TORONTO - A woman convicted of killing her newborn baby in a case involving now disgraced pathologist Dr. Charles Smith won't have to face a new trial.
Charges against the woman, who can only be identified as F due to a publication ban, were withdrawn Wednesday by the Crown.
The Ontario Court of Appeal had quashed her conviction last October and ordered a new trial in the 1996 death of Baby F.
F had said she had felt pressured into pleading guilty to infanticide due to Smith's stellar reputation at the time as a pediatric forensic pathologist.
Lawyer James Lockyer told the appeal court that F -- who was 18 at the time -- gave birth to a baby that was stillborn or died minutes after birth.
An inquiry by Justice Stephen Goudge found that errors in Smith's work were responsible, in part, for several people being wrongfully convicted and sent to prison for killing children.
"The Ministry (of the Attorney General) has been working to expedite cases where an injustice has been claimed," spokesman Brendan Crawley said Wednesday.
"This was one of the cases in which Dr. Smith provided an opinion on the cause of death, but that opinion was later discredited," Crawley added.
