Innocent Until Proven Guilty: Why It's Important

In 1999, Sherry Sherret-Robinson faced the worst thing a mother can face: her son, Joshua, was found dead in his crib. The pathologist, Dr. Charles Smith, testified that, due to hemorrages in Joshua's neck, and a fractured skull, that he was murdered. Sherry Sherret-Robinson was convicted of killing Joshua by smothering him. She has served 10 years in jail for doing so.

Today, after the joint submissions of Crown and Defence, based on new expert evidence, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that Ms. Sherret-Robinson should be acquitted. The new reports suggest there was no skull fracture and the neck hemorrhages were in fact caused by Smith during the autopsy.The experts concluded there was no basis in the pathology to support Smith's inference the baby was deliberately smothered or suffocated, but that it can't be ruled out.

Instead, the autopsy findings and the fact that Joshua had numerous layers of blankets under, around and on top of him, "reasonably support the conclusion that death occurred by an accidental asphyxial means in an unsafe sleeping environment."

How sad. That's why, whenever people ask how I can defend someone I "know" is guilty, I always respond that because I'm not God, I never "know". Not being a pathologist, Dr. Smith's evidence might have seemed very persuasive to me and to Ms. Sherret-Robinson's lawyer.