THE CRIME?
There was no crime - except in the mind of the infamous pathologist Charles Smith, the discredited namesake of this Blog. On Sept. 21, 1994, twenty-two year-old William Mullins-Johnson was convicted of first-degree murder of his niece Valin Johnson, meaning that the jury believed he had killed Valin while sexually assaulting her, and sentenced to life-imprisonment without the possibility of parole for twenty-five years. No physical evidence connected him with Valin's death. Although he strenuously protested his innocence (his innocence was proven through DNA testing after he had served 12 years in penitentiary for the 'crime'), only one member of his family believed he was innocent: His mother, Laureena Hill. As Sarah Harland-Logan notes in her post on the case on the Innocence Canada website, Bill's extended family, including his brother Paul, closed ranks on him, since they trusted the expert's judgment - alluding to Charles Smith, who was still a highly regarded pathologist, and other medical specialists. "Bill on the other hand, began to believe that his brother might have killed his own daughter, since he too trusted the experts, and he knew himself to be innocent."
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A MOTHER'S BRUTAL DILEMMA:
I can hardly imagine a mother being caught in a more terrible situation, struggling to grieve for her suddenly deceased four year-old grand-daughter, while her two sons, Paul, Valin's father, and Bill, her uncle, blamed each other for what they believed was the horrific 'crime' - sexual assault and murder of a 4-year-old. Which son would she side with? What message would that send to the other? It would be many years before the truth finally emerged when Dr. Michael Pollanen, now Chief Forensic pathologist for Ontari0 concluded after studying materials from the autopsy, that - contrary to Smith's opinion - there was actually no evidence whatsoever that Valin had been sexually abused or that she had been murdered. Although it was impossible to tell what had caused Valin’s death, there was zero evidence that she had died from anything but natural causes. I wrote about this mother's brutal dilemma in an obituary in memory of Laureena in a post on The Charles Smith Blog published on May 20, 2020, headed: 'Laureena Hill. RIP: A great lady lady of biblical strength.' (Mother of William Mullins-Johnson - whose story is well-known to readers of The Charles Smith Blog.) I began the post with a reference to CBC journalist John Chipman who wrote in his classic book on Charles Smith 'Death in the family': "His story was almost biblical: two brothers turned against each other, each convinced the other had committed an unspeakable crime, only to realize years later that the crime had never happened."...I continued: "The 'biblical' aspect was intensified by the prophet-like role played by the brother's mother 'Laureena - the grieving mother - caught in this hellish conflict between her sons, but unwavering in her belief that neither son had harmed her beloved grand-daughter. "Her experience in life had taught her tragically some children become sick and die. Sometimes we understand why, other times, as with Valin's death, we don't. But to Charles Smith and his colleagues at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto it was murder, to the police (even before receiving all of the forensic reports) it was murder, and to many of the members of the family's tiny community, it was murder. Why would the police have charged William with murder if he hadn't committed the crime? But, like a Prophet, Laureena, who sadly passed away this week, did not waver in the face of all of the hatred, ignorance and bigotry generated by the emotionally charged situation - and in the face of a justice system which had somehow lost its bearings."
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THE SELFLESS WARRIOR: LAUREENA HILL'S BATTLE TO FREE AND EXONERATE WILLIAM - IN SPITE OF WIDESPREAD HOSTILITY:
QUOTE: WIN WAHRER: (INNOCENCE CANADA):
"The greatest trauma and tragedy of her life called upon her to step out of her comfort zone and take the position of warrior. Her true essence was revealed for all too see, to experience, and yes even to fear if you weren't on the side of truth and fairness. Laureena was armed for the fight of her life with great wisdom, incredible courage, dogged determination, a caring and loving heart as well as a fantastic sense of humour. She was a remarkable woman and someone I deeply respected and loved."
