Shaken-baby syndrome faces new questions in Court, experts disagree about evidence.

But some experts say the testimony on which criminal courts rely in convicting those responsible for such child abuse may not be as reliable as was once thought, according to the New York Times.

Symptoms thought to conclusively show that shaking had occurred and the time frame in which injuries were deemed to have taken place are increasingly the subject of debate among experts, explains the magazine-length article. And some are also questioning whether innocent people have been wrongfully convicted based on unproven theories that were not aggressively challenged by defense lawyers relying on claimed medical expertise.

For example, “it is simply incorrect to state that severe retinal hemorrhaging is diagnostic of abuse or shaking,” says Evan Matshes. The Canadian forensic pathologist presented a paper on the topic at a 2010 meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

dozen years ago, the medical profession held that if the triad of subdural and retinal bleeding and brain swelling was present without a fracture or bruise that would indicate, for example, that a baby had accidently fallen, abuse must have occurred through shaking. In the past decade, that consensus has begun to come undone. In 2008, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, after reviewing a shaken-baby case, wrote that there is “fierce disagreement” among doctors about the shaken-baby diagnosis, signaling “a shift in mainstream medical opinion.” In the same year, at the urging of the province’s chief forensic pathologist, the Ontario government began a review of 142 shaken-baby cases, because of “the scientific uncertainty that has come to characterize that diagnosis.” In Britain, after one mother’s shaken-baby conviction was overturned, Peter Goldsmith, then attorney general, reviewed 88 more cases. In 2006, he announced doubts about three of the convictions because they were based solely on the triad; in the other cases, Goldsmith said, there was additional evidence pointing to the defendant’s guilt.

A small but growing number of doctors warn that there can be alternate explanations — infections or bleeding disorders, for example — for the triad of symptoms associated with shaken-baby syndrome. Across the country, the group of lawyers that has succeeded in exonerating hundreds of people based on DNA evidence is now mounting 20 to 25 appeals of shaken-baby convictions. “No one wants child abuse,” says Keith Findley, a lawyer for the Wisconsin Innocence Project. “But we should not be prosecuting and convicting people in shaken-baby cases right now, based on the triad of symptoms, without other evidence of abuse. If the medical community can’t agree about all the conflicting data and research, how is a jury supposed to reach a conclusion that’s beyond a reasonable doubt?”


Links: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/magazine/06baby-t.html

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/as_experts_disagree_about_evidence_in_shaken-baby_cases/