PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I had a real shock when I picked up my paper on my doorstep this morning and discovered Charles Smith - the notorious namesake of this Blog - back on the front page of The Toronto Star, where I had put him many times in years past. Except this time there is one whopping difference. The story centres on Charles Smith's nemesis - Dr. Michael Pollanen, Ontario's chief forensic pathologist who has been accused of 'strong bias' in investigating a baby death. He is being cast as the 'villain'. Au contraire, let me be totally clear. Dr. Pollanen, whom I admire greatly, is everything Charles Smith is not. He is brilliant, extremely competent, extremely well educated in forensic pathology - and well versed in the duties pathologists owe to the public they serve. To a large extent Dr. Pollanen is the architect of the system developed to remove Ontario from the stain created by Smith and his powerful supporters in the Ontario Government, The Chief Coroner's Office, The College of Physicians and Surgeons, and The Hospital for Sick Children. It's good to read that the Toronto Star has committed the paper to fighting the publication bans and shedding light on the story. I trust that Dr. Pollanen will be vindicated, in this complaint brought by a subordinate, if he is treated with the same fairness and evidence-based approach that he has consistently advocated for others. Let's not rush to judgment. This is no time to 'think dirty' as Charles Smith, and top officials in the Chief Coroner's Office were all too eager to do. Stay tuned for developments.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Dr. Michael Pollanen played a key role in restoring public confidence after the devastating scandal involving disgraced pathologist Charles Smith. Smith’s flawed autopsy analyses tainted more than a dozen criminal cases and led to parents wrongfully convicted of killing their children."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "In 2017, Alan Young, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, where he runs the Innocence Project, told the Star that Pollanen “did excellent work in the past in uncovering problems with forensic science.” Pollanen was appointed Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist in 2006, as the scale of the damage caused by Smith’s faulty analyses was coming to light. Pollanen’s reviews of cases involving Smith’s opinions helped overturn several wrongful convictions. Pollanen’s evidence-based approach was widely viewed as the antidote to Smith, who wrongly believed his role was to support the Crown, instead of giving objective expert evidence. Pollanen has credited the 2008 report by Justice Goudge, who led the public inquiry into Smith, for helping to foster a “culture of accountability.” In a 2013 TV interview on the five-year anniversary of Goudge’s report, Pollanen attributed the Smith scandal to a “misunderstanding of some of the fundamental roles of a forensic pathologist,” and the “think dirty” approach. “Whereas now, the pervasive view among forensic pathologists is to think truth,” Pollanen said. “Go in with an open mind and go in with a view that credibility is the main issue. And as a credible expert witness, you must be impartial.”
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STORY: "He was brought in to fix Ontario's forensic pathology system. Now he's accused of 'strong bias' in investigating a baby death, by Joianna Frketich and Rachel Mendleson, published but The Toronto Star on May 7, 2021. Joanna Frketich is a Hamilton-based reporter primarily covering health and education for the Hamilton Spectator. Rachel Mendleson is a Toronto-based investigative reporter for the Star."
GIST: "Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist is accused of “strong bias” in concluding a baby’s death was the result of child abuse, raising serious questions about the integrity of the province’s death investigation system he was brought in to repair.
Dr. Michael Pollanen played a key role in restoring public confidence after the devastating scandal involving disgraced pathologist Charles Smith. Smith’s flawed autopsy analyses tainted more than a dozen criminal cases and led to parents wrongfully convicted of killing their children.
Pollanen himself is now accused of the same kind of tunnel vision that favours abuse as the explanation for children’s deaths.
The allegations — outlined in detail in court documents for the first time — come from Dr. Jane Turner, former director of the Hamilton Regional Forensic Pathology Unit, who has said she resigned because she felt her integrity was threatened.
She also alleges the oversight body created to safeguard the system “shielded” Ontario’s top pathologist “from accountability.”
Together, the allegations threaten to tarnish a justice system that has been shaken by scandals involving flawed forensic evidence, and Pollanen’s image as a champion of righting wrongful convictions.
Turner is seeking a judicial review of Ontario’s Death Investigation Oversight Council’s (DIOC) handling of her complaint, alleging that it failed “to perform the function entrusted to it by the Ontario legislature” to ensure accountability. The council was established after the Smith scandal.
Turner said the DIOC did not “properly consider” her complaint that Pollanen allegedly interfered in the Hamilton death investigation of a baby — referred to as AB — who died suddenly and unexpectedly in December 2017.Turner alleges that Pollanen deemed the baby’s death a result “of child abuse,” even though the evidence did not support that conclusion, and that he “manipulated” an independent review committee “to pressure her into changing her decision.”
