LINDA FISCHER'S LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER CARNEY: "I just want to express upon you the urgency many of us feel in having the commission up and running. There are many convicted people who have been proclaiming their innocence for many many years. My son is one. He has been behind bars since 2000, and prison is no fun, especially if you are innocent. My son turned 24 in prison and this year he will turn 50. What a waste of a bright young man who could have brought much to his country in many ways. Prison life, for someone who is innocent, can only be called cruel and unusual punishment. That is also true for all the wrongly convicted, and their friends and family are quite often also living in cruel and unusual punishment. I am 77 years old, have diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and am doing everything I can to prolong the years or months I have before I will have to have dialysis.. When I visit my son for PFVs, my son requests a wheelchair for me to use 20 minutes 3 times a day to go to the office to take my medication. The last time I visited, I was refused a wheelchair. Instead I had to walk to the house with a cane in my right hand AND A CHAIR IN MY LEFT HAND SO I COULD STOP AND REST AT THE TIMES WHEN I COULD NO LONGER GO ON. I was accompanied by two Correctional Officers. one of which asked me about 20 yards from the house, if it would help if she carried the chair. How Cruel and disrespectful. I know I am not the only one in this position and I am going to try to contact some more of us. As I said before, times are tough out there, but many of us are running out of time to see our loved ones exonerated. I ask you please, if there is any way at all you can get this commission working soon, please do it for all of us who are running out of time. We just need these cases to be heard. We are not asking you to exonerate them, just give them a chance to prove they are innocent."
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. 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. 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; 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;
