September 14: Mistaken Black Identity: Social historian Edmund Davis explains in this powerful, beautifully written commentary, why facial recognition algorithms are no substitute for independent verification in an eye-opening commentary on "Chicago Defender,' noting that: "Facial recognition was supposed to make identification more scientific. Instead, when investigators treat an algorithmic lead as evidence rather than a lead requiring rigorous independent verification, old human biases can acquire digital authority. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found significant demographic differences across many facial-recognition algorithms. In one-to-one matching, NIST found higher false-positive rates for African American and Asian faces compared with Caucasian faces, with differences often ranging from 10 to 100 times, depending on the algorithm.""

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: "This Blog is interested in false eye-witness identification issues because wrongful identifications are at the heart of so many DNA-related exonerations in the USA and elsewhere - and because so much scientific research is being conducted with a goal to making the identification process more transparent and reliable- and less subject to deliberate manipulation. I have also reported far too many cases over the years - mainly cases lacking DNA evidence (or other forensic evidence pointing to the suspect - where the identification is erroneous - (all too often where Black identity is mistaken) in spite of witness’s certainty that it is true - or where the police have somehow rigged the identification process in order to make a desired identification inevitable.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Search “mistaken identity police arrest,” and the images and news reports tell their own disturbing story: innocent people handcuffed, detained, jailed, and sometimes traumatized because they supposedly “fit the description." How many times can “mistaken identity” happen before America stops treating every incident as merely an innocent mistake? And what does the persistence of these racial disparities tell us about anti-Blackness in American institutions?"

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "There is no comprehensive national database documenting every innocent person stopped, searched, handcuffed, detained, or arrested because police believed that person “fit the description.” That absence matters. America collects extensive criminal-justice statistics, yet we still cannot determine exactly how many innocent citizens experience mistaken-identity police encounters each year. .According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Black people in 2022 were three times as likely as white people—6% compared with 2%—to experience threatened or actual nonfatal force during their most recent police-initiated or traffic-accident-related contact."

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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "The reforms are not mysterious: require independent corroboration before arrests involving facial recognition; prohibit an algorithmic candidate from becoming the sole basis for probable cause; strengthen body-camera accountability; improve eyewitness-identification procedures; audit racial disparities; document mistaken-identity detentions; and establish national reporting so America can finally determine how frequently innocent people are stopped because they supposedly “fit the description.” Good policing should welcome safeguards that improve accuracy."

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COMMENTARY : "Mistaken identity only if you're black: When “Fitting the Description” Turns Blackness Into Probable Cause, by Edmond W. Davis, published by Chicago Defender, on September 11, 2026. (Edmond W. Davis is a social historian, media strategist HBCU leader, and professor);

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GIST: "Tashawn Bernard was 12 years old.

Driving while Black. Working while Black. Walking while Black. And now, apparently, doing chores while Black.

These phrases describe a painful American reality in which routine encounters between Black citizens—particularly Black males—and law enforcement can escalate into suspicion, detention, handcuffs, force, or arrest. Sometimes authorities acknowledge “mistaken identity.” Other cases raise serious questions about racial profiling, inadequate verification, and police misconduct.

Search “mistaken identity police arrest,” and the images and news reports tell their own disturbing story: innocent people handcuffed, detained, jailed, and sometimes traumatized because they supposedly “fit the description.”

How many times can “mistaken identity” happen before America stops treating every incident as merely an innocent mistake? And what does the persistence of these racial disparities tell us about anti-Blackness in American institutions?

On August 10, 2023, Bernard was outside his Lansing, Michigan, home taking out the trash when police detained and handcuffed him while searching for a suspected car thief. Officers had the wrong person. Lansing police acknowledged the misidentification and released Bernard within minutes. But a few minutes can become a lifelong memory when you are a child surrounded by armed adults with the authority to take away your freedom.

In July 2025, Bernard and his family filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against Lansing and several officers.

