By Isabelle Taft; February 28, 2023

Benton’s testimony was a key factor in preventing two Mississippians convicted of shaking a baby to death from getting new trials. And although he claims to approach his work with scientific objectivity, a Mississippi Today review of his testimony found inconsistencies and a claim directly contradicted by medical literature.

This story is the second part in Mississippi Today’s “Shaky Science, Fractured Families” investigation about the state’s only child abuse pediatrician crossing the line from medicine into law enforcement and how his decisions can tear families apart. Read the full series here.

At Jeffrey Havard’s trial in 2002, medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne testified the Adams County man had shaken 6-month-old Chloe Britt to death. Her injuries — bleeding in both her brain and retinas — were “consistent with a person violently shaking a small child.”

More than a decade after Havard was convicted and sentenced to death, Hayne changed his mind. 

At a hearing in 2017 to determine whether Havard would receive a new trial, Hayne said he believed the science had evolved, and that Chloe could not have died by shaking alone, though he still thought her death was a homicide. The claim that had put Havard on death row — an injury to her rectum meant he had sexually assaulted the baby — disintegrated, as three different experts and Hayne himself now said there was no evidence of sexual abuse. 

Havard had long maintained he had been giving Chloe a bath when she slipped from his arms and her head hit the toilet. He put her to bed, and not long after, her mother found her “blue and not breathing.” She died at Natchez Community Hospital on Feb. 21, 2002. 

Three defense experts testified in that 2017 hearing that the autopsy findings were consistent with the short fall onto a hard surface Havard had described…

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