Death in the Family

Starred review from March 20, 2017
Chipman, a prolific radio producer, journalist, and author (The Obsession: Tragedy in the North Atlantic), brings his finely tuned investigative skills to bear in this first-rate combination of police procedural, courtroom drama, and history of wrongful convictions emanating from the infamous Dr. Charles Smith’s flawed forensic pathology reports in Ontario in the 1990s. By introducing the intimate details and backstories of families in which parents were wrongfully accused and convicted of murdering children who in fact died of other causes, Chipman allows readers to empathize with those whose lives have been torn asunder and to imagine how easily they could have been drawn into similarly tragic circumstances. Chipman clearly illustrates how an institutional culture that pushed legal authorities to “think dirty” and suspect child abuse in far too many cases was enabled by the absence of a robust system of checks and balances. He writes with a fierce immediacy that balances the medical-scientific details of the autopsy world, the legal minutiae of the courts, and the brutal conditions behind prison walls. This work is a painful reminder of the far-reaching, devastating ripple effects on friends, families, and communities when the systems that are supposed to protect basic democratic rights fail.