She claims that Pollanen’s alleged interference came after his credibility was “badly damaged” in a scathing superior court ruling months earlier. In that case, which also involved an allegation of child abuse, the judge slammed Pollanen for offering “expert opinions on matters that were not appropriate, not within his knowledge and expertise, and incorrect” about the death of two-year-old Nicholas Cruz.
In an email, lawyer Wayne Cunningham, who is representing Pollanen, said, “Dr. Turner made these same allegations before DIOC and now applies for judicial review because DIOC declined to make the findings she now seeks.”
“Dr. Pollanen will respond fully and vigorously to Dr. Turner’s efforts to set aside DIOC’s decision, but will not otherwise comment on the case while it remains before the courts,” he said.
The lawyers representing the oversight council have asked the Divisional Court to seal large swaths of the record, citing privacy concerns and the confidentiality of the council’s complaints process. The Toronto Star and Hamilton Spectator are opposing that motion. The court has not set a date to hear Turner’s application for judicial review.
A spokesperson for the ministry of the solicitor general, speaking on behalf of the oversight council, which reports to the ministry, declined to comment for this story, because “the matter is before the courts.” Turner also declined to comment.
The case is the latest chapter in Turner’s years-long battle to expose her concerns about Pollanen’s alleged interference and bias in death investigations. It’s the first challenge of the effectiveness of the oversight council, which was created in 2010 on the recommendation of Justice Stephen Goudge after his inquiry into Ontario’s forensic pathology system and Smith.
Pollanen and Ontario’s Chief Coroner Dr. Dirk Huyer started shutting down the Hamilton unit in 2019, during the oversight council’s investigation into Turner’s complaint.
While The Hamilton Spectator has previously reported on the broad strokes of Turner’s allegations against Pollanen, the Divisional Court documents make public the details of her concerns about Pollanen’s involvement in the investigation into the death of the baby.
The Solicitor General, Pollanen and Turner have all declined to comment on whether there were criminal charges, involvement by child-welfare agencies or any other fallout for the family of the baby, identified as “AB,” who has a surviving twin.
The Star and Spectator are opposing the requested sealing order, arguing that reporters need the crucial information to investigate the case and the public deserves transparency and openness when it comes to such serious allegations.
Turner’s submissions state that she performed an autopsy on the baby in December 2017. She found abnormalities that can indicate abuse, including bleeding in the retina and around the surface of the brain, and abnormal bone changes and damage, but no bruises or other external evidence of injury.
She concluded the death was caused by bacterial sepsis, which is when the body’s response to infection causes injury. She determined the low birth-weight baby had metabolic bone disease, which causes abnormalities such as weak or brittle bones.
She sent samples to a bone pathologist who she says confirmed that the damage appeared to be from a bone disease and not the result of injuries.
However, a radiologist who reviewed the case disagreed and called Turner to say she believed “the bone lesions were fractures and the death a homicide,” according to Turner’s application for judicial review.
The dispute led to a case conference a few months later, in February 2018.
Turner alleges Pollanen attended by phone so he was unable to review the evidence himself. She says he came to Hamilton soon after and reviewed only the slides of the bones for 20 minutes.
Based on that brief review, and without looking at the other evidence, such as autopsy images and radiographs, she claims, Pollanen “declared the death to be caused by child abuse.” Turner refused to change her opinion.
In an interview with The Spectator in August 2019, she said, “it’s important for forensic pathologists to be able to be independent in their work and their opinions.”
“How can I possibly in good faith and in all honesty give sworn testimony supporting an opinion that I don’t believe?”
As Turner notes in her submissions, the controversy over the death of the baby came shortly after Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy excoriated Pollanen’s evidence in a case involving another child’s death.
Pollanen had performed the autopsy of the two-year-old Nicholas Cruz. He testified in the case of Cruz’s mother’s boyfriend, Joel France, who was charged with second-degree murder.
In an April 2017 ruling, Molloy deemed Pollanen’s evidence “inadmissible” and “highly prejudicial.” Pollanen “was predisposed to see” the death of Cruz “as an assault and failed to keep an open mind on other possible explanations,” she found. (France ultimately pleaded guilty to manslaughter.)
Molloy said the “protective role” of pathologists “must not be confused with the role of an expert witness,” but that Pollanen “blurred those roles.”
Three months after that ruling, Pollanen announced an independent review committee within the Ontario Forensic Pathology Service to strengthen the quality of decision making in difficult cases through a peer-review process, Turner’s submissions state.