There is no comprehensive national database documenting every innocent person stopped, searched, handcuffed, detained, or arrested because police believed that person “fit the description.” That absence matters. America collects extensive criminal-justice statistics, yet we still cannot determine exactly how many innocent citizens experience mistaken-identity police encounters each year.

What we can measure is troubling.According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Black people in 2022 were three times as likely as white people—6% compared with 2%—to experience threatened or actual nonfatal force during their most recent police-initiated or traffic-accident-related contact.

Bernard was not committing a crime. He was doing what his father asked him to do: taking out the trash.

His family’s lawsuit alleges lasting emotional harm. Therapy may help a traumatized child process such an experience, but therapy cannot erase the moment.

In a well-run organization, when an unacceptable outcome occurs repeatedly, leaders examine the process itself. One of the first questions should be: Was the established process followed? If it was, yet innocent people repeatedly suffer unacceptable outcomes, then perhaps the process itself requires examination.

Wrongful-conviction evidence makes that examination even more urgent. The Innocence Project reports that 58% of the people it has helped free or exonerate through its DNA work are Black and that 62% of its cases involved eyewitness misidentification.

Now technology has added another layer.

WHEN THE COMPUTER “FITS THE DESCRIPTION”

Facial recognition was supposed to make identification more scientific. Instead, when investigators treat an algorithmic lead as evidence rather than a lead requiring rigorous independent verification, old human biases can acquire digital authority.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found significant demographic differences across many facial-recognition algorithms. In one-to-one matching, NIST found higher false-positive rates for African American and Asian faces compared with Caucasian faces, with differences often ranging from 10 to 100 times, depending on the algorithm.

Those errors have real consequences.

Robert Williams, a Black Detroit father, was wrongfully arrested in 2020 after facial-recognition technology incorrectly connected him to a shoplifting investigation. He was detained for nearly 30 hours.

Nijeer Parks was wrongfully arrested in New Jersey following an erroneous facial-recognition result. Michael Oliver was wrongfully arrested in Detroit. Porcha Woodruff, a Black woman who was eight months pregnant, was wrongfully arrested following another faulty facial-recognition investigation.

And this problem has expanded beyond Black defendants. By April 2026, the American Civil Liberties Union identified 14 publicly known people wrongfully arrested in the United States following police reliance on erroneous facial-recognition results.

These are not statistics without faces. They are children, parents, workers, and citizens whose freedom was interrupted because a person—or increasingly, a computer—essentially said:

You look like the person we want.

AMERICA MUST CONFRONT THE HISTORY

Historical accuracy matters here.

Not every American police department descended directly from slave patrols. Northern policing developed through systems of watches, constables, and later professional departments. But historians have extensively documented slave patrols as an important part of the development of law enforcement in the American South.

Slave patrols controlled the movement of enslaved Black people, searched quarters, suppressed gatherings, and captured people attempting to escape bondage. After emancipation came Black Codes, Jim Crow enforcement, and periods when racial terror and official authority overlapped.

Historian Sally Hadden’s scholarship on police and slave patrols also documents how the Ku Klux Klan later drew upon slave-patrol practices to terrorize Black Americans, sometimes with cooperation from local law enforcement.

That history does not mean today’s individual police officer is a slave patroller.

It means American law enforcement inherited a complicated racial history that cannot responsibly be discussed without acknowledging race.

And that history matters when a modern officer hears “Black male” and encounters a Black child taking out the trash.

BLACKNESS CANNOT BE THE DESCRIPTION

“Black male, dark clothing” cannot become a license to detain every Black man or boy within walking distance.

Neither should artificial intelligence become digital racial profiling with a confidence score attached.

Police officers have an extraordinarily difficult responsibility. They sometimes must make decisions rapidly, and suspect descriptions are legitimately necessary to locate dangerous individuals. But precisely because government gives police the extraordinary authority to stop, search, handcuff, detain, and arrest citizens, verification must be rigorous.

