PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Disgraced pathologist Charles Smith - the namesake of this Blog - harmed dozens of individuals and families in Ontario. Indeed, he was referred to by a national paper as an 'earthquake' underneath the province's criminal justice system. However the harm he caused does not come close to the number of destroyed lives and miscarriages of justice left behind him by South Australia’s former chief forensic pathologist Dr Colin Manock, the subject of Drew Rooke's new book 'Witness of Fact." Thanks to Rooke, and and others such as Dr. Bob Moles, a distinguished Australian law reformer and his colleague Professor Bibi Sangha, and many others, the truth of 'Colin Manock' is beginning to emerge - in spite of the efforts of the Government of South Australia's continuing efforts to suppress it. I am following developments closely. Stay tuned.
Harold Levy; Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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REVIEW: Review by Freelance Writer Nathan Smith in Books + Publishing':
GIST: "A Witness of Fact examines the controversial public life of South Australia’s former chief forensic pathologist Dr Colin Manock, and his problematic role in the state’s criminal justice system. Manock might be a name mostly unfamiliar to readers outside of SA, yet, he’s a man who wielded enormous influence there for three decades. We read that ‘according to his own estimate, he helped secure more than 400 convictions and performed approximately 10,000 autopsies’. But where things go wrong is when the senior forensic pathologist lets hubris, bumbling bureaucracy and even wilful ignorance blind his perspective. Readers learn how Manock may have sent innocent people to prison and misjudged several indigenous deaths (perhaps because of bias), owing greatly to his ‘highly particularised’ assessments. Sometimes his seemingly scientific conclusions simply mistook tragedy for criminality.
Author Drew Rooke is an accomplished writer, with an eye for detail and a talent for storytelling, and his profile of Manock is captivating to read. There’s a pleasure in seeing how detail-oriented and dispassionate Rooke can be in his own assessments, mirroring much the same clinical approach Manock attempted (and sometimes failed) to subscribe to with his coronial decisions. While Rooke never comes face-to-face with Manock directly to interrogate this enigmatic personality, A Witness of Fact still charts compelling territory. It offers readers a sobering look at a figure who had significant influence on criminal justice in Australia for perhaps far too long."
Read the entire review at:
http://netk.net.au/Manock/Manock33.pdf
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Read also review by Margaret Simons, author of 'Six Square Metres", at the link below: "Throughout his long career, he performed more than 10,000 autopsies and gave expert scientific evidence in court that helped secure approximately 400 criminal convictions. But, remarkably, Manock, a self-described 'witness of fact', did not have the necessary training for such a senior, specialist role, and he made serious errors in several major cases - with tragic consequences, including the apparently wrongful imprisonment of innocent people. The full extent of his wrongdoing and the exact number of cases impacted by it remains a mystery more than twenty-five years after he retired, due to the continuing refusal of those in power to heed calls to launch a formal inquiry into his career. In this book, Rooke examines several of Manock's most controversial cases, and speaks with many of his former colleagues, people directly impacted by his flawed work, and legal experts. At its heart, A Witness of Fact is about how an entire legal system has failed badly, how unsafe verdicts have been swept under the carpet - and how forensic evidence that is admitted in courts of law in Australia and across the world is dubious more often than we would like to think."
https://www.qbd.com.au/a-witness-of-fact/drew-rooke/9781922310057/
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To purchase 'A Witness of Fact':
a-witness-of-fact-9781922310057
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