When the End Doesn’t Justify the Means:Voluntariness Issues and Unreliable Expert Witness Testimony in R v Doyle 2003

Author: Tia Andrews

The Case

In 1996, while dancing at home with his girlfriend’s infant son, Tyler, in his arms, twenty-three-year-old Bernard Doyle tripped and fell. Tyler fell on construction tools that were scattered around the floor of the apartment, with Mr. Doyle landing on top of him. In spite of immediately receiving medical attention, Tyler’s injuries were too severe; he died in the hospital the next day. Mr. Doyle was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. However, even with the judicial system against him, Mr. Doyle maintained his innocence for twenty-seven years until he was exonerated in 2023 after a successful appeal.

Tyler’s death was a tragic accident and served as punishment enough for himself and his family. . How did Mr. Doyle end up being convicted of a crime he did not commit and punished further for something he wasn’t morally culpable for? The misuse of two important evidentiary principles at his trial led to Mr. Doyle’s false conviction: voluntariness of confession, and faulty expert evidence. Both of these concepts will be examined in this blog . The scope of my analysis, focuses on  how evidence can be misused in pursuit of these ends, and  is limited to how the thirst by adversarial police and prosecutors for confessions and convictions can devolve into something that is no longer a fact-finding mission, but instead a search for culpability that, in Doyle, did not exist.

Voluntariness

Voluntariness is fundamentally outlined in Ibrahim v the King: “no statement by an accused is admissible in evidence against him unless it is shown by the prosecution to have been a voluntary statement…”[i] This principle is a tenet of evidence law as the prejudicial effects of an involuntary confession greatly outweigh its probative value when it may be inaccurate. Confessions are incredibly persuasive evidence. This is why they are strongly protected under Canadian law.

In R v Oickle, the Supreme Court delineated what constituted improper police conduct that would render a confession involuntary, such as circumstances of oppression. R v Hoilett is the leading case on this matter. In Hoilett, the accused was left in a cold cell without clothing for a prolonged period and spoke to the police in hopes they would give him warm clothes in exchange for cooperating.[ii] The purpose of taking a statement is to find out the truth of what happened. However,  if police are willing to prioritize a confession over the truth, that fundamental fact-finding purpose is distorted.

In Doyle, the truth-finding purpose of the trial process was distorted, which led to a wrongful conviction. Mr. Doyle was subjected to a “gruelling”[iii] police interrogation after Tyler’s death, which included several of the abusive techniques as outlined in Oickle.[iv] Mr. Doyle said in his affidavit that “I found the interview so traumatic that I almost began to believe what they were telling me, but it was not true.” Traumatized by the accidental death of the baby and the inherent presumptiveness of the police interview process, Mr. Doyle was “bullied into … saying something that [he] didn’t do”, after “they were drilling me for hours, and bullied me, and made me say what they wanted to hear”.[v] Beaten down, Mr. Doyle confessed, agreeing with the police that he must have caused Tyler’s death, though he knew it was not true. He maintained his innocence until his exoneration, stating that  “I did not shake Tyler, nor was I rough with him. I was handling him as an infant should be handled, gently and with love, and I tried to protect him when we fell.”[vi] The police’s conduct was reprehensible, “abusive” [vii]and prioritized finding someone to blame over their legal and moral obligation to seek the truth.  On appeal, the confession was found to merit “no weight”[viii] and should have been excluded from the 1997 trial. Had it been excluded, the result may have been significantly different.

The adversarial nature of the criminal justice system can make it easier for some police officers and experts to forget that their ultimate obligation is to the court and its truth-seeking process, not to securing confessions or convictions. Doyle is the most recent in a long line of cases where an accused person was coerced into confessions by police who prioritized results over the truth. The second and most blatant betrayal of that obligation came to light when Dr. Charles Smith was called to provide forensic evidence about what had caused Tyler’s death.

Expert Evidence

Expert evidence is called for when something is at issue that is beyond the scope of knowledge of a lay person. When someone has died, and the cause of their death is at issue, oftentimes a medical expert will be called to provide expert testimony about how death occurred. Dr. Charles Smith was a medical pathologist (as of 2011, he has been stripped of his medical license)[ix] who performed the majority of autopsies on children in Ontario between 1982 and 2003. He was asked to provide expert evidence in many cases where children had died under unknown circumstances.

When Tyler’s death began to be prosecuted, Dr. Smith was called by the Crown as a witness. He and another doctor testified that “a combination of blunt force trauma and “shaken baby syndrome” – Dr. Smith’s now discredited theory – accounted for Tyler’s injuries.”[x] At the time, Dr. Smith was acting with a lack of oversight that had disastrous consequences, but the Court accepted his testimony . The expert evidence that Tyler had been shaken and had had purposeful blunt force applied to his head was convincing. That, in combination with Mr. Doyle’s admission of guilt to the police, was damning, and the jury convicted him of manslaughter. He was sentenced to and spent three years in prison.

The appeal which my analysis focuses on was brought forward because four pieces of fresh evidence were proffered, consisting of (1) four new expert opinions on the forensic evidence; (2) a transcript of the 911 call made by Mr. Doyle after the accident; (3) a 2022 affidavit from Mr. Doyle; and (4) his cross-examination on that affidavit. The fresh evidence proved the Crown’s experts wrong, and necessitated admission “in the interests of justice.”[xi] As forensic science has progressed, many older cases (such as Doyle) that relied on less-accurate forms of evidence have been appealed to utilize scientific progress in the search for truth.

