Charles Randal Smith is a Canadian pathologist who was the head pediatric forensic pathologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, from 1982 to 2003. The quality of his autopsies, and the resulting criminal charges and convictions of several people, have been called into question and a full public inquiry was ordered. The inquiry found there to be fundamental errors made on the part of Smith and many of the cases in which he had testified are now being re-examined and appealed.

In 2008, the chief forensic pathologist for Ontario, Canada's most populous province, began a public inquiry into 220 cases of shaken baby syndrome to determine if anyone was wrongfully convicted in the babies' deaths.^[1]

Contents 1 Early life and career 2 Notable cases 2.1 Un-named 12 year old 2.2 Lianne Thibeault 2.3 Maureen Laidley 2.4 William Mullins-Johnson 2.5 Sherry Sherret 2.6 Brenda Waudby 2.7 Anthony Kporwodu and Angela Veno 2.8 Louise Reynolds 3 Outcome 4 References 5 External links 5.1 Report and inquiry

[edit] Early life and career

Smith graduated from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1975. He completed his training in Pathology at the University of Toronto and was certified as an anatomical pathologist in 1980. He joined the Hospital for Sick Children in 1981 as one of the rotating team of pathologists, and shortly was doing autopsies on children who had met sudden or suspicious deaths.

In 1992 the Ontario Coroner's Office created a pediatric forensic pathology unit at Hospital for Sick Children and Smith was appointed director. He had become almost solely responsible for investigating suspicious child deaths in Ontario. In this period he conducted hundreds of autopsies and testified in court multiple times. He conducted training sessions for lawyers on how to examine and cross-examine expert witnesses, and training for law-enforcement and medical staff on detecting child abuse.

[edit] Notable cases

[edit] Un-named 12 year old

An un-named 12 year old (the names of children under 18 and their families charged with crimes cannot be released under Canadian Law) from Timmins, Ontario, was charged with manslaughter, based on Smith’s testimony. Three years later, she was completely cleared in 1991. Ontario Court of Justice Judge Patrick Dunn, after hearing from 9 other expert witnesses testifying that the cause of death was an accidental fall, criticized Smith for not even following his own prescribed autopsy procedures in accusing the Grade 6 student of shaking a 16-month-old baby to death.

[edit] Lianne Thibeault

Lianne Thibeault's (née Gagnon) 11 month old son Nicholas died suddenly in 1995.^[2] The police investigation ruled out foul play, but a year later the chief coroner’s office asked Smith to review the case, He concluded that it was homicide attributable to blunt head injury. He exhumed the body, and after performing an autopsy concluded that Nicholas died from brain swelling consistent with blunt force injury, although he could not rule out asphyxiation.

When the Crown did not lay charges, Smith informed the Children's Aid Society that he was 99% certain that Thibeault, then pregnant, had killed Nicholas. The CAS took wardship of her unborn child and placed her name on the list of known child abusers. After the birth, she was not allowed to be alone with her baby. Her father launched a court battle to clear her name, which was ultimately successful, with the Court’s own independent expert summarily dismissing Smith's opinion.

[edit] Maureen Laidley

Maureen Laidley was charged with killing Tyrell Salmon, the three-year-old son of her boyfriend.^[3] Laidley says the boy had jumped off the couch, slipped and struck his head on a marble coffee table, but was arrested after Smith informed them that such injuries could not result in death. The charge was abruptly stayed when outside experts testified that the injuries were fully consistent with Laidley's account.^[3]

[edit] William Mullins-Johnson

William Mullins-Johnson of Sault Ste. Marie was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Valin Johnson after a two and half week trial in September 1994.^[4] He was convicted after a jury trial in which Smith’s evidence played a major role in determining the time of death, the cause of death and whether the girl had been sexually assaulted. Mullins-Johnson had babysat Valin, 4, and her 3-year-old brother on the evening of June 26, 1993.^[4] When the girl's mother returned home, she did not check on her daughter. At 7 a.m. the next day she found Valin dead in bed.

A local pathologist performed an autopsy on Valin. Then "consultation reports" were sought from Smith and four other specialists, based on tissue samples and other evidence from the autopsy. Smith was the only consultant to conclude Valin was sexually assaulted at the time of death. That contradicted the defence's point that Valin, who had a history of vomiting in bed, might have died of natural causes. The jury convicted, which the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld in 1996. The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed a further appeal in 1998.

