Shaken Baby Syndrome Has Been Discredited. Why Is Roberson Still on Death Row?
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00247-018-4149-1
> Abusive head trauma (AHT) is the leading cause of fatal head injuries in children younger than 2 years.
> There is no controversy concerning the medical validity of the existence of AHT, with multiple components including subdural hematoma, intracranial and spinal changes, complex retinal hemorrhages, and rib and other fractures that are inconsistent with the provided mechanism of trauma
Shaken baby syndrome has not been debunked but the forensic science that concluded that shaking a baby was the only/most likely cause of those symptoms is what changed. It's now known there are other possible causes for those symptoms and abuse is less likely than some of those other symptoms.
The very quote you mention includes "intracranial and spinal changes", "rib and other fractures" and importantly "inconsistent with the provided mechanism of trauma". That last part is critical, because it means not simply concluding abuse from injuries, but also seeing that the story the caregiver provided doesn't actually make sense.
He's still on death row because judges, prosecutors, and the public all view our criminal justice system as infallible in a multitude of ways, and also one of the cornerstones of our democracy.
Letting him go would admit that in probably one of the worst ways possible (for an individual), the CJS is not infallible at all.
It doesn't help that the system is designed to be punitive, not reformative (see: the prisoner exception in the amendment banning slavery. We're one of very few industrialized nations where prisoners can be used as slave labor.)
Electing district attorneys also doesn't help; everything they do is aimed at their next election.
It used to be that groups like The Innocence Project would present DAs with conclusive DNA evidence that the person in jail wasn't responsible, and the DAs would refuse to do anything about it, because in the next election their opponent would be shouting about how they "let a convicted killer go."
- A blog post I wrote last year: https://cambridgeblog.org/2023/05/a-journey-into-the-shaken-...
- HN discussion on this blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402
- A scientific introduction to SBS: https://cyrille.rossant.net/introduction-shaken-baby-syndrom...
To be clear, what has been discredited is not the fact that babies are shaken (studies have consistently shown a high incidence of this type of abuse) nor that shaking is safe (it is not—never shake a baby).
What has been discredited by scientific evidence over the past 25 years is the reliance on isolated subdural and retinal hemorrhages in infants to determine with near certainty that a child has been violently shaken, in the absence of a history or evidence of major trauma. Abuse must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, considering other signs of trauma (fractures, bruises, neck injury) and ruling out a long list of alternative medical explanations. Most importantly, abuse is not a medical determination; it is a legal one.
https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/gummersbach-baby-zu-t...
The answer is the same.