EDITOR'S NOTE: Mississippi Today Editor Adam Ganucheau shreds the the hospital's defence that it hired Benton to better protect abused children and parents; Published on March 2, 2023.
GIST: "Our Feb. 28 story “Mississippi’s child abuse pediatrician works between medicine and the justice system. Can he be objective?” has been updated to reflect that former University of Mississippi Medical Center Vice Chancellor Dr. Dan Jones said the reason for hiring Dr. Scott Benton in 2008 was to better protect abused children and parents — not as a result of previous lawsuits the hospital faced.
The article cites a 2017 deposition that Dr. Scott Benton gave in which he said Jones recruited him to UMMC as a direct response to previous lawsuits that the hospital had faced for “failing to recognize child abuse in some cases.”
Jones denies the accuracy of Benton’s assertion.
Jones’ full statement submitted to Mississippi Today after publication reads: “In my role as vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, I was not directly involved in determining the need for a specialist in child abuse evaluations nor in the decision to hire Dr. Benton. I am confident that none of these decisions were driven by anything other than the best interests of the children and parents of Mississippi. I am certain that protecting the medical center against lawsuits would never take priority over the welfare of any of our patients in any decision made by me, those working with me during my time of leadership, nor of any decisions made by my successors in leadership. Any statement by a Mississippi Today journalist wrongfully impugning my character or assuming motives for decisions without evidence is strongly resented.”
At Mississippi Today, we take seriously the power our words can have, and we constantly weigh the responsibility we owe readers in using them. In more than 10 years as a Mississippi journalist, I have closely covered Jones in his various prominent leadership roles and do not have any reason to question his integrity — and that includes when he served as UMMC’s leader when Benton was hired. I can say unequivocally that in the weeks of reporting, writing, editing and fact-checking of the Feb. 28 article in question, no Mississippi Today journalist once intended to impugn Jones’ character.
Two sentences in our original article, however, didn’t clearly attribute Benton’s 2017 deposition as the source of information regarding his recruitment to UMMC. We apologize for that omission and have updated the story to make it clearer who said what and when.
I’d like to use this opportunity to share with readers a little more about our reporting process.
Understanding why Benton was brought to UMMC in the first place is critical to contextualizing the questions our reporting raised about his work in later years.
We spent weeks exhausting every option available to us to learn more about the exact nature of Dr. Benton’s hiring.
Before the story published, Jones twice declined to speak with us on the record about Benton’s statement regarding why he was hired.
He referred our inquiries to current UMMC public affairs officials, who subsequently declined to respond to two detailed questions about the nature of Benton’s recruitment.
Additionally, UMMC officials declined several requests for interviews with Dr. Benton and made no other medical center official available for an on-the-record interview. Without comment or an interview to discuss why Benton was hired, we cited what was available to us: Benton’s sworn testimony from the 2017 deposition — a public record and Benton’s own words.
Mississippi Today will continue to be completely transparent with our readers about updates to and any necessary corrections or clarifications. And when our reporting is called into question, we will publicly respond as appropriate.""
The entire Editor's Note can be read at:
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/03/02/editors-note-shaky-science-fractured-families/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
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