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This is Charles Smith, he was a pathologist and half of his autopsies were found to be faulty and he was responsible for many wrongful convictions including William Mullins-Johnson.

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This is Valin Johnson, she was William's 4 year-old niece and she passed away on the night of June 26th, 1993.

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This article briefly talks about William's case and it goes in depth about the compensation he had received.

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The first of many victims of notoriously inept pathologist Dr. Charles Smith has finally received compensation for a miscarriage of justice.

Seventeen years after William Mullins-Johnson was arrested and accused of murdering and sodomizing his 4-year-old niece, he has been awarded a $4.25 million settlement.

Critics argue the settlement has been too long in coming and note that others whose lives are in disarray after wrongful prosecutions and convictions are still waiting.

In announcing the compensation Thursday, Attorney General Chris Bentley apologized to the 40-year-old Sault Ste. Marie man who spent 12 years in jail on a first-degree murder conviction.

"We're very sorry, on behalf of the government of Ontario, the people of Ontario, for the terrible pain and suffering that Mr. Mullins-Johnson has undergone over the years," he told reporters.

Mullins-Johnson's ordeal began on the morning of June 27, 1993, when his 4-year-old niece, Valin, was found dead in her bed by her parents.

Mullins-Johnson had been babysitting her the night before and under the Crown's theory, he had exclusive opportunity to commit the crime.

At the time, Smith was considered the ultimate authority on pediatric forensic pathology in Ontario and his findings were rarely challenged.

Asked to review the case, Smith concluded Valin died while being anally raped. The opening to her anus was dilated, proof that she was sodomized, Smith said.

But expert pathologists who subsequently reviewed the case discredited Smith's finding, pointing out that the anus can naturally dilate after death, a process well-recognized in medical literature and textbooks.

They determined Valin had died from natural causes.

Justice Stephen Goudge, who led a public inquiry into the fiasco, concluded two years ago that Smith "lacked basic knowledge" about forensic pathology and did not have formal training in the field.

Mullins-Johnson was not available to comment Thursday. But in earlier interviews he spoke of being traumatized by the ordeal. He has always maintained his innocence, but many family members did not believe him and disowned him.

He developed a drug addiction and had to spend time in solitary confinement in jail. He lamented over not being married and having a family.

Mullins-Johnson had earlier filed a $13 million lawsuit against those he held responsible, including Smith, the office of the chief coroner, and doctors who worked at the Hospital for Sick Children and in Sault Ste. Marie. He has dropped that lawsuit as part of the settlement.

Mullins-Johnson's lawyer, David Robins, said his client is grateful for the settlement. Still, he said money can never fully compensate Mullins-Johnson for the hardship he has endured.

"Money cannot turn back the hands of time. It cannot bring back 12 important years of his life. Money cannot remove the label of a convicted sex offender, notwithstanding his acquittal, that some people still see in him. It cannot repair the harm to the important familial relationships that he has. And money cannot resolve post-traumatic stress," Robins said.

He said it's unfortunate it has taken the province two years to develop a process to compensate individuals, something the Goudge Commission recommended the government explore.

"The travesty is that so much time can pass where they have to live in very difficult economic conditions until some means of compensation can be resolved," Robins said, explaining that it's hard for victims to land jobs after being branded child killers and doing jail time.

Smith erred in at least 20 child-death investigations, 12 of which resulted in convictions. Four of those convictions have since been quashed, including Mullins-Johnson's. Five others are in various states of appeal.

Bentley said provincial-territorial-federal guidelines were used to determine the compensation and added that the settlement does not necessarily serve as the benchmark for other Smith-related cases.

"Every one of the cases is decided on its own facts and its own merits," he said.

Asked if any part of the compensation bill was footed by taxpayers or the Canadian Medical Protective Association, the insurance company for doctors, Robins said: "I am not at liberty to disclose anything about that."

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Man wrongfully convicted in Smith case gets $4.25 million

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The first of many victims of notoriously inept pathologist Dr. Charles Smith has finally received compensation for a miscarriage of justice. Seventeen years after William Mullins-Johnson was arrested and accused of murdering and sodomizing his 4-year-old niece, he has been awarded a $4.25 million settlement.

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This article goes into depth about William's time in prison. It also talks about how William is adjusting to his new everyday life outside of prison.

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William Mullins-Johnson is known as Bill to friends, of which he has few.

Five years ago, Mullins-Johnson was released on bail from the Warkworth Institution, the largest federal correctional facility in Canada, pending a review of his 1993 conviction for the rape and murder of his four-year-old niece, Valin Johnson.

In 2007, just about everybody involved in his 12-year incarceration apologized for what turned out to be a wrongful conviction, based largely on the testimony of the Crown's star prosecutor, pathologist Dr. Charles Smith.

Today, Mullins-Johnson, 39, says he may as well still be in a prison cell.

"I largely live the way I lived when I was inside: isolated, untrusting and largely alcohol-free," he said in a recent interview. "I don't go out. I don't go to bars. They're too unpredictable for me. . . . I never know if some punk is going to come up to me and I'd have to throw him through the window."

