Interruption for Serious Legal Matter

This came up again today, and when I was trying to think of something to post tonight and coming up blank, I decided that some of you might find this interesting. I bet a few of you know of these developments, but most do not.

I have several clients who are convicted of murder in the death of babies or infants, where the State claimed the child died of Shaken Baby Syndrome. That "diagnosis" was all the rage back in the day, and of course, those kinds of cases made the news pretty regularly. All kinds of education programs were put in place to educate people, who evidently do not know that shaking a baby can really hurt it.

What you probably do not know is this--recent research shows that Shaken Baby Syndrome is junk science.

There are three main symptoms that will suggest a baby has been shaken to death. Hemmorhages in the eyeballs, bruising on the brain and brain swelling have been enough to convict hundreds of people of murder. Quite often (in fact, in almost every case I have handled like this), no one can even pinpoint when the baby was injured (versus when they died), or testify that the defendant was ever seen doing something to the baby.

Now scientists know that brain bleeds are quite often present in babies when they are born. No apparent reason, they are just there. But since we hardly scan babies for brain bleeds at birth, we don't know who has them and who does not--but finding it in an autopsy is going to send someone to prison. Retinal hemmorhaging is also very common-- and can be caused by attempts to resuscitate a person. Or puking hard-- I have seen that myself.

A major issue in these cases is the common medical testimony that the child could not have sustained the injuries by a fall, like from a couch, or off the monkey bars, or just by tripping. Studies done on crash test dummies now show that is absolutely not true. A fall of just a few feet can cause exactly the big three injuries that have been the basis of SBS cases. A corollary to this is that tests also show that it is virtually impossible for the average adult to shake a child hard enough to cause the injuries claimed to result from shaking.

An interesting thing developing is that many of the things that alert a person that a baby is hurt (vomiting, lethargy, bruising, retinal hemmorhages) are also indicative of two other situations--a Vitamin C deficiency, and reactions to vaccines, With Vitamin C deficiency, ribs reak--and I cannot tell you how often broken ribs show up in these cases as proof the child was abused. Vitamin C deficiency does not present the same way in infants as it does adults, but it is simple enough to do a blood test for proof of it. But is this done before there is a rush to diagnose SBS? Nope. The vaccine reaction is similar in that vaccines cause a histamine reaction, in inverse proportion to the amount of Vitamin C in the body.

Ok, so what all this ranting about is this--how many people are in prison for shaking a baby to hurt it or shaking it to death, based on this junk science? A whole lot. Sure, some of them really did something to hurt the baby. But we sure cannot tell who they are, can we?

If that does not scare the hell out of you, you just are not paying attention