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Case Study Of John's Wrongful Conviction: Flawed Pathology Evidence

1139 Words5 Pages

John (Jack) Salmon was charged with the murder of his common-law wife, Maxine Ditchfield, a 28 year old dog groomer and mother of three who had died due to fatal brain injuries on September 22th, 1970. John, a welder, met Maxine in 1967 and they started dating each other in 1970, and then moved in together. Following the couple’s time at a local hotel drinking beer, and later returning to their friends, Don and Mary Claydon’s residence where they continued to drink before deciding to go back to their house. That night and the following morning, Maxine experienced several falls with the associated bruising and marks on her face and body from hitting the floor and washroom features, resulting in evident changes in her movements. John …show more content…

This represented the power and position of forensic pathology in the criminal justice system, which the Crown and defence rely on, but can end in incarcerations of innocent individuals, as shown in John’s case. In this investigation, rather than having evidence presented by a forensic pathologist, Dr. Dietrich was a clinical pathologist who was trained to determine causes of disease in living patients and not to perform post-mortem examinations to identify the causes of death. John’s trial was proceeded by an unqualified pathologist without training in the area required to provide medical evidence in criminal trials, which lead to misdiagnoses and John’s wrongful conviction. As well, rather than approaching evidence with an open mind “without preconceptions or presumptions about abuse”, Dr. Dietrich had initially believed Maxine’s death was a homicide, therefore demonstrating his bias and lean towards evidence supporting his view instead of the truthful information …show more content…

Eyewitness accounts play a huge role in general in trials and verdicts, but may be unreliable many times, with certain views placed on evidence provided by children. Unreliability may arise from not being able to recount the identity of the accused, the actions and speech occurring during that time, the relationship of individuals towards the person in question, and many

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