The following articles and cases are essential to examine due to the faulty science of shaken baby syndrome and the false accusations that can arise.
The Debate Over Shaken Baby Syndrome
June 16, 2022, By Emily Bobrow, The Wall Street Journal
Defense lawyers are challenging the science behind a diagnosis that has sent hundreds of parents and caregivers to prison.
The Decades-Old Case Casts Doubt on Shaken Baby Syndrome Convictions
MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) –
This decades-old case has now put forensic science on trial as a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor hopes his research on the topic helps exonerate those whose convictions have ties to Shaken Baby Syndrome…
A Star Witness Recanted. But Tasha Shelby Is Still Imprisoned For ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’ Junk-Science
October 19, 2022, by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, The Appeal
In a Mississippi courtroom more than twenty years ago, a jury was tasked with deciding if 25-year-old Tasha Shelby should be executed for the murder of two-year-old Bryan Thompson IV, a crime that likely never occurred…
In the years since her 2000 conviction, the case against her has unraveled.
Flawed Forensics: A Controversial Doctor. A disputed abuse diagnosis. Two convicted Wisconsin men say they are innocent.
April 2022, Wisconsin Watch
Courts, legal experts, and medical specialists are increasingly scrutinizing the abusive head trauma diagnosis. This umbrella term includes the controversial diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, for lacking a scientific basis and criteria for diagnosis. Earlier this year, a New Jersey judge labeled abusive head trauma “junk science” and refused to allow testimony about the diagnosis in his courtroom…
Nationally, since 1992, 26 people have been exonerated following convictions on charges stemming from diagnoses of abusive head trauma or shaken baby syndrome, according to The National Registry of Exonerations…
Columbus woman’s exoneration makes history
November 1, 2021, Yolanda Harris, 10 WBNS
Kim Hoover-Moore was exonerated last month in what’s known as a “shaken baby syndrome” case. Hoover-Moore was falsely convicted of the crime in 2003.
Pro Bono Heroes: How Keker team won freedom for a father in ‘shaken baby syndrome’ case
April 29, 2021, By Jenna Greene, Reuters
It’s hard to find anything but heartbreak in the case of Clifton Jones, who was convicted in 2007 of killing his infant son CJ based on what his lawyers from Keker, Van Nest & Peters and the Northern California Innocence Project call faulty forensic science about “shaken baby syndrome.”
But thanks to their pro bono work, there is at last a measure of justice…
Key to his release? His lawyers convinced the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office that the scientific consensus around shaken baby syndrome has significantly changed, and that Jones, after 15 years behind bars, deserved to be resentenced and released…
New Research on Shaken Baby Syndrome Helps Free Man Who Spent 15 Years in Prison
April 22, 2021; by Olga R. Rodriguez, 5nbcdfw
Clifton Jones’ case is among a nationwide series of recent legal challenges to what used to be accepted evidence of shaken baby syndrome.
A man imprisoned for 15 years in the death of his month-old son is free after prosecutors and a judge agreed that the scientific research underlying what was once called “shaken baby syndrome” has changed significantly in recent years…
Jones’ case is among a nationwide series of recent legal challenges to what used to be accepted evidence of shaken baby syndrome, which at one point was determined by brain swelling and bleeding inside the skull and behind the eyes. Medical experts now say the telltale pattern of injuries isn’t so clear and that those symptoms can sometimes be caused by a short accidental fall…
How Dubious Science Helped Put A New Jersey Woman In Prison For Killing A Baby In Her Care
January 15, 2020, by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, The Appeal
The state said Michelle Heale shook the baby to death, but some experts say her conviction was based on debunked science...
The state’s case was built on testimony from the hospital’s doctors, as well as two of the most well-known adherents to the diagnosis known as shaken baby syndrome (SBS). But critics say SBS has failed to survive scientific scrutiny, and Heale’s case, according to medical and legal experts, appears to have involved a rush to judgment based on questionable science…
Shaken Baby Syndrome Hypothesis Has Never Been Scientifically Validated
May 3, 2019, by Jenna Little, California Innocence Project
For years we have known that the diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is flawed. Yet too many innocent parents and caretakers remain wrongfully incarcerated and face wrongful convictions based on this false evidence. In a statement released by the Innocence Network on April 30, the Network explains that although the SBS hypothesis was popularized in the early 2000s, it has never been scientifically validated.
‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’ Diagnoses Discredited, Convictions Questioned
May 15, 2018, by Matthew Clarke, Criminal Legal News
The term “junk science” does not quite cover the revolution in our understanding of the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome. Medical experts now know that their belief in how to diagnose a clear sign of child abuse based upon a determination of shaken baby syndrome was mistaken. This new understanding may cast doubt on hundreds of murder, assault, and child abuse convictions…
Wrongly Imprisoned for Killing His Infant Daughter, a Father Could Go Free This Week
The science on shaken baby syndrome, it turns out, was not actually sound and should not have been used for putting this father behind bars.
December 5, 2017, by Vince Beiser, Slate (This story was originally published by The Chronicle of Social Change, a nonprofit news publication that covers issues affecting vulnerable children, youth, and their families.)
Mississippi and New York Shaken Baby Convictions Tossed
December 17, 2014, Innocence Project
Two Shaken-Baby convictions were overturned this week, with judges citing changing medical opinion regarding the controversial diagnosis.
Judge reverses shaken-baby conviction
December 16, 2014, by Steve Orr and Gary Craig, Democrat & Chronicle
In a ruling that could have statewide significance, a Monroe County Court judge has reversed the 2001 murder conviction of a Greece woman who was accused in the shaken-baby death of a toddler in her care.
In a decision released Tuesday morning, Judge James Piampiano ruled that the science used to convict René Bailey has changed significantly since her trial.
The ruling marks the first time a shaken-baby conviction has been overturned in New York on the basis of changing science. Lawyers have won a handful of reversals in other states in recent years.
Levon Brooks, Time Served, 16 Years
June 2008, Innocence Project
Levon Brooks served 16 years in Mississippi prisons for a 1990 rape and murder of a three-year-old girl he didn’t commit. In 2008, DNA testing cleared another man, Kennedy Brewer, who had been sentenced to death for a nearly identical murder that happened in the same town less than two years after the crime for which Brooks was convicted. The DNA results implicated the perpetrator of that crime, and he confessed to committing both murders, clearing Brooks.
The exonerations of the two men, both Innocence Project clients, revealed troubling problems with autopsies and forensic oversight in Mississippi, and the underlined the shortcomings of bite mark comparison evidence.The exonerations of the two men, both Innocence Project clients, revealed troubling problems with autopsies and forensic oversight in Mississippi, and the underlined the shortcomings of bite mark comparison evidence…
In the wake of the exonerations of Brewer and Brooks, the Innocence Project and several other organizations and individuals began to call for investigations into the work of Hayne and West. For years, Hayne claimed to conduct 1,200 to 1,800 autopsies a year across the state of Mississippi (six times the professional standard), earning him more than a million dollars a year.
Hayne had served as Mississippi’s chief medical examiner in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but couldn’t fill the position permanently because the state required the official to be properly board-certified, which he is not. The position has been vacant for more than 15 years, however, and Hayne was essentially filling the role on a de facto basis. In August of 2008, just months after the Brewer and Brooks exonerations, the state announced that it was severing all ties with Hayne…
Justice for Jeffrey Havard 