Attempts were made to clear his name based on available DNA technology, but the tissue could not be located by Smith, who was given the evidence by the pathologist who did the autopsy, until 2005, 11 years after the trial, when the missing tissue samples turned up in Smith’s office. William Mullins-Johnson was released on bail in 2006, pending review of his case. On July 16, 2007, a report by three expert pathologists (a report written unbeknownst to the lawyers working on his behalf) determined there was no evidence that the girl was sexually assaulted, and the Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant, said that William Mullins-Johnson's conviction “cannot stand” and that he should be acquitted by the appeals court. On October 15, 2007 he was acquitted by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

[edit] Sherry Sherret

On the morning of January 23, 1996, Sherry Sherret found her four month old son Joshua lying in his bed not breathing.^[5] He was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. Three and a half years later she was given the option to accept a plea of infanticide. She was convicted of infanticide without offering a defence (but offering no admission of guilt) in a plea (the delay was primarily attributable to Smith's unavailability to testify). Sherret was jailed on the basis of Smith's opinion that her four-month-old son Joshua had a skull fracture, and that he had been smothered. She was released on bail in 1996 and remained on bail until the conviction. Sherret's sentence was 1 year in jail and 2 years probation. Sherret served six months in total, and was entered into the child abuse registry.^[5] Her older child was removed by Children's Aid, and in order to get him out of foster care, she agreed to give him up for adoption and have no physical contact with him until he was 18.^[5] Later exhumation of the child and examination of the skull have shown that there was no skull fracture. It is thought Dr. Smith confused the normal gap between the baby's skull plates for an injury. ^[6] On Dec. 7, 2009, the Ontario Court of Appeal exonerated Sherret, stating that it was "profoundly regrettable that due to flaws in pathological evidence" she was wrongfully convicted ^[7]

[edit] Brenda Waudby

Brenda Waudby of Peterborough was charged with beating her 2-year-old daughter Jenna to death on January 22, 1997, on the basis of Smith's professional opinion as to what time the injuries were inflicted.^[4] The charge was dropped on June 15, 1999, when a prosecutor cited "certain medical evidence that has shifted dramatically:" five other medical experts said the toddler's injuries were inflicted on the evening of her death, when she was in the care of a 14-year-old boy. A crucial piece of evidence, a strand of pubic-like hair found on the body, went missing; it was eventually found in an envelope on Smith’s desk, where it had apparently sat for five years.

[edit] Anthony Kporwodu and Angela Veno

Anthony Kporwodu and Angela Veno were charged in 1997 with murdering their infant son. Smith took more than seven months to prepare his initial autopsy report. The charges were ultimately thrown out by a judge for violating the constitutional right to a timely trial.^[8]

[edit] Louise Reynolds

Louise Reynolds was a 28 year old single mother living in Kingston, Ontario, charged with second degree murder for having killed her seven-year old daughter Sharon in 1997 by stabbing her more than 80 times with a pair of scissors. Much of the case rested on Dr. Smith’s 10-page autopsy report. In January 2001 the Crown abruptly dropped the charges, after numerous experts, including Crown witnesses, disagreed with Smith and agreed that a powerful dog had mauled the girl (there was a pit-bull present in the house at the time).^[9] By then, Reynolds had spent 22 months in custody.^[9]

Louise Reynolds sued in March 2007. Despite the rules related to Crown immunity, the Court of Appeal ruled, in a ground-breaking decision, that the suit against Smith and other experts could go ahead: while court testimony is protected, faulty work is not.^[10]

[edit] Outcome

In 2002, Smith was reprimanded with a caution by the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons for his work on three suspicious-death cases, and in 2003 he was removed from performing autopsies.^[11]

In July 2005 he resigned from Sick Children's Hospital to take up a position at Saskatoon City Hospital in Saskatchewan. He failed to mention to his new employers that he was under investigation for misconduct in Ontario. In December of 2005 he was dismissed. He successfully appealed, but was not reinstated because he was not licenced to practise in Saskatchewan.^[12] He then pled guilty to a charge of unprofessional conduct laid by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan, for his failure to disclose that he was under investigation in Ontario.^[13]

In June 2005, the Chief Coroner of Ontario ordered a review of 44 autopsies carried out by Smith. Thirteen of these cases had resulted in criminal charges and convictions. The report was released in April 2007, indicating that there were substantial problems with 20 of the autopsies.

In response to this report, Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant announced that there would be a full public inquiry into the state of pediatric forensic pathology in Ontario. The Goudge Inquiry began hearing evidence on November 12, 2007.^[14] Justice Goudge's report, released in October 1, 2008 concluded that there were serious problems with the way suspicious deaths involving children are handled in Ontario. He pointed to the problems that had been found with the 20 or so problematic cases that Charles Smith had handled as evidence of serious problems in the Ontario system.^[13]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• CBC Biography
• Injustice Busters coverage
• Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted news clippings regarding Smith

[edit] Report and inquiry

• Goudge Inquiry Site
• The Charles Smith Blog by Harry Levy, a retired TorStar reporter writing a book on Smith
• The Coroner's Report