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Laureena's extraordinary battle to vindicate her son for a murder she believed he could never have committed, was beautifully captured in an obituary published by Innocence Canada. "Despite being ostracized by her community, family and friends, Laureena refused to believe that Bill had committed such an unspeakable crime and did everything in her power to expose his wrongful conviction," the obituary began. "Laureena was Bill’s voice and despite being diagnosed with cancer, refused to let anything stop her from her mission of unlocking the truth that would set Bill free," it continued. "During the 12 years that Bill spent in prison, he had only one visitor: Laureena. She would regularly make the 9 hour drive from Sault Ste. Marie to Kingston, where Bill was imprisoned. On those visits and during many phone calls and letters she would encourage Bill not to give up hope but to battle through his despair and fear because somehow the truth would prevail. There was nothing that could stop her from helping her son. On September 21, 2005 it was Laureena who stood by Bill's side when he was released from prison and while surrounded by media spoke proudly, emotionally and candidly about his experience. Whether she knew it then or not, Laureena became an inspiration to everyone who attended that press conference but for Laureena it was simply what mothers are supposed to do. For this reason and many others, Laureena was celebrated and deeply respected among all those who tirelessly advocate for the wrongly convicted, especially the wrongly convicted and their families. Bill chose to live in Toronto after his release so Laureena left Sault Ste. Marie to be by his side and help him reintegrate into society. She was his rock, his anchor and the person he could count on, a person who loved him unconditionally and had never doubted his innocence for a moment."
COMMENTARY: I got to know Laureena personally when I began working on Bill's case as part of my Toronto Star investigation of Charles Smith. During my visit to Sault St. Marie she drove me - in what she called her 'rez' car - to Valin's grave. We talked for hours. She was firm, positive, and very much focussed on her quest to vindicate Bill, an effort that seemed to consume her life. One story Laureena told me has always stayed with me as it exemplifies her dogged determination and devotion to her son. Bill had asked her to bring some books to the prison - mainly works on subjects such as sociology, philosophy, political science and whatever else might challenge his curious mind. However, Laureena ran into an obstacle: Prison policy prohibited the provision of books to inmates. On her next visit, Laureena returned to the prison with the same box of books, announcing that she would like to donate them to the prison library. All the books made it through! That was pure Laureena! A very clever 'Selfless Warrior! Author Helena Katz described the support she provided Bill during the difficult years of his confinement in her book 'Justice Miscarried: Wrongful convictions in Canada: "Throughout his incarceration, he would phone his mother Laureena Hill at least once a week to let her know that he was still alive. She would write him lengthy letters every week sharing details of her life, such as local weather and gossip. Meanwhile Mullins-Johnson spent his life behind bars reading, taking correspondence courses and learning about Aboriginal culture. The conviction tore his family apart. He had no contact with his brothers, including Valin's father. Other family members shunned his mother for sticking by her son and fighting for his release. "What gave me hope was mom. She would not let me give up;" he said. "There were times when I literally wanted to smash my wrist and be done with this."
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READING MATERIALS:
The Charles Smith Blog Post: (Harold Levy)
https://smithforensic.blogspot.com/search?q=%22laureena+hill%22
Justice Miscarried: Inside wrongful convictions in Canada: By Helena Katz; Published by Dundurn Press;
Innocence Canada: Synopsis of the Mullins-Johnson case: (Author Sarah Harland-Logan);
https://www.innocencecanada.com/exonerations/william-mullins-johnson/
Innocence Canada obituary:
https://innocencecanada.com/the-latest/newspress/in-memory-of-laureena-hill/
Death in the Family: John Chipman: Penguin/Random House Canada;
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/228817/death-in-the-family-by-john-chipman/9780385680844
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CHRONOLOGY: ('Innocence Canada' note on the Mullins-Johnson case by author Sarah Harland-Logan sets out key dates and events):
Introduction:
"On the evening of June 26, 1993, twenty-two-year-old Bill was babysitting his four-year-old niece, Valin. Bill’s sister-in-law, Kim, had asked him to look after her three children that evening; she would soon tell the police that “the children loved staying with Billy.”
Bill and Valin spent part of the evening watching TV, before Valin went to bed – she had been running a fever earlier that day. Valin gave her uncle a goodnight kiss and a hug, and told Bill that she loved him. When Bill checked on her about half an hour later, Valin was sleeping. When Kim went into Valin’s room the next morning, she was confronted with any mother’s worst nightmare. She first noticed that there was vomit on Valin’s bed, and when Kim turned the little girl over, she saw that Valin was purple. Bill would later recall that he had been sleeping on the couch when he heard Kim barreling down the stairs, crying and screaming. He asked her what had happened, and she screamed out the heartbreaking news that Valin was dead. Bill’s brother – Valin’s father – tried to roll her over to perform CPR, but it was too late: Valin’s body was rigid with rigor mortis, and reviving her would be impossible.
