TORONTO - A week of humiliation, apology and tears came to a quiet conclusion Friday for Dr. Charles Smith as the disgraced pathologist concluded five days of emotionally charged testimony before the public inquiry charged with probing his mistakes.

After five straight days of Smith expressing, in quiet, measured tones, his shame and embarrassment for work that sent innocent parents to jail for the deaths of their children, the questioning of the 57-year-old physician sputtered to an end, ahead of schedule.

The spectre of watching a man, who broke down in tears Thursday, repeatedly denigrated for the considerable errors of his professional life seemed to rob the inquiry's lawyers -- and those whose lives were torn apart by his mistakes -- of the desire to continue their inquisition.

As Smith slipped out a side door, lawyers declined to discuss the week's testimony.

William-Mullins Johnson, who spent 12 years in jail after he was wrongfully convicted in the death of his four-year-old niece, received a tearful and very public apology from Smith in a dramatic face-to-face confrontation during Thursday's testimony.

By Friday, the Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., man was visibly drained and weary of the spectacle.

"I'm tired," he said. "I'm going home to play in the snow."

Smith's work in 20 cases is the subject of a public inquiry into why pediatric pathology, on so many occasions, served only to compound the tragedy of a child's death instead of exposing the truth. Thirteen of those cases resulted in criminal charges.

Several of those involved single mothers in financial dire straits, some who had children by multiple partners.

The inquiry has heard evidence that Smith, when conducting his autopsies, scribbled down such observations as "hooker" and "cocaine," or that the mother was "shooting pool."

Still, Smith presented himself Friday as a well-intentioned professional who never let the comments investigators often made about a parent's economic or social status colour his findings.

Smith said he simply noted things told to him by investigators and that such observations never influenced his conclusions about how a child died.

"There have been numerous occasions when the science of my work has disproven any statement that was made to me about socio-economic or cultural factors," Smith testified Friday.

"I do take pride in (that) fact."

Despite his penance, Smith laid much of the blame for his errors on his limited education in forensic pathology - a deficit that he said left him ignorant of the criminal justice system.

Smith also told the inquiry Friday that during the trial of a mother charged with fatally stabbing her daughter with a pair of scissors, he noticed she was in emotional distress and expressed concern with justice officials that she needed proper legal representation.

"Trying to be helpful is one of the things that characterizes me," Smith said of the alleged incident. "That reflects the honesty of my heart."

The woman, who was charged largely as a result of Smith's expert evidence in her case, was later cleared after other experts determined her daughter was mauled by a pit bull.

During the time frame that covered many of Smith's most controversial cases, Dr. James Young - as chief coroner of Ontario - was the pathologist's superior when he conducted autopsies in suspicious child deaths.

The Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services oversaw the coroner's office, but Young was also the assistant deputy minister of that arm of the government. As such, Young was technically reporting to himself.

"It doesn't help when one of the persons charged with the lever for oversight is the very person being overseen," lawyer Julian Falconer said outside the inquiry after examining Smith.

While "there's no way to remove the responsibility . . . attributable to Dr. Smith," Falconer said the blame goes much higher.

"How come he was allowed to slip through the cracks? How can this level of sheer incompetence reflected by a judge in 1991, reported nationally in 1999, (go) on and on and on," said Falconer.

"Those who were in charge of catching it were asleep at the switch. Why? Because they entrusted the switch to the kids that were supposed to be baby-sat."

Smith, who lives in Victoria, will be subject to a review by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the regulatory body with the power to revoke his licence, after the inquiry concludes in late April.