Race alone is not probable cause.

A computer-generated candidate is not probable cause.

Being nearby is not guilt.

Looking vaguely similar is not guilt.

Proverbs 18:13 warns against answering a matter before fully hearing it. John 7:24 instructs us not to judge merely by appearances, but to judge rightly. Isaiah 1:17 commands us to “seek justice” and defend the oppressed.

Those principles belong in the courthouse, police academy, patrol car—and increasingly, inside the algorithms government purchases.

The reforms are not mysterious: require independent corroboration before arrests involving facial recognition; prohibit an algorithmic candidate from becoming the sole basis for probable cause; strengthen body-camera accountability; improve eyewitness-identification procedures; audit racial disparities; document mistaken-identity detentions; and establish national reporting so America can finally determine how frequently innocent people are stopped because they supposedly “fit the description.”

Good policing should welcome safeguards that improve accuracy.

Because every wrongful arrest potentially creates two victims: the innocent person whose freedom was violated and the public whose actual suspect may remain free.

Tashawn Bernard was taking out the trash.

He was 12.

He was Black.

And he was innocent.

The phrase “mistaken identity” may describe what happened.

It should never be enough to excuse why it keeps happening."

The entire story can be read at:

https://chicagodefender.com/mistaken-identify-only-if-youre-black/

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

September13: Neonatal Nurse Lucy Letby: Will Nurse Letby be thrown to the wolves to preserve undeserved public trust in key British institutions? Writer/producer Stephen Phipps who has dived deeply into British miscarriages of Justice on his television programs, confronts this question hours before the report of an inquiry into the hospital deaths of babies is to be released on September 15, noting that: "Some weeks ago I was talking about the Letby case with a very senior Circuit judge. When I made the point that overturning this conviction would raise massive questions about every bit of the state system from the NHS, (National Health Service) through policing, to the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) and even the adversarial system itself, he leaned across the table and said ‘that’s the problem’. He didn’t elaborate, but the clear implication was that the Court of Criminal Appeal will, when it lands on their doorstep, be contemplating this appalling vista, which can only be avoided by upholding the conviction of a young woman who had the misfortune to be on the receiving end of all these failures. Send her back down and we can all continue to hang on to the idea that, here in England we have the best health service, policing and criminal justice system in the world. Whereas one thing the Letby case has told us in spades is that we no longer do."

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: On (September 15) all eyes will be on a report by Lady Justice Thirwall, who has been tasked with examining how Letby was able to commit her crimes at the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2015-2016, - and whether her managers should have responded differently when suspicions about her were raised. But Nota Bene, the BBC (Special Correspondent Judith Moritz) remind us that Lady Thirwall, after months of hearing, has not been asked to report on Lucy Letby's guilt or innocence. In her words, "she had "approached the inquiry on the basis that Lucy Letby is guilty of the crimes of which she has been convicted".  (That's most unfortunate. HL) However, she is expected to cast  a critical eye on the enormous failings in the UK's health and justice systems that ultimately led to deaths of the babies Nurse Letby was convicted of murdering. All of this to the background of mounting evidence that none of the babies were murdered - and that their deaths were caused by  a terribly flawed  health systems. and terribly flawed police and  judicial processes of which Nurse Letby is also a victim. Stay tuned!

Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2e0jg10dkdo

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Some weeks ago I was talking about the Letby case with a very senior Circuit judge.  When I made the point that overturning this conviction would raise massive questions about every bit of the state system from the NHS, through policing, to the CPS and even the adversarial system itself, he leaned across the table and said ‘that’s the problem’. He didn’t elaborate, but the clear implication was that the Court of Criminal Appeal will, when it lands on their doorstep, be contemplating this appalling vista, which can only be avoided by upholding the conviction of a young woman who had the misfortune to be on the receiving end of all these failures.  Send her back down and we can all continue to hang on to the idea that, here in England we have the best health service, policing and criminal justice system in the world. Whereas one thing the Letby case has told us in spades is that we no longer do."

