Man convicted of Ontario toddler's death exonerated nearly 30 years later

Nearly three decades after being convicted of killing his partner’s toddler, Bernard Doyle has won the legal battle to clear his name.

On Monday, Ontario's Court of Appeal acquitted Doyle, 50, of manslaughter charges in the 1996 death of 17-month-old Tyler Cunningham, which he served three and a half years in a maximum-security prison for.

"The justice system has worked for me at last," Doyle said in a statement issued after the decision. "But I will never forget Tyler. He was a wonderful boy who had lots of promise."

Tyler died while in Doyle's care in a Cambridge, Ont. apartment in August 1996, according to the agreed-upon facts in court documents reviewed by CTV News Toronto. Ten days later, Doyle was arrested and charged with manslaughter.

The conviction of Doyle relied, in part, on evidence provided by disgraced pathologist Charles Smith. In 2011, Smith, the head forensic pathologist at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children from 1982 to 2003, was stripped of his medical license after the court found his "misguided testimonies on child deaths sent several innocent people to jail."

In its reasoning, the court said Doyle's conviction was "another in the long list of wrongful convictions brought about in part by the unreliable expert evidence of [the] disgraced pathologist."

A television camera looks out over the Ontario Court of Appeal in Toronto, Wednesday Jan. 31, 2007. (CP PHOTO/Adrian Wyld)

In 2008, Doyle's case was one of over 200 re-examined as part of a federal review into previous convictions citing shaken-baby syndrome deaths. The review was ordered in “light of [new] understanding of evolving science” and in the wake of questions on the validity and impacts of Smith’s testimonies.

When Tyler died, Doyle was alone with him, according to agreed-upon facts. Doyle’s lawyer told the appeal court the man had been dancing with Tyler in his arms when he tripped, and the pair fell onto building equipment left on the floor. Tyler sustained injuries, largely to his head, according to evidence provided to the court, and was taken to hospital where he died the next day.

During Doyle’s trial, experts, including Smith, suggested the child’s injuries were likely caused by a combination of shaking and blunt-force trauma and largely dismissed the idea that a fall could be to blame, court documents state.

Doyle, 23 at the time, did not testify at his trial. A jury convicted him in 1997 and he was sentenced to four years in jail, four months of which he had already served while awaiting trial. He served the entirety of his sentence.

In 2014, high-profile criminal lawyer James Lockyer took on Doyle's case, alongside another mother who'd been convicted of manslaughter in her child's shaken-baby death, launching appeals for both clients.

James Lockyer, now Doyle's lawyer, attends a past session at the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry into the mass murders in rural Nova Scotia on April 18/19, 2020, in Halifax on Thursday, July 14, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

Monday’s acquittal was based on a review of fresh evidence from four new experts, reviewed by CTV News Toronto. A neuropathologist, a biomechanical engineer, and two forensic pathologists agreed that a “complex fall” could indeed explain the injuries, according to their court submission.

In an affidavit submitted to the appeal court by Doyle in April 2022, 27 years after his conviction, he stated he had done nothing to cause Tyler’s death other than “trip and fall on him.”

He also recounts a three-hour interview with police in which he alleges he was told he had “shaken Tyler to death” and that he eventually “gave in” to those accusations, the document reads.

In its Monday decision, the court deemed that interview "a gruelling interrogation" which "reflected several abusive techniques."

“I have regretted that since this day,” Doyle said in his affidavit. “I was a young man and I was scared.”

"For the months I knew Tyler, I loved him,” the affidavit continued. “I felt responsible for his death because I was holding him when I fell, and he died. However, it was an accident.”

Crown lawyer Michael Bernstein agreed to admit the fresh evidence but asked the court Monday for a stay of proceedings rather than a clearing of the charges.

Ultimately, the judge ruled with Lockyer and Doyle, acquitting the now-50-year-old of the manslaughter charges.

Bernard Doyle can be seen at Osgoode Hall on June 12 (Handout by the Innocence Project)

Doyle’s case is among many Lockyer has successfully helped to fight that produced a conviction based on wrongful evidence. Since 1992, much of his practice has been spent fighting wrongful convictions, including the high-profile case of David Milgaard, a Canadian man wrongfully convicted of rape and imprisoned for 23 years who dedicated his life post-incarceration to justice activism.

CTV News Toronto has reached out to Lockyer for a statement on the decision but did not receive a response by publication.

In February, the federal government tabled the 'David and Joyce Milgaard Law,' a bill that, if passed, would see an independent commission established to review, investigate and decide which criminal cases should be sent back to the justice system.