The Child Injury Interpretation Committee was established “in direct response to” Molloy’s decision to review “controversial cases” and “repair the damage to the credibility” of the forensic pathology service, Turner said. (The committee is distinct from the Death Investigation Oversight Council, which hears complaints about death investigations.)
Although the committee is supposed “to conduct its work independently,” Turner alleges, Pollanen intervened, appointing the members and the chair. She also said the AB case should not have been contemplated by the committee given her opinion that the death did not meet the criteria for its review.
Turner states in her submissions that the “only reasonable inference that can be drawn” is that Pollanen “convened” the committee to “overrule” her.
She also says he placed the Hamilton unit on disciplinary remediation in the summer of 2018 while the committee was still reviewing the case.
The committee’s findings in the AB case are not publicly available.
The Divisional Court heard a motion on Thursday from the lawyers representing the Death Investigation Oversight Council to seal, among other things, the Child Injury Interpretation Committee’s (CIIC) 2018 report on the AB case, the names of the individuals who provided evidence to the DIOC and the name of the baby, as well as dozens of emails between Turner, Pollanen, and the CIIC. Citing the high public interest in the case, Justice David Corbett
referred the matter to a panel of three judges, who will hear the motion in June.
The Star and Spectator are opposing the request to shroud the identities, because, “Accountability and transparency in the context of DIOC complaints is crucial in light of Ontario’s dark history of flawed forensic evidence and unreliable expert testimony,” the newspapers’ submissions to the court state.
Turner, who came to Hamilton from Missouri, resigned from the Hamilton unit in March 2018 and returned to her home in St. Louis where she is a consultant. In a letter to Solicitor General Sylvia Jones in August 2019, she said she left “fearing for my own professional integrity as well as to protect my team.”
“If pathologists see their conclusions changed irrespective of the evidence, they must be able to speak up. Otherwise, erroneous conclusions will be reached and lives will be ruined,” she said in the letter.
A final case conference to discuss the AB case was held in March 2019. Turner alleges that Pollanen “took the position...that the cause of death was in fact child abuse, a position no one else at the meeting agreed with.” He stated “multiple times at the meeting that he welcomed ‘the opportunity to bring his argument to court,’ ” Turner alleges.
She complained to the Death Investigation Oversight Council in March 2019, alleging Pollanen had strong biases in pediatric cases in favour of child abuse, and used his position of power to enforce his views. She accused him of threatening, intimidating and bullying Hamilton pathologists who held reasonable dissenting opinions.
During the oversight council’s investigation into that complaint, Pollanen and Huyer shut down the Hamilton unit, moving the death investigations to Toronto in stages over eight months.
Pollanen told The Spectator in July 2019 that the unit was closed because it was overburdened, and the move to Toronto would save money and help make forensic pathology services more sustainable across the province in the face of increasing demands.
But NDP Leader Andrea Horwath raised questions about whether closing the unit during the investigation was “rooted in revenge.”
The oversight council concluded its review into Turner’s complaint by issuing 13 recommendations in December 2019 starting with an independent external operational review of the Ontario Forensic Pathology Service. The oversight council failed “to make any factual findings whatsoever,” despite having the power to do so, says Turner.
That same month, Ontario’s auditor general blasted the province’s death investigation system in a report that found it lacked “effective systems and procedures” needed to “improve public safety” and “reduce the risk of preventable deaths.”
In 2017, Alan Young, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, where he runs the Innocence Project, told the Star that Pollanen “did excellent work in the past in uncovering problems with forensic science.”
Pollanen was appointed Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist in 2006, as the scale of the damage caused by Smith’s faulty analyses was coming to light. Pollanen’s reviews of cases involving Smith’s opinions helped overturn several wrongful convictions.
Pollanen’s evidence-based approach was widely viewed as the antidote to Smith, who wrongly believed his role was to support the Crown, instead of giving objective expert evidence.
Pollanen has credited the 2008 report by Justice Goudge, who led the public inquiry into Smith, for helping to foster a “culture of accountability.”
In a 2013 TV interview on the five-year anniversary of Goudge’s report, Pollanen attributed the Smith scandal to a “misunderstanding of some of the fundamental roles of a forensic pathologist,” and the “think dirty” approach.
“Whereas now, the pervasive view among forensic pathologists is to think truth,” Pollanen said. “Go in with an open mind and go in with a view that credibility is the main issue. And as a credible expert witness, you must be impartial.”
The entire story can be read at:
