TORONTO, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Lawyers for a Canadian pathologist accused of incompetence and professional misconduct entered a no contest plea Tuesday at a Toronto disciplinary hearing.
Charles Smith did not appear before the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons hearing where families of people who were wrongly imprisoned as a result of Smith's findings also attended, Postmedia News reported.
The hearing didn't immediately announce a penalty, which could range from a temporary to permanent medical license revocation as well as a fine.
Smith stopped practicing medicine in 2008, a year after Ontario's chief coroner announced an investigation had found major problems with 20 of 44 autopsies Smith.
Convictions based on Smith's testimony are still being reviewed and some have been overturned.
In October, the provincial attorney general's office awarded a man $4.25 million for his wrongful conviction and imprisonment in the 1994 death of his niece, the report said.
Smith worked as a child forensic pathologist for the Chief Coroner's Office from the 1980s until 2001.
