One is forced to wonder how many other people are wrongfully convicted based on flawed testimony -- where the flaws are never uncovered. Remember, in Canada for ever 100 adults who plead not guilty there are over 96 convictions. The customary result of a criminal trial is a conviction -- that leads to complacency.
Charges have been withdrawn against an Ontario woman who spent 14 years in jail after being convicted of killing her toddler — in part because of evidence from now-disgraced pathologist Dr. Charles Smith.
Tammy Marquardt was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of her two-year-old son Kenneth Wynne in 1995.
But the conviction was based on evidence from pathologist Charles Smith, who was recently stripped of his medical licence for professional misconduct and incompetence. He testified at Marquardt's trial Kenneth was strangled or suffocated, when the toddler had actually died of an epileptic seizure.
Earlier this year, the Court of Appeal for Ontario quashed Marquardt's second-degree murder conviction, calling her a victim of a miscarriage of justice and ordering a new trial.
Marquardt said nothing could be done to compensate for what Smith has done.
"I don't think that anything could vindicate," Marquardt told reporters outside an Oshawa court. "He has to live in his own personal hell and so there's nothing that really that I or anyone else could do.
1 comment:
I have a question. A year or so ago there was a fair bit of press coverage of Dr. Gregory Carter who had proffered unqualified "expert" testimony in Ontario child custody cases. Carter was charged with perjury and obstruction by the Durham police. Later it was reported that the perjury charge was dropped but that the obstruction charge would proceed. There has been no further coverage letting the public know the outcome of the case. So why does the OPP/AG say charges against Smith aren't in the cards given Carter was charged for tainting child custody cases with unqualified "expert" testimony? Why are the system's players sheilding Smith from an obstruction charge? Seems to me that either both should be charged - or neither should be.
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