In the only wide-ranging interview he has given since his spectacular fall from grace, Dr. Smith told of imploring three different judges to interfere in the defence being conducted for Louise Reynolds of Kingston, Ont., on trial in 2001 for murdering her seven-year-old daughter, Sharon. Simultaneously, Dr. Smith was busy testifying for the Crown against Ms. Reynolds, who had allegedly stabbed her daughter 80 times.
Ms. Reynolds, who spent two years behind bars, was ultimately exonerated after an exhumation revealed that at least some of the child's injuries were bites from a pit bull.
"The first break I had, I was in the cafeteria sitting and chatting and various people came along," Dr. Smith said in the previously unpublished interview, conducted in 2001 by Maclean's magazine journalist Jane O'Hara and made available to The Globe and Mail. "I remember turning to two other judges and pleading with them to do something such that she was properly represented," said Dr. Smith, whose judgment and ethics are being seriously questioned.
The picture that emerges is one of a sublimely self-confident man who was equally at ease in the witness box or the backrooms of prime players in the justice system. His confidence was again evident in his willingness to blame others - police, lawyers and judges - for shortcomings that caused defendants to be acquitted or have their charges dropped.
Dr. Smith's mistakes will be front and centre at an inquiry in Toronto that begins today. Commissioner Stephen Goudge is examining 20 murder cases where Dr. Smith played a central role.
In the four-hour interview, which Ms. O'Hara recorded for use in a libel action that Dr. Smith ultimately dropped, the pathologist portrayed his work for the Ontario Office of the Chief Coroner as something akin to an indulgent favour. "The payment is negligible," he said in the interview. "On a case like Sharon Reynolds, I get paid $78 for weeks of work. The equivalent is about minimum wage.
"Can you take someone who already has a busy job, offer them minimum wage for something that's a no-win situation and - if they make any mistakes or anyone else makes mistakes that happen to get pinned on them - their reputation is shot? It's insanity. Why would anyone do it?"
Dr. Smith also alleged in the interview that:
Most autopsies were being done "by people who are not forensically trained. ... There is a shortage of pathologists in the country, and we're at crisis proportions. I've been pushing for years, trying to get pediatric autopsies done by people who knew what they were doing, and there just wasn't the political will to do that."
"Very frequently, coroners will mislead. You know they know stuff and think it's insignificant. Or, they didn't ask questions, and assume answers - that kind of thing. The likelihood of the pathologist coming to the correct conclusion is dependent in part on the information given to the pathologist."
Harold Levy, a veteran journalist who is writing a book about the Smith affair, said the attitudes that come across in the interview are vintage Charles Smith. "Dr. Smith has an almost magical power to impress people, like a minister who is capable of captivating a crowd," he said.
"Other pathologists, judges, police, prosecutors and jurors abandoned their usual skepticism and fell under his sway. Jurors were extremely impressed by his testimony. Even some defence lawyers were so taken in by Smith that they did not challenge his credentials, or overly challenge his opinions."
In another excerpt from the interview, Dr. Smith described a case in Timmins, Ont., where Mr. Justice Patrick Dunn of Ontario Superior Court discharged a defendant known only as Amber S. at the end of her preliminary hearing, relying largely on the testimony of a raft of international experts who shed doubt on his conclusions.
"I knew it was going off the rails when the Crown attorney ... started phoning for advice," Dr. Smith said. "She would call in the middle of some cross-examination and she'd say: 'What does this mean?' It was clearly off the rails."
Dr. Smith also said that Ontario's onetime chief pathologist, John Hillsdon Smith, left it to Dr. Smith to do most of the heavy lifting on many cases.
"I came to realize after a period of time that, in fact, he never looked down the microscope to look at the glass slides," Dr. Smith said. "Later, he told me that the reason he didn't was because he was confident of my opinion, and he felt that if he looked down the microscope he would be obligated - depending on the circumstances - to go to court, and he didn't want to. He felt that my opinion was better than his."
