TORONTO -- Ontario's appeal court will be asked today to quash a woman's 25-year-old manslaughter conviction in the death of her stepdaughter.
The Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted will go before the court today to argue that Maria Shepherd's 1992 conviction should be thrown out.
The group is supported by Ontario's attorney general who agrees that Shepherd's guilty plea and conviction should be struck and an acquittal entered.
Shepherd was implicated by disgraced pathologist Charles Smith in the death of her three-year-old stepdaughter Kasandra.
It was one of many suspicious child deaths in which Smith had done the autopsy.
A review of his work and subsequent public inquiry uncovered numerous examples where he made serious mistakes, and he was stripped of his medical licence in 2011.
Shepherd says she is looking forward to having another day in court today.
"It has been a very long wait. I hope today that the Court of Appeal will clear my name," she said Sunday in a statement released by the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted.
In 1991, Kasandra Shepherd, of Brampton, Ont. began vomiting and became unresponsive. She died two days after being admitted to hospital. Smith concluded she died from trauma due to at least one blow of "significant force."
Shepherd had told police she pushed the child once with her wrist and watch hitting the girl on the back of the head, but she said she didn't believe the blow could have killed the child.
Her lawyer at the time consulted an outside expert who agreed Smith's theory was reasonable and it prompted Shepherd to plead guilty to manslaughter.
The Crown now says the conviction should be set aside based on new forensic evidence. Experts have concluded Smith's testimony at Shepherd's court hearing contained a "number of significant errors."
The theory is that Kasandra may have had a previous brain injury that caused seizures or that she suddenly developed a seizure disorder that led to her death.
