PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Veteran wrongful convictions lawyer James Lockyer, who represented Doyle in his appeal, described the “immense and agonizing guilt” Doyle felt after the boy’s death, but said, “There was no offence in this case at all.” In a recorded 911 call in the moments after the boy’s death, Doyle can be heard saying, “I fell with him … in my arms,” Lockyer said. “This isn’t a man concocting some defence that turns out unbeknownst to anyone that it will ultimately jive with science in the future, decades later,” Lockyer said. “This is a genuine explanation that fully accounts for the injuries.”
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Lockyer acknowledged that during a police interview after the boy’s death, Doyle appeared to concede that he had been overly aggressive with his dancing, and that there had been no fall. However, Lockyer said this “so-called confession” was “entirely false” — the result of “a serious power imbalance” between Doyle and the officers, who were his “intellectual superiors.” “He had every reason to believe they weren’t going to stop until he gave them what they wanted,” Lockyer said.'
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STORY: "He was convicted of killing his partner’s child. After more than 20 years, Ontario’s top court chose to acquit him," by investigative Reporter Rachel Mendleson, published by The Toronto Star, on June 13, 2023. (Rachel Mendleson has been widely praised - and deservedly so - for her award-winning exposee of flawed drug testing at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children (former doctor Charles Smith's employer for years) which led to wrongful convictions and seizure of children from innocent parents.)
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SUB-HEADING: "Bernard Doyle’s case was singled out for re-examination following concerns about the opinions of disgraced pathologist Charles Smith."
GIST: 'More than two decades after he was convicted of killing his partner’s child, a crime he insisted he did not commit, Bernard Doyle has won his battle to clear his name.
After a brief hearing on Monday, the Court of Appeal for Ontario acquitted Doyle of manslaughter charges in the 1996 death of a 17-month-old boy.
Doyle’s conviction was based, in part, on the evidence of disgraced pathologist Charles Smith.
The case was singled out for re-examination by a government-commissioned review of shaken-baby convictions in Ontario, after questions emerged about the validity of Smith’s opinions and a now largely debunked theory that attributed certain injuries to violent shaking.
Doyle was alone with the boy in their Cambridge, Ont., apartment when the child suffered his injuries.
Doyle’s lawyer told the appeal court that the man had been dancing with the boy in his arms when he tripped, and the two fell onto roofing equipment that had been left on the floor.
Smith and other experts had opined at Doyle’s original trial that the boy’s extensive head injuries were likely caused by some combination of shaking and blunt-force trauma. They dismissed the idea that a fall could be to blame, court documents state.
A jury convicted Doyle in 1997. He served three and a half years in jail.
The appeal court made its decision after reviewing fresh evidence from four experts — including a neuropathologist, a biomechanical engineer and two forensic pathologists — who agreed that a “complex fall” could explain the boy’s injuries, according to court documents.
Veteran wrongful convictions lawyer James Lockyer, who represented Doyle in his appeal, described the “immense and agonizing guilt” Doyle felt after the boy’s death, but said, “There was no offence in this case at all.”
In a recorded 911 call in the moments after the boy’s death, Doyle can be heard saying, “I fell with him … in my arms,” Lockyer said.
“This isn’t a man concocting some defence that turns out unbeknownst to anyone that it will ultimately jive with science in the future, decades later,” Lockyer said. “This is a genuine explanation that fully accounts for the injuries.”
Crown lawyer Michael Bernstein agreed to admit the fresh expert evidence, but argued that the court should stay the proceeding rather than clear Doyle of the charges.
An acquittal would not be “an appropriate remedy” because of inconsistencies in Doyle’s account over time, and the fact that none of the new expert reports “rule out” that the boy’s injuries could have been caused by inflicted trauma, he said in court.
“What happened in the apartment … remains an important triable, contested issue,” Bernstein said.
Lockyer acknowledged that during a police interview after the boy’s death, Doyle appeared to concede that he had been overly aggressive with his dancing, and that there had been no fall.
However, Lockyer said this “so-called confession” was “entirely false” — the result of “a serious power imbalance” between Doyle and the officers, who were his “intellectual superiors.”
“He had every reason to believe they weren’t going to stop until he gave them what they wanted,” Lockyer said.
Doyle did not testify at his trial.
He told police the boy was “a lovely baby” who was “happy as the day was long,” and that he was planning to adopt the boy, according to Lockyer’s written arguments, filed in court.
A neighbour said that Doyle and the child got along “like a dream” and that Doyle was “quite a father figure,” the documents state.
Before the panel of judges filed into court for Monday’s hearing, Doyle lifted the charm on the end of his necklace — a silver guitar, containing his father’s ashes — to his lips.
“A lot of the people that (were) really so close to me, a lot of them (are) not with me today. But they believed in me and they did stand by me,” he said in an interview after the hearing. “This is for them, too.”
Growing up in Newfoundland, Doyle said he was raised to believe that there was “justice for all.” That confidence was shattered when he was convicted.
“I lost everything,” said Doyle, who is now 50. He lives back home in Newfoundland, where he is on workers’ compensation because of a fall he suffered on the job as a roofer.
Lockyer has successfully fought to overturn numerous convictions that were based, in some part, on the evidence of Charles Smith.
In the late 1990s, when Doyle was convicted, Smith routinely testified in cases where children died under suspicious circumstances. Concerns about his opinions prompted a $10-million public inquiry into pediatric forensic pathology.
Neither Smith nor the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy in the case could be reached for comment.
One of the experts who submitted fresh evidence that aligned with Doyle’s “complex fall” explanation was Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Pollanen.
Pollanen was brought in to restore confidence in the death investigation system following the Smith scandal. In recent years he has been accused of falling into some of the same traps as Smith, including bias toward finding child abuse as the cause of death, but has vehemently denied those allegations."
The entire story can be read at:
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/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
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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