Bill was devastated. Over a decade later, he would describe his niece as “very smart, very mischievous, very funny and very special to me.” Bill’s mother, Valin’s grandmother, would insist that “he adored that girl and would never hurt her.”Having suffered this devastating family tragedy, Valin’s family – Bill included – should have been able to grieve together and treasure her memory. However, due to a series of egregious errors made by the physicians who conducted the post-mortem examination of Valin’s body, Bill’s personal tragedy was just beginning.
Faulty Medical Evidence:
After Kim discovered her daughter’s body, Valin’s remains were taken to the Sault Ste. Marie General Hospital. Over the next several hours, a team of physicians – Dr. Bhubendra Rasaiah (who conducted Valin’s autopsy), Dr. Patricia Zehr, and the now-infamous Charles Smith (see explanation below) – made findings as to how Valin had died. Their conclusion was that she had been strangled to death between 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. on the night of June 26th – meaning that Bill, who had been alone with the children, would had to have murdered her.They also found that Valin had been subjected to chronic sexual abuse. In fact, Dr. Zehr – who was not a pathologist, but rather “a gynaecologist/obstetrician with expertise in child sexual abuse” – concluded that “this was one of the worst cases of child sexual abuse she had seen."
Bill was arrested at 6:30 p.m. on June 27th 1993, for the first degree murder and aggravated sexual assault of his niece. Bill recalled that during his interrogation, the police officers “kept screaming at me that they had evidence that I did this and that…. With every accusation, I responded: ‘I didn’t do it.’”Bill continued to maintain his innocence, from this first police interview until the present time. However, only his mother, Laureena, believed him. Meanwhile, Bill’s extended family closed ranks on him, since they trusted those believed to be the experts’ judgment. Bill, on the other hand, began to believe that his brother might have killed his own daughter, since he too trusted the experts, and he knew himself to be innocent.[16]
Bill’s Trial and Incarceration:
At Bill’s trial, the jury heard expert testimony from the now-disgraced pathologist Charles Smith. He and other Crown expert witnesses testified that Valin had been abused and then suffocated to death, as evidenced by the bruises found on her chest, neck, and head. Smith also testified that the four-year-old had been anally raped.
On September 21, 1994, Bill was convicted of first degree murder – meaning that the jury believed he killed Valin while sexually assaulting her – and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years. The jury convicted Bill despite the fact that there was no physical evidence connecting him to Valin’s death.
Bill was transported to Joyceville Institution, outside Kingston, Ontario. As a convicted sex offender, he received death threats from other prisoners, and was afraid that other inmates might slash his throat. He was placed in solitary confinement for a four-month period for his own protection. In 1995, he was sent to Warkworth Institution, a prison north of Toronto that houses sex offenders in protective custody. At Warkworth, Bill took correspondence courses and learned about his Aboriginal heritage, while locked behind the steel door of a sparsely appointed cell.
Appeals Denied:
Bill appealed his conviction to the Ontario Court of Appeal, but the court dismissed the appeal on December 19, 1996. One of the three judges disagreed with the decision to dismiss the appeal. In his dissenting judgment, Justice Borens stated that he would have ordered a new trial in Bill’s case. He pointed out that “there was no forensic evidence” connecting Bill to Valin: “although tests were conducted, there was no evidence that any bodily substance of [Bill’s] … was on, or in … [Valin’s] body.”He also noted that “Of the five experts who testified, only Dr. Smith … thought he saw evidence of recent anal penetration.” This dissenting opinion – pointing out the severe limitations in the evidence used to convict Bill of Valin’s murder – is in retrospect haunting, as we will see below.
Bill then appealed this decision to the Supreme Court of Canada, but the court unanimously dismissed his appeal on May 26, 1998.
A Miscarriage of Justice:
Bill then turned to Innocence Canada (formerly AIDWYC) for help, and the organization took his case. In February 2003, lawyer James Lockyer wrote to the Crown Law Office on Innocence Canada’s behalf, asking that the samples taken from Valin’s body be made available so that forensic pathologist Dr. Bernard Knight could independently review them.
