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SUB-HEADING: "Tammy Bouvette's criminal negligence charge was thrown out by the B.C. Court of Appeal in April."
GIST: "The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear the case of a British Columbia woman whose conviction in the drowning death of a toddler was quashed earlier this year.
Documents show that the court has granted the application for leave to hear the case of Tammy Bouvette, whose criminal negligence charge was thrown out by the B.C. Court of Appeal in April.
Bouvette's lawyer is seeking an acquittal in the case rather than the Appeal Court's order for a stay of proceedings as remedy.
An acquittal declares a defendant has been found not guilty by the court, while a stay means the Crown has dropped its charges but does not determine guilt or innocence.
Bouvette was originally charged with second-degree murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge in 2011 for the bathtub drowning death of a 19-month-old girl she had been babysitting in Cranbrook, B.C., about 390 kilometres southwest of Calgary.
The B.C. Court of Appeal found the Crown failed to disclose several items of key evidence to Bouvette's lawyers, depriving her of the "opportunity to make an informed decision about how to plead.''
The Appeal Court ruling called the original conviction "the product of a miscarriage of justice'' despite not finding bad faith or malice in the Crown's failure to share the evidence.
In explaining its order for the stay, the Appeal Court said to retry Bouvette's case would be "unjust.''
"It would amount to punishing the appellant again for succeeding in having her guilty plea and conviction quashed,'' the decision said, noting Bouvette had already served her whole sentence for criminal negligence.
The Appeal Court also said Bouvette relapsed in her battle with addiction after being charged, losing custody of her children while getting assaulted in jail for being perceived as a "baby killer.''
Bouvette was babysitting Iyanna Teeple when the toddler was found unconscious and not breathing in a bathtub. The child was flown to a Calgary hospital but later died.
In 2021, a special prosecutor from the BC Prosecution Service found that there may have been a miscarriage of justice since there was a strong case that Bouvette did not receive disclosure of significant and relevant materials.
The review found that Bouvette's charter rights may have been breached, eventually leading to the quashing of the conviction."
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.
