"SHAKEN BABY SYNDROME"
"Every year in this country, hundreds of people are convicted of having shaken a baby, most often to death. In a prosecution paradigm without precedent, expert medical testimony is used to establish that a crime occurred, that the defendant caused the infant's death by shaking, and that the shaking was sufficiently forceful to constitute depraved indifference to human life.
Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is, in essence, a medical diagnosis of murder, one based solely on the presence of a diagnostic triad: (1) retinal bleeding, (2) bleeding in the protective layer of the brain, and (3) brain swelling.
New scientific research has cast doubt on the forensic significance of this triad, thereby undermining the foundations of thousands of SBS convictions. Outside the United States, this scientific evolution has prompted systemic reevaluations of the prosecutorial paradigm. Most recently, after a seventeen-month investigation costing $8.3 million, a Canadian commission recommended that all SBS cases be reviewed. In contrast, our criminal justice system has failed to absorb the latest scientific knowledge. This is beginning to change, yet the response has been halting and inconsistent."
[Deborah Tuerkheimer, 87 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1 (2009)]
The term "Shaken Baby Syndrome" was first coined in the early 1970s. As previously stated, supra, it has been used to describe a characteristic set of head injuries found in infants who have allegedly been subjected to violent shaking: (1) swelling of the brain, (2) bleeding around the brain, and (3) bleeding in the retinas.
The theory was first espoused by a pair of pediatric specialists as a possible cause of the otherwise unexplained head injuries sometimes seen in infants with no visible signs of physical abuse. It quickly took root in the medical community.
Before long, SBS became widely accepted as a clinical diagnosis for head injuries inflicted on small children. And a nationwide educational campaign to alert the public to the dangers of shaking was launched.
In fact, SBS is now so firmly ingrained in the public consciousness that the World Health Organization has a diagnostic classification for it; the American Board of Pediatrics offers a subspecialty in it; and last year, for the fifth year in a row, the U.S. Senate designated the third week in April as National Shaken Baby Syndrome Awareness Week.
To this day, there is widespread consensus among medical professionals that shaking a baby is dangerous and often lethal. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the National Association of Medical Examiners have all issued position papers embracing the theory, although the NAME paper, which was published despite failing peer review, was later withdrawn. The Centers for Dis ease Control and Prevention publishes SBS prevention guides for public health departments and community organizations. And several states, including Ohio, New York and Texas, require prospective parents and child care providers to learn about the perils of shaking.
Audrey Edmunds
In or about 1996, wife, mother and child care provider Audrey Edmunds of Wisconsin, then a 35-year-old stay-at-home mom, was convicted of reckless homicide in the 1995 shaking death of a neighbor couple’s infant daughter. She was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
In 2008, however, a Wisconsin appeals court granted her a new trial on the grounds that a shift in mainstream medical opinion as to the cause of the girl’s injuries now casts doubt on Edmunds’ guilt.
Prosecutors subsequently dismissed the case against Edmunds—not because they think she is innocent but to spare the victim’s parents the agony of having to revisit their daughter’s death.
Now, in 2012, Edmunds’ culpability remains a hotly contested topic of conversation in criminal justice circles. And her case has reignited a fierce debate in the forensic community over the science behind what’s called "shaken baby syndrome" (SBS).
Certainly, the vast majority of doctors still regard it as a valid and reliable diagnosis, one whose scientific basis has been proven time and time again by decades of peer-reviewed research, clinical experience and caregiver confessions.
But a small and apparently growing number of forensic experts have begun to question many of the assumptions upon which the diagnosis rests—like whether shaking alone can produce the kind of traumatic head injuries attributed to SBS in the absence of other injuries, like a broken neck, or whether a child who has been shaken violently would immediately be rendered unconscious.
The decision marks the first time that an appeals court has questioned the scientific basis for a shaken baby conviction, and some hope the Wisconsin ruling will lead to a systematic court review of the evidence in other shaken baby cases, or even an independent examination of the underlying science by some neutral third party like the National Academy of Sciences.
Today, a freed Audrey Edmunds, now 51, continues to maintain her innocence, though she is still angry about her prosecution.
[lawreview.wustl.edu/inprint/Volume 87, No. 1/ 87 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1 (2009)/ "The NExt Innocence Project: Shaken Baby Syndrome and the Criminal Courts"/ by Deborah Tuerkheimer; www.abajournal.com/ December 1, 2011/ "Unsettling Science: Experts Are Still Debating Whether Shaken Baby Syndrome Exists"/ by Mark Hansen; blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/June 22, 2009/Javier Lavagnino, Esq./ "Reliability of Shaken Baby Syndrome Diagnosis Questioned"; www.thecrimereport.org/SBS and Audrey Edmunds; www.nytimes.com/02-02-2011/ "Shaken-Baby Syndrome Faces New Questions in Court"/ by Emily Bazelon; mip.medill.northwestern.edu/blog/ Sept. 19, 2012/ "A Point of View: Shaken Baby Syndrome"]
No comments:
Post a Comment