The police then contacted Dr. Rasaiah (who had conducted Valin’s autopsy); his records revealed that he had sent the microscopic slides from Valin’s autopsy that Innocence Canada had requested to Charles Smith, who had never returned them. Numerous people then attempted to communicate with Smith about the location of these slides, but he denied that he still had the slides and stonewalled this process for over a year, until the slides were finally located in his office and provided to Dr. Michael Pollanen, who has since become the Chief Forensic Pathologist for Ontario.
Dr. Pollanen decided to conduct his own investigation into the slides. He quickly realized that Smith’s findings had been shockingly inaccurate. In fact, they were completely wrong. The injuries to Valin’s body that Smith had attributed to physical abuse were simply “the result of normal processes following death or were caused by procedures connected to the post-mortem investigation.” In particular, the injuries that Smith had testified indicated she had been sexually assaulted was actually a normal result of changes to her body after death and during the autopsy.
Dr. Pollanen concluded that there was actually no evidence whatsoever that Valin had been sexually abused or that she had been murdered. Although it was impossible to tell what had caused Valin’s death, there was zero evidence that she had died from anything but natural causes. Dr. Pollanen then sent the slides to Dr. Knight, who agreed that Valin’s death was natural.
At last armed with new evidence that he was innocent, Bill and Innocence Canada filed a s. 696.1 application for ministerial review of his conviction on September 7, 2005. He was granted bail on September 21, 2005, while the Minister considered his application. He had spent exactly 11 years in prison for a crime that never took place.
On July 6, 2007, the federal Minister of Justice granted Bill’s application and sent the case back to the Ontario Court of Appeal. This time, the Court took a very different view of Bill’s conviction, finding that “it is now clear that there is no evidence that Valin Johnson was assaulted or murdered, and no evidence that … [Bill] was guilty of any crime.” Further, the Court acknowledged that Bill had suffered “a terrible miscarriage of justice.
On October 15, 2007 the Court quashed Bill’s conviction and acquitted him of the terrible “crime” that never occurred but had torn his life and family apart. On October 20, 2010, Chris Bentley, the Attorney General of Ontario at the time, announced that Bill would be awarded $4.25 million in compensation for his wrongful conviction. Mr. Bentley apologized to Bill and his family on behalf of the Ontario government “for the miscarriage of justice that occurred and the pain they had to endure."
Causes of Bill’s Wrongful Conviction:
The principal reason for Bill’s wrongful conviction was the flawed testimony of disgraced ex-pathologist Charles Smith. In fact, Innocence Canada played a crucial role in bringing about the investigation that exposed him. Innocence Canada had grown suspicious of Smith’s conclusions in other cases as well; so in April 2005, Innocence Canada wrote to Dr. Barry McLellan (then the Chief Coroner for Ontario) and Michael Bryant (then the Attorney General), urging a full public inquiry into Smith’s work. On June 7, 2005, Dr. McLellan announced in a press release that a formal review would be conducted into Smith’s work on 45 cases involving suspicious deaths of children. This inquiry, led by Justice Stephen Goudge, resulted in the publication of the Inquiry into Pediatric Forensic Pathology in Ontario.
This comprehensive report found that Smith had no training in forensic pathology (his own field was pediatric pathology), which led to many misdiagnoses such as his completely incorrect assessment of Valin’s injuries.Moreover, Smith was a terrible expert witness who often “provided unbalanced or emotive testimony, which tended to invite inappropriate and adverse conclusions.”Smith was eventually stripped of his medical license.
At the Ontario Court of Appeal hearing that led to Bill’s acquittal, Innocence Canada lawyer James Lockyer explained that Smith’s woefully inaccurate testimony incited an “extraordinary rush to judgment” by authorities, after which “there was no stopping the train.”
Wounds that Innocence Canada Cannot Heal:
A few days before his release on bail, Bill told reporters that the day he was charged “ripped my soul out – and right from the first allegation it destroyed my life.” On the day of his release, he explained that “the last 12 years has been nothing but hell for me – and my family.” In a 2010 interview, Bill said that he might as well still be in a prison cell, because, in his words: “I largely live the way I lived when I was inside: isolated [and] … untrusting.”
Although Bill has regained his freedom, he has lost a decade of his life and suffered unimaginable anguish and undeserved stigma, as his family, fellow inmates, and the public at large believed that he had committed a horrific crime. In a sense, Bill is still behind bars."