He speaks from a fast-food restaurant he preferred to meet a reporter in rather than at his home. Though candid about his ordeal, he still doesn't "want people to know my address," he said. "It wouldn't surprise me if a large number of people still believe I'm a murderer and a pedophile."

Mullins-Johnson quietly moved back to Sault Ste. Marie about 18 months ago, partly because "quite honestly, I should never have been pushed out of here. This is my home," he said. "I'm a (Soo) Greyhounds fan. I'm a Sault boy."

Most of his family is still here, including his mother, Laureena Hill, the only one who never doubted his innocence. The rest were slower to stop perceiving him as a monster, especially his brother Paul, Valin's father.

The family is "healing" after so many years, Mullins-Johnson said, and Paul "seems to be alright. Him and I are back together again."

His move was also after an aborted attempt to earn a criminology degree from the University of Toronto. He finished his transitional year, for mature students without a high-school diploma, and started his first year, but "I was partying too much, having too much fun."

A relationship with a Manitoulin Island woman fizzled around the same time, as did several others over the years. Mullins-Johnson was not the same man who had been sent to prison 17 years ago. Besides receiving counselling for anger management, he has trust issues "like you wouldn t believe."

In prison, "it's so easy to live (because) you know where you stand with people. Out here, it's a harder thing to figure out," he said.

"When people first meet me, they ask me about compensation. . . . I don't know if people want to be with me because of money."

Dr. Smith's victims returned to the headlines last week after Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced Attorney General Chris Bentley would release details of a compensation package "very, very shortly."

In October 2008, Justice Stephen Goudge released a 1,000-page report that slammed Smith, along with Ontario's former chief coroner and his deputy, for their roles in wrongful prosecutions and asked the province to consider compensating some 40 innocent people once branded child murderers.

Despite the premier's assurances, those affected by the disgraced pathologist are unlikely to receive money any time soon. Bentley, who set up a team in December 2008 to consider the viability of a compensation process for people wrongly accused, and in some cases convicted due in part to Smith, wouldn't pinpoint a date.

It took longer than expected, but the government is still in the process of coming up with a "short" and "user-friendly" framework that would be used to calculate compensation, Bentley said.

"We're trying to be as respectful as we can of different circumstances that people find themselves in and how the compensation framework, if we can come up with one, will actually be flexible enough to deal with all the differences without being so complex and difficult that it takes forever to get to the conclusion of it."

Mullins-Johnson says he barely keeps track, except when reporters update him with their phone calls. Though he has no source of income or government assistance -- "I'm relying on family and friends to help me out," he said -- he insists whatever compensation awaits him, including a $13-million lawsuit he filed against local medical officials in 2008 that's making its slow way through the legal system, is money he'd gladly trade for his life back.

"To tell you the truth, I don't really know how to deal with compensation. It's more complex than just cutting a cheque."

While he is a changed man, in many ways he's also still that 23- year-old stuck in time, with no employment background to get a job or even a driver's licence. He never used to feel he lost all those years he worked to clear his name behind bars but "now I'm starting to feel it. I'm going to be 40 years old. A lot of women I date don't want to start families," he said. "It's not easy. That's the simple, nice way of saying it."

-- With files from CP

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William Mullins-Johnson a prisoner of the past

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This is a personal interview with William and he explains his point of view and all the pain that his case had caused him.

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William appeared at the Robson Hall and talked to  law students about the terrible miscarriage of justice that he had been through.

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William Mullins-Johnson: A Terrible Miscarriage of Justice - January 15, 2010

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William became overwhelmed with emotion while testifying on Monday October 15th 2007.

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William takes a moment before speaking to reporters about being acquitted.

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The Story of William Mullins-Johnson's Wrongful Conviction

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The Story of William Mullins-Johnson's Wrongful Conviction

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This video goes in depth of how William was convicted of murder and aggravated sexual assault. It tells us step by step what had happened in his case and the factors that led him to being wrongfully convicted.

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William Mullins-Johnson wrongful conviction : A Death in the Family (2009) - The Fifth Estate

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A Death in the Family is the story of William Mullins-Johnson, his wrongful first-degree murder conviction, and how that guilty verdict shattered his family. In Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, on June 27, 1993, four-year-old Valin Johnson was found dead in her bed.

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The Formal Acquittal of William Mullins-Johnson

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The Formal Acquittal of William Mullins-Johnson

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William stated in the article how he wanted to fight for his name to be cleared and that a formal acquittal was not enough.

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The Ontario government and three top judges offered an extraordinary round of profuse apologies yesterday to a 37-year-old aboriginal man - William Mullins-Johnson - moments after he was acquitted of the 1993 murder of his four-year-old niece, Valin.

However, it wasn't enough for Mr. Mullins-Johnson who insisted that only a declaration of utter innocence can truly clear his name and allow him to return to his Northern Ontario reserve where many still believe him to be a child killer.

While the Crown resisted Mr. Mullins-Johnson's attempt to win a historical first - a verdict that would go beyond a mere acquittal and establish actual innocence - it conceded that the evidence used to convict him was worthless.

