The problems unearthed with one Ontario pediatric forensic pathologist’s work should be a wake-up call for lawyers and judges.

Ontario’s public inquiry into pediatric forensic pathology stems from a coroner’s office review into the work of one controversial pathologist, but its findings could have implications across the board for all scientific expert evidence, lawyers say.

 

The inquiry, headed by Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Stephen Goudge, plans to make recommendations to restore and enhance public confidence in pediatric forensic pathology in the province and its future use in both investigations and criminal proceedings. It comes on the heels of the results of a 17-month review by the Ontario Chief Coroner’s office of 45 criminally suspicious and homicide cases where Dr. Charles Smith, a forensic pathologist who carried out autopsies and provided opinions on cases involving pediatric deaths in the province until 2002, consulted or performed the autopsy.

 

Before 2002, Smith was known as one of the leading experts in cases involving pediatric forensics, but he has not worked with the coroner’s office since then, leaving Toronto in 2005 to practise in Saskatchewan. He is now reportedly living in British Columbia and has also undertaken not to practise forensic pathology in Ontario before the inquiry is completed next April.

 

The coroner’s review, ordered in 2005, was the result of general concern expressed about some of the conclusions reached by Smith in a number of criminal cases in which he was the primary or consulting pathologist. There were also concerns about the safeguarding of tissue samples from autopsies, after an audit earlier that year at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children located a previously unaccounted for tissue sample in the desk drawer of Smith’s office.

 

The aim of the review was to determine whether the conclusions reached by Smith in his autopsy, consultation reports, or testimony could be supported by the information and materials available.

 

However, in April 2007, the results of the review identified specific concerns in 20 of the 45 reviewed cases involving the pathologist, ranging from relatively minor to potentially more serious issues. Among those 20 cases, 12 had resulted in criminal convictions and one finding of not criminally responsible. Following the results of the review, Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant announced a full public inquiry into the matter.

 

Louis Sokolov, a lawyer with Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP in Toronto, will be representing the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) at the inquiry. He says that, while there will always be expert scientific evidence in criminal trials and it will always be accorded considerable weight, the danger materializes when there is uncritical acceptance of what the expert has to say simply by virtue of the fact that they are an expert.