The new medical experts testified that Tyler’s injuries were consistent with a “complex fall.” This matched the fresh evidence from the 911 call transcript, and Mr. Doyle’s own testimony.  Tyler fell on uneven ground and then had an adult land on top of him, he suffered multiple impacts, which were consistent with the injuries he received. These four experts agreed on the complex fall explanation, with expert Dr. Van Ee stating that “Tyler’s injuries are accounted for by the history provided by Mr. Doyle.”[xii] Dr. Pollanen discredited the “shaken baby” theory and stated that though it may have been a mainstream theory in the late twentieth century, it has since been discredited as experts have increasingly accepted that complex falls are a “reasonable explanation for fatal head injuries in infants and children.”[xiii] On the fresh evidence, it was found that there was “no reasonable prospect of conviction” and Mr. Doyle was acquitted.[xiv]

How was this allowed to happen? Dr. Smith had clearly been either incompetent oron some sort of crusade. It was later discovered that twenty of his findings that had led to thirteen criminal convictions were problematic, and that he “felt it was his role to support the Crown”[xv] . The harm that he caused to families by having innocent parents branded as murderers and spending years in jail is incalculable, though the government of Ontario has set the monetary value at $250,000.[xvi] Dr. Smith’s saga exemplifies the dangers of using expert witnesses, who come with their own biases that may detract from the fact-finding process if they allow their biases to supersede their objective duty to the court.

The Goudge Inquiry was created to inquire into the state of pediatric forensic pathology in Ontario. It found that Dr. Smith, working with limited oversight, had “actively misled” superiors and made “false and misleading statements in court.”[xvii] Not only did his level of expertise fall far short of how he represented himself, it was also found that he had “a thing against people who hurt children”[xviii] which manifested itself to the way  he attributed accidental injuries in children to foul play. Dr. Smith’s distain against people who hurt children is understandable, but when engaging with the court system, feelings of moral outrage must take a backseat to the search for truth. Otherwise, the system does not function as intended and innocent people like Mr. Doyle end up as victims of wrongful convictions.

Principles

Evidence exists to help the courts in their search for truth. Anything that subverts the search for truth with an agenda of its own becomes an enemy of that very search. This case illustrates two important evidentiary principles, and how perverted their results became when actors forget that they are not just means to an end, but an end unto themselves. Here, Mr. Doyle had to deal with both police who prioritized getting a confession rather than finding out the truth of what really happened to Tyler, and an expert with a vendetta who thought it was more important to use manipulated evidence to help the Crown punish Mr. Doyle for perceived crimes than let the evidence stand on its own merit.

Luckily, since 1997, the jurisprudence has developed significantly. There are more common law protections in place to ensure confessions are reliable and voluntary, Oickle being one. After the Goudge Inquiry, forensic pathologists became subject to more qualification requirements and scrutiny. As the expert testifying in the 2023 appeal said, shaken baby syndrome has fallen out of vogue as an explanation for infant deaths.[xix]

Hopefully, as we continue to learn from our mistakes, there will be fewer cases where evidence is misused to pursue an agenda. Police must remember their duty to the accused and the judicial process when conducting interviews. Experts must remember that their primary duty is to the court, not to personal biases or to those who hired them, and if they cannot fulfill that duty, they must not be allowed to participate in proceedings. Courts must guard against the submission of inaccurate evidence to ensure that innocent people aren’t falsely convicted.

As for Mr. Doyle? After twenty-seven years, he’s free of the stigma of being a baby killer, but the pain of both losing Tyler and being dragged through a lengthy judicial process has stayed with him. He knows what the police and Dr. Smith couldn’t seem to accept, which is that sometimes awful things simply happen, and there’s nobody to blame. Leaving court after his exoneration, Doyle expressed excitement at getting to go and spend time with family, gratitude to those who stuck by him through the process, and sadness about his stepson, saying that he would never forget Tyler, and “couldn’t help thinking that he was [in court] with me today.”[xx]

Endnotes

[i] Ibrahim v. The King, 1914 AC 599 at 609.

[ii] R. v. Hoilett, 1999, 136 CCC (3d) 449.

[iii] R. v. Doyle, 2023 ONCA 427 at para 13 [Doyle].

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid at para 14.

[vi] Ibid at para 13.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] “Dr. Charles Smith: The man behind the public inquiry”, CBC News (8 December 2009), online: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/dr-charles-smith-the-man-behind-the-public-inquiry-1.864004 [CBC].

[x] Supra note 3 at para 5.

[xi] Ibid at para 7.

[xii] Ibid at para 10.

[xiii] Ibid at para 11.

[xiv] Ibid at para 15.

[xv] Zach Dubinsky, “Goudge inquiry expected to urge sweeping reforms for child autopsies”, (30 Sept 2008), online: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/goudge-inquiry-expected-to-urge-sweeping-reforms-for-child-autopsies-1.744162.

[xvi] $250,000 was provided by Ontario to those who were wrongfully convicted because of Dr. Smith’s testimony. (see Jill Mahoney, “Compensation for Ontario victims of forensic pathology scandal”, (10 August 2024), online: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/compensation-for-ontario-victims-of-forensic-pathology-scandal/article1212955/.)

[xvii] Supra note 9.

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Doyle at para 11.

[xx] Supra note 9.