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COMMENTARY: "Lucy Letby and another appalling vista," by Stephen Phipps, published by The Justice Gap, on September 11, 2026. (Stephen  Phipps is a writer and former TV producer. His production work included both BBC's Rough Justice and Channel Four's Trial & Error, as well as Watchdog and Dispatches.)

INTRODUCTION: THE JUSTICE GAP: "The conviction of Lucy Letby more than two years ago for the murder and attempted murder of premature and vulnerable newborns in the neonatology unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital is coming under ever-increasing scrutiny as the Criminal Case Review Commission (CCRC) ponders referring the case back to the Court of Appeal. Cards on the table – with the experience of a decade and more making television programmes (Rough Justice, Trial and Error) investigating miscarriages of justice I am one of those who is convinced she is innocent and that this case will have dramatic consequences for many parts of the system that put her in the dock."

GIST (Stephen Phipps): "Within a matter of months Lucy Letby may be back in the Appeal Court.

If she is found not guilty it will be on the grounds that there were no murders and that the babies collapsed and died of natural causes and inadequate care. 

But the Countess of Chester, and NHS maternity services will not be the only organisations to come under the microscope. 

So much so that she may well be sacrificed to the protection of the state. 

History can tell us how and why this might happen.

(You can read about the Lucy Letby case in the latest PROOF magazine including Stephen Phelps on the media, Prof Richard Gill and Dr Svilena Dimitrova on How to become a serial killer (without killing anyone) and an interview with the barrister Mark McDonald representing the former nurse.) 

In a 1980 Appeal Court ruling, Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, considered the possibility that West Midlands police officers had committed perjury at the trial of the Birmingham Six and that the convicted men had been beaten into making false confessions. 

That the Six might be innocent, he said, opened up ‘such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say: It cannot be right that these actions should go any further’.

Fast forward almost half a century and the evidence that Lucy Letby was wrongly convicted is growing by the day. 

But when it is referred (as it surely must be) what if the Court of Appeal does overturn her conviction? 

That would open up a truly appalling vista that covers not mere police corruption but failings in every arm of the state apparatus.

Failing maternity units: the Countess of Chester will be revealed to be just another failing maternity unit – along with Nottingham, Shropshire and many others. 

The collapses and deaths were the result of a toxic and understaffed maternity unit.

A unit where, in the years leading up to these events, the hospital shed its most highly qualified and experienced nurses (Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioners) to make savings of some £300,000. 

A unit where expertise had been sacrificed to the (financial) expedience implicit in the idea of self-governing Hospital Foundation Trusts.

A failing NHS: Those babies collapsed or died in an ageing and outdated hospital, part of a critically under-resourced NHS.

 When journalists start asking the questions they should have asked immediately after the conviction, they will discover that (largely as a result of this misguided case) nurses are turning away from neonatology in their droves.

 But be under no illusion that the consequences of acknowledging Letby’s innocence stop with the NHS. Let’s consider the progress of this case through the entire system.

Policing: After Letby was convicted, Cheshire Police posted a YouTube video ‘Operation Hummingbird’ slapping themselves on the back – a slick, professionally produced video (complete with syrupy piano music) in which they freely admitted they knew nothing about medical matters when the case dropped onto their desk.

 How much did that video cost the public purse, you may ask? Well, not very much considering the estimated £10 million they had spent on the investigation. 

Nevertheless it’s a useful document in which they themselves set out just how inept their operation was. 

I’ve seen it before, in the work I’ve done in this field over the years – a provincial force usually used to dealing only with what one wizened old barrister referred to as ‘cooking murders’. 

This one, they suddenly realise, is the one they’ll be telling their grandchildren about in years to come. A career-maker. 

Throughout the investigation no-one it seems, had the nerve to put up their hand and say, ‘hang on, nothing to see here’. 

