One final, forensic bombshell exploded at the Goudge commission yesterday, when it emerged that Charles Smith testified for the state of Ohio in a 2000 child-murder case where the accused man narrowly escaped being executed.
After the man, Christopher Fuller, was convicted of aggravated murder and attempted rape of his three-year-old daughter, Randi - with the help of Dr. Smith's testimony - the jury recommended that he be put to death.
The trial judge, however, turned down the request. Citing the 31-year-old man's childhood of severe deprivation and his low IQ, the judge instead sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The revelation emerged yesterday - the last day of testimony at the inquiry into the discredited work of Dr. Smith - after lawyer Julian Falconer stumbled across it in a database comprising 30,000 documents that was given to lawyers at the inquiry.
The key document was a Sept. 22, 2000, letter from district attorney John Holcomb to Dr. Smith expressing gratitude for his "truly outstanding work."
James Lockyer and Louis Sokolov - lawyers representing groups of the wrongly convicted at the inquiry - told reporters that they have not yet been able to ascertain how vital Dr. Smith's testimony was to the state's case.
"I have no idea what the courts of Ohio would do with this information," Mr. Sokolov told reporters. "We are in no position to say whether this was a miscarriage of justice.
"But what we do know was that a pathologist whose work has been severely discredited in this province gave evidence which contributed to a guilty verdict and [the man]is in prison for life," he added.
Mr. Falconer said that, in light of Mr. Holcomb's praise for Dr. Smith, "I suggest that there is little doubt that Mr. Holcomb meant to convey to Dr. Smith that he played an important role in securing Mr. Fuller's conviction."
The revelation threw the inquiry into a brief tizzy, as Mr. Falconer, Mr. Sokolov and Mr. Lockyer applied to reopen questioning of former chief coroner James Young.
However, Mr. Justice Stephen Goudge ruled against them, noting that they had four months in which to discover the document and take action.
In the Ohio case, the victim was determined to have died of "asphyxia" caused by neck and chest compression. The case involved forensic evidence that included the identification of minute hemorrhages as evidence of asphyxia, and a "dilated anus" as evidence of a probable sexual assault.
Mr. Falconer noted that the evidence was "eerily similar" to key evidence in the 1992 conviction of an Ontario man, William Mullins-Johnson, in the sex slaying of his niece, Valin Johnson.
Mr. Mullins-Johnson was exonerated in October after the Ontario Court of Appeal was told that Dr. Smith's evidence on these points was dangerously wrong.
According to evidence at Mr. Fuller's trial, he initially told police that he found Randi unconscious on the bathroom floor one evening and attempted to resuscitate her in a panic.
In a second statement to police, he admitted to striking her after she struggled against his attempts to force her to engage in sexual conduct.
In rendering sentence, Judge Matthew Crehan said that Mr. Fuller had been dropped on his head as a child, suffered from Asperger's disorder and was depressed.
Goudge commission counsel Mark Sandler told the inquiry that lawyers for Dr. Smith have informed him that the Fuller case is the only death-penalty case in which their client has played a role.
Mr. Sokolov responded that, given Dr. Smith's general record for accuracy, he was not prepared to accept this assurance at face value.