Certainly not CSI

I turned up to Zinc at Federation Square late this afternoon to attend an event organised by the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. The speaker was a justice from the Court of Appeal in Ontario Province in Canada. He was speaking about the results of an extended enquiry which he’s just completed into the delivery of forensic pathology services in Ontario. This enquiry was set up by the provincial government after a recent scandal concerning a medical practitioner who had been conducting autopsies for many years and delivering his opinions to coroners’ courts on the cause of death in numerous cases involving children. The judicial enquiry revealed that the medical practitioner had rendered so-called expert opinions which no rational person could have reached on the evidence available to him. As a result, one Ontario resident had been convicted of murder in 1995 and spent twelve years in prison before his conviction was quashed and he was released.