_svg.png){kind=small}
03/02/07
Forensic Pathologist under Investigation
By Lee Hanlon
Louise Reynolds spent 22 months in custody after being wrongfully charged with the murder of her 7 year old daughter. The autopsy evidence of Forensic Pathologist Doctor Charles Smith alleged that Reynolds stabbed her daughter 80 times with a pair of scissors.
Reynolds was exonerated when a further autopsy conducted by another forensic pathologist revealed the stab wounds to be in fact dog bites.
Another victim of Dr. Smith was William Mullins-Johnson who was wrongfully convicted of murdering his 4 year old niece in 1994. Mullins-Johnson had been in jail for 12 years before being exonerated. The evidence that exonerated Mullins-Johnson had been found in Smith’s desk. Mullins-Johnson was released from prison in 2005.
Brenda Waudby, yet another victim of a wrongful conviction, was originally charged with murdering her daughter due to Smith’s evidence. Waudby sued Smith after the charges were dropped.
Waudby was charged with second degree murder after her daughter was found beaten to death in 1997. The charges were dropped when evidenced revealed that the baby was in the care of a male teenage baby-sitter at the time of death.
Waudby filed a civil suite against Smith when it was disclosed that he kept a hair sample found on her daughter’s body for five years before being sent away for DNA testing.
In a review of Smith’s autopsies, an Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons Panel stated that it was "Extremely disturbed by the deficiencies in his approach."
Subsequently, Ontario’s Chief Coroner ordered an audit into at least 40 of Smith’s cases. Prior to the audit Smith had performed thousands of autopsies and testified at hundreds of trials, helping secure convictions for murder and assault charges.
After the audit was ordered, Smith moved to Saskatoon and was found working at the Saskatoon City Hospital, but no longer conducted autopsies. In December 2005 the hospital terminated Smith’s contract.
It is because of Smith’s blatant errors that there are additional wrongful convictions in the Canadian criminal justice system.
After their findings of Dr. Smith’s blatant errors, the College of Physicians and Surgeons should have banned him from practicing medicine.
Smith should have also been charged with obstruction of justice and put in the same cell that he had Mullins-Johnson put in.
The question that remains is this: How can we prevent this type of blatant error from happening again in the future?