Remember, in fifteen cases of murder or attempted murder, in a unit where clinical staff outnumber patients, no-one saw Lucy Letby actually do anything to harm babies.

CPS: (Crown Prosecution Service): Yet the CPS allowed this case to go ahead.

 Largely on the basis of an infamous duty roster chart which showed that Letby was on duty for all the cases brought against her. 

Well of course she was. They couldn’t charge her with causing babies to collapse and die when she wasn’t there.

 And there were many other collapses and deaths when she wasn’t present. 

During their investigation the police instructed a leading statistician, but the CPS told them to stop.

 Had they not done so it’s possible the case would have evaporated because the chart simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

 But the Cheshire police were not alone in their ineptitude. 

They had an ‘expert’ to advise them. Just the one. A retired paediatrician (not, you’ll note, a neonatologist). 

Not the panel of six or seven specialists in different relevant disciplines, as recommended to them by the National Crime Agency, but just this one retired ‘expert’ whose licence to practice had run out some two years before he volunteered himself to Cheshire police. 

So confident was Dr Dewi Evans of his abilities that he told the police he was the only expert they needed. 

Which must have seemed helpful to the police as genuine, highly-qualified specialists, the leaders in their field, are becoming less and less willing to get involved in court cases, which take up far too much time and expose them to attacks by barristers trying to undermine their evidence by attacking their competence. 

And those attacks are just one part of what’s wrong with the adversarial system when it comes to medical or fraud cases.

The Court System: "An altercation in a pub spills out onto the street. There’s a fight. One man falls to the ground banging his head on the kerb. He dies in hospital. 

Police charge his attacker with murder. The facts are simple. The prosecution argues those facts one way, the defence the other.

 The assailant’s fate will be decided by a jury of twelve ordinary men and women – people who (arguably) know a great deal more about pub fights than the judge or the barristers. 

Now imagine that same jury has to decide the fate of a young nurse charged with seven murders and eight attempted murders. 

A case with (as the Operation Hummingbird video helpfully tells us) thousands of pages of complex medical notes and reports. 

A case which lasts for ten months. 

Where prosecution and defence argue with one another about how complex facts should be interpreted, and the jury is bamboozled by science. 

Is this really the best way to get at the truth? 

Surely, when Letby’s conviction is quashed there must be some examination of changing the system so that guilt or innocence is decided on the basis of a search for the truth instead of the theatre of a jury, with no access to independent advice of their own, deciding between competing narratives. 

Let’s stick with juries for the straightforward case, but we must find another way to deal with complex medical or fraud cases lasting many months.

The CCRC: (Criminal Cases review Commission):  The CCRC has a fundamental flaw. It can only refer a case if there is a ‘real possibility’ the Court of Appeal will overturn the conviction.

 So often they seem to be trying to ‘second guess’ the CoA instead of investigating whether there has been a genuine miscarriage of justice. 

Set up with powers to independently investigate, the CCRC no longer seems capable of doing so (try Googling ‘Bamber and Milbank’).

 To be fair to the Commissioners the ground has been cut out from underneath them over the past decade and a half. 

When the CCRC opened its doors in 1997 Commissioners were paid a relatively handsome £93000 a year for a position which was, as I’m sure you can imagine, full-time. 

But once we entered the years of austerity the CCRC must have seemed a soft target and the cuts began. 

With few in positions of power willing to fight their corner those cuts carried on to a point where Commissioners are now employed on a contract not unlike that of a pizza delivery kid – guaranteeing them one day a week at a daily rate of £460.

 What’s more they are able to work from home, whereas those of us who have done this work over the years know that there is no substitute for sitting together in an office to argue the key issues through. 

In the Letby case the CCRC’s failings have no doubt been exacerbated by the sheer volume of stuff that has been dumped on them by Letby’s current lawyer, but the point remains that this is exactly the sort of case they were set up to re-examine and re-investigate, and three years on from her conviction the CCRC has yet to decide how to act.

