Former doctor’s sexual assault conviction quashed in appeal

A former Hamilton pediatrician twice convicted of abusing teenage boys has had one of those convictions quashed by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

The decision released last week overturns Daniel Marshall’s conviction of Dec. 7, 2015, acquitting him of one count of sexual assault. He had been sentenced to pay a $5,000 fine. The acquittal came in the form of a written decision released Oct. 19 after the appeal was heard in May.

Judge Gloria Epstein acquitted Marshall after she ruled that Hamilton Superior Court Justice James Ramsay’s verdict was unreasonable because of his misapprehension of the expert evidence presented at trial.

Two experts at trial, one for the Crown and one for the defence, testified that touching an adolescent’s penis may be necessary in the particular exam the complainant needed. Ramsay, however, concluded Marshall did not need to couch the boy’s penis, Epstein wrote. The Court of Appeals judge added that Ramsay inferred this touching was for a sexual purpose.

Last July, the College of Physicians and Surgeons banned Marshall from the medical profession.

Marshall’s first conviction, in April 2013, on another count of sexual assault still stands after he lost an appeal of that one in July 2015. He was sentenced to eight months in jail.

That conviction is related to three incidents involving one victim, two at his home and one on a zip-lining excursion. The decision resulted from a trial on 32 sex crime charges based on allegations by 20 boys that Marshall touched them inappropriately during genital exams. He was convicted of just one count of sexual assault and acquitted of the others.