualifications of individual doctors or
measure the quality or accuracy of their reports, Hunter said. But based on some of the findings reported by NBC News and KING 5, he said he wants to take a closer look. “I
can't tell you whether the fellowship training that you get to have a
particular tag on your diploma actually matters in terms of the accuracy
of the outcomes,” Hunter said, then added, “You've raised my interest
in looking at how we do that particular contract.” She should be held to a higher standard: After
Carter had been apart from her children for a year, with limited
supervised visits and frequent video chats, her custody case went to
trial in King County Juvenile Court last April. Judge Susan Amini
presided over the proceeding, which included 15 days of testimony and
arguments. The Carters spent more than $300,000, much of it borrowed from family, to fight the case. Woods was the state’s star witness. Over
the course of four days, Woods testified that she believed “all of
Ellie’s medical issues” were the result of medical abuse, even though
the child was born severely premature and continued to require
significant medical care after she was separated from her mother. Woods
claimed that only Carter had ever witnessed Ellie suffer seizures and
that the child had since been weaned from anti-seizure medicine, though
medical records showed otherwise. Multiple members of the hospital’s
medical staff reported observing seizures, which was why Ellie was still
receiving anti-seizure medication at the time of trial. Woods
testified that when she reported concerns that Carter had used Ellie’s
health problems for her own gain, that “was related to a relationship
with the Seahawks that was deemed inappropriate by hospital staff.” But a
review of messages and social media postings show that it was members
of the hospital’s marketing team who invited an NFL player to visit
Ellie in the hospital and promoted the event to the media. And
Woods testified that soon after Carter was removed from the hospital by
police, Ellie “wolfed down” a McDonald’s Happy Meal, though she later
acknowledged during cross examination that she did not witness the event
and could not say who had. Other members of the Mary Bridge medical
staff testified that they did not believe Ellie would have eaten a whole
Happy Meal, as she continued to have difficulty eating in the months
after she was removed from Carter’s care. As
for the video that Woods said was proof that Carter was abusing Ellie?
Woods testified that the footage showed Carter secretly dumping
medication from a syringe after pretending to administer it. The
medicine was intended to prevent dangerous blood clots. But when lawyers
played the video for other witnesses, including a doctor who supervised
Ellie’s care, they said it showed no such thing. Plus, two hospital
staff members were in the room at the time and did not report
wrongdoing, Amini, the judge, later noted With each statement by Woods, Carter said she fought the urge to shout out in court. “I
think just as a doctor, she should be held to a higher standard,”
Carter said in a recent interview. “People should be able to expect that
she tell the truth. And she just didn't.” The judge agreed. More than three weeks after the trial ended, she issued her order. In a scathing 26-page report,
Amini both dismissed the state’s case against Carter and rebuked the
doctor who’d initiated it. Most of Woods’ testimony, the judge wrote,
was “without supporting factual basis.” Amini dismissed parts of Woods’
conclusions as “not plausible” and “speculation at best.” Carter
was video chatting with her husband and children while they ate dinner —
even during the separation, she always wanted to eat as a family — when
her lawyer texted her on June 24. “We f------ won,” he wrote. Carter
looked up from her phone and screamed. Tears streamed down her cheeks
as she shared the news. Spencer stood up from the table and asked if
they could come home that night. Ellie ran to her room and started
packing her toys. The next day, for the first time in more than a year, Carter was allowed to pick up her children from school. She
felt like the cloud of suspicion that had followed her for 14 months
was finally lifting. Yet, she and her family have struggled to move on. Ellie,
now 6, talks frequently about the time she was forced to spend away
from her mother, a period she refers to as “the rules.” “Well,
do you want to know what the rules did when I was in the hospital?”
Ellie said one evening last month. “They wouldn't let my mom visit me.
They wouldn't let my mom visit me. Even though she was my mom.” Carter tries to comfort and reassure her, but she, too, lives in constant fear. “We're
just much more fearful than we ever were before,” she said in January.
“I think one of the main things that I experience is that if somebody
rings our doorbell, I'm scared to answer it, because I don't know if
it's going to be somebody coming with more allegations and trying to
take my kids away.”
I'm scared:
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Access the entire 'Do No Harm' series at the link below, sit back and prepare to weep. HL.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/investigations/do-no-harm/
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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/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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