Journalism and the BBC: As a former employee of the BBC I am loath to join the right-wing chorus of attack, but this estimable organisation which gave us Rough Justice which did much to bring about the creation of the CCRC now has questions to answer about how it approaches high-profile cases like Letby’s convictions. 

The jury in the first Letby case deliberated for a total of 105 hours, over twenty-two days.

 Good reason to suppose then that conviction was not exactly a slam-dunk. 

Yet on August 18th 2023, on the very day those convictions came in, Panorama was able to broadcast Lucy Letby: The Nurse Who Killed, a complete programme predicated on her guilt. It must have been quite a while in the making.

 Panorama is supposed to be an investigative programme, carefully crafted deep-dives into serious issues. 

Yet in this case reporter Judith Moritz, who had followed the case throughout, seems to have drunk the Cheshire police Kool Aid. 

If they had another programme ready to go under the title Lucy Letby: My Nightmare Is Over, I’d like to see it.

Some weeks ago I was talking about the Letby case with a very senior Circuit judge. 

When I made the point that overturning this conviction would raise massive questions about every bit of the state system from the NHS, through policing, to the CPS and even the adversarial system itself, he leaned across the table and said ‘that’s the problem’.

 He didn’t elaborate, but the clear implication was that the Court of Criminal Appeal will, when it lands on their doorstep, be contemplating this appalling vista, which can only be avoided by upholding the conviction of a young woman who had the misfortune to be on the receiving end of all these failures. 

Send her back down and we can all continue to hang on to the idea that, here in England we have the best health service, policing and criminal justice system in the world. Whereas one thing the Letby case has told us in spades is that we no longer do."

The entire commentary can be read at:

https://www.thejusticegap.com/lucy-letby-and-an-appalling-vista/

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

September 13: Geauga's Child: Rural Ohio: Reporter Lauren Conlin (Los Angeles Magazine) raises many important questions as she tackles the complex story behind the documentary film Baby Doe, in her review headed, "She Left Her Newborn in the Woods. 30 Years Later, DNA Led Police to Her Door," and sub-headed, "Baby Doe director Jessica Earnshaw opens up about Gail Ritchey’s shocking cold case…and why the story of a mother accused of murder is far more complicated than the headlines suggest', noting that: "Thirty years ago, Gail Ritchey gave birth alone and left her newborn baby in the woods of rural Ohio. For nearly three decades, no one knew who the baby’s mother was. Then… DNA changed everything."..."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Ritchey, by then a suburban mother of three with a husband, adult children and an entirely different life, was linked to the long-unsolved case known as “Geauga’s Child.”  She was arrested and accused of murder. It sounds like the setup for a fairly straightforward true-crime documentary. But it isn’t. In Baby Doe, director Jessica Earnshaw (Jacinta) takes viewers inside Ritchey’s case while forcing them to sit with a series of deeply uncomfortable questions: What if the person accused of something horrific doesn’t fit neatly into our idea of a murderer? What happens when shame becomes so powerful that a person appears capable of denying her own pregnancy? And how should the justice system deal with a woman decades after the alleged crime?

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "So what happened to Gail Ritchey? Did she go to trial? Was she convicted? You’ll have to watch the film. Baby Doe debuted at the SXSW film festival and boasts Sarah Paulson as an executive producer. The film will be available on VOD beginning Sept. 17."

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STORY: "She Left Her Newborn in the Woods. 30 Years Later, DNA Led Police to Her Door, by Lauren Conlin, published by Los Angeles Magazine; (Lauren Conlin is an independent crime and entertainment reporter.) 

SUB-HEADING: "Baby Doe director Jessica Earnshaw opens up about Gail Ritchey’s shocking cold case…and why the story of a mother accused of murder is far more complicated than the headlines suggest

GIST:Thirty years ago, Gail Ritchey gave birth alone and left her newborn baby in the woods of rural Ohio.

For nearly three decