JUSTICE REPORTER
Five canvas bags filled with donated clothing lay in a pile outside an ornate Ontario Court of Appeal courtroom yesterday morning - a symbol of the confidence Tammy Marquardt's supporters felt that she would be freed on bail after 14 years in prison for the murder of her child.
Minutes later, she was. Ms. Marquardt beamed a broad smile from the prisoner's box as Crown counsel Gillian Roberts consented to her release pending a rehearing of the case.
"This is my day," Ms. Marquardt told reporters afterward. Overwhelmed to the point of tears by the adjustment from a prison cell to a media scrum and freedom, the slightly built woman gasped: "I'm out. I made it. It's totally amazing. I'm in a bit of shock."
Based largely on testimony from Dr. Charles Smith, Ms. Marquardt's conviction was thrown into doubt after an independent review found that the onetime god of pediatric forensic pathology had made errors leading to wrongful conviction in numerous cases of parents accused of killing their children.
Her two-year-old son, Kenneth, died on Oct. 9, 1993, after Ms. Marquardt called 911 in a panic to report that she had emerged from the shower to find the child, who had a history of epileptic seizures, tangled in his bedclothes, struggling for breath and calling, "Mommy."
Yesterday, Ms. Marquardt recalled her misery as she learned that other murder convictions based on Dr. Smith's testimony had been overturned, but never hers. "I just have one thing I want to say to him, and that is: Why?" she said.
"But it wasn't just his fault," Ms. Marquardt added yesterday.
She cited the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario, which employed Dr. Smith, as well as the people who trained him. "I just hope and pray that the system changes."
Ms. Marquardt described the past 14 years as "a living hell."
Her appeals exhausted, abandoned by her family and branded a baby-killer, Ms. Marquardt's only hope lay in the work of her lawyers at the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted.
"It was devastating," Ms. Marquardt said. "It's the worst kind of heartache a parent could ever feel. I don't think there is any other pain that could possibly be worse. I don't know exactly how I survived it, but I showed myself that I was a very strong person to get through all this."
Under a bail plan that was approved by Madam Justice Kathryn Feldman, Ms. Marquardt will live in a Toronto halfway house pending her appeal.
Ms. Marquardt said yesterday that she longs to have contact with her two other sons, who were born around the time of her conviction and seized by child-welfare authorities to be placed in foster homes.
"I just hope that one day they know what happened," the 37-year-old mother said. "I'd like them to know that I would like to have contact with them, but I don't want them feeling obligated. It's got to be their choice.
"I'll be there for them," she said. "When they are ready, they'll find me. I'm hoping that they are watching the news today. I don't know if they even know who I am. I can only keep praying that they do."