"There can be no doubt that this miscarriage of justice has exacted a terrible toll on Mr. Mullins-Johnson, his mother and his entire family," prosecutor Michal Fairburn said.

"For this, we are truly, profoundly sorry."

The apologies capped an emotionally wrenching day in which Mr. Mullins-Johnson broke down repeatedly as he described the day of Valin's death, and how the tragedy split his extended family and kept him behind bars for 12 years.

"My life got sucked right out of me," Mr. Mullins-Johnson testified haltingly. "I went into hysterics. ... It ruined my name. It ruined my reputation. I thought I was going to a federal penitentiary to die. To be honest, I expected to get my throat cut."

The case began to fall apart five years ago, when international experts contradicted disgraced pathologist Charles Smith's finding that Valin was sexually violated and murdered several hours before her body was discovered on June 27, 1993.

At the time, Mr. Mullins-Johnson was living with his brother, Paul, and his sister-in-law, Kim, in their home on the reserve near Sault Ste. Marie. The previous night, he had babysat their three children, giving Valin an affectionate hug as she settled into her bed for the night.

Weeping, Mr. Mullins-Johnson recounted his sister-in-law's horror when she discovered the next morning that Valin was dead. He described his brother's frantic efforts to roll Valin - her body rigid with rigor mortis - over onto her back so that he could administer CPR.

Within 11 hours, police had arrested Mr. Mullins-Johnson and carted him off for a nightmarish interrogation session. "They kept screaming at me that they had evidence that I did this and that," Mr. Mullins-Johnson recalled. "With every accusation, I responded: 'I didn't do it.' "

His horrified extended family "closed ranks on me," Mr. Mullins-Johnson testified. He said that since he, too, trusted the experts, he came to believe privately that his brother might have killed his daughter.

(The two men are estranged. Speaking to reporters yesterday, Mr. Mullins-Johnson said: "I would tell Paul that nobody hurt your little girl. We have suffered enough. It is a point where we have to heal now.")

In prison, Mr. Mullins-Johnson kept to himself. He sought refuge in learning about aboriginal culture and he waited patiently in the hope that lawyers from the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted would review and tear apart his conviction.

On Sept. 21, 2005 - precisely 11 years after his conviction - Mr. Mullins-Johnson was released on bail to await yesterday's Court of Appeal hearing.

AIDWYC lawyer James Lockyer told the court yesterday that Dr. Smith's shoddy work launched an "extraordinary rush to judgment" by authorities that ignored simple logic and a complete dearth of any physical evidence of a sexual assault.

"There was no stopping the train," he said. "It had left the station."

Urging the court to declare his client "factually" innocent, Mr. Lockyer said that nothing short of such a finding will convince the doubters in Mr. Mullins-Johnson's community. "It shouldn't need a public inquiry to restore his name, if this court believes that Mr. Mullins-Johnson is innocent," Mr. Lockyer said. "This is a request to not leave Mr. Mullins-Johnson in limbo."

But Ms. Fairburn and co-counsel Ken Campbell warned that it would be a grave mistake to create a new verdict that would "debase" any not-guilty finding and relegate it to second-place status.

"We may never know [how Valin died]," Ms. Fairburn said. "But what we do know - and it is critically important to today's case - is that there was no evidence of homicide."

The court reserved its written reasons yesterday. Before adjourning, Associate Chief Justice Dennis O'Connor told Mr. Mullins-Johnson - on behalf of Mr. Justice Marc Rosenberg and Mr. Justice Robert Sharpe - "it is regrettable that as a result of flawed evidence, you were wrongly convicted and you spent a long period in custody."

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Reinterpreting the facts
Anatomical evidence that led to William Mullins-Johnson's conviction for the murder of his four-year-old niece, Valin, was a tragic misinterpretation, Ontario's top pathologist testified yesterday.

Michael Pollanen said that two crucial autopsy observations led to the murder charge and conviction - a dilated anus, which was interpreted as a sign of a sexual assault; and bleeding in blood vessels of Valin's neck, which suggested that she had been strangled.

In fact, both were normal biological events that can be expected to take place when a child dies and is found lying face down, said Dr. Pollanen, Ontario's chief forensic pathologist.

He said that a child's anus will often dilate after death, and that blood responds to gravity after death and pools at the lowest point, often creating an appearance of bruising or compression.

Dr. Pollanen said that disgraced pathologist Charles Smith made another suspicious - but mistaken - observation when he conducted an autopsy on Valin's body in 1993: a laceration to her anus. In reality, he said, the laceration was caused when portions of her body were sectioned in preparation for the autopsy.

"The cause of death is unascertainable in this case," Dr. Pollanen said.

Crown counsel Michal Fairburn asked: "Essentially, we have a young girl who died suddenly and inexplicably, and any pathological attempt to explain her death would be mere speculation?"

"In my view ... a pathologist should resist any speculative guesses at the cause of death," Dr. Pollanen agreed.

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Formal acquittal not enough for tearful Mullins-Johnson

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William hugging his aunt on October 15th, 2007 after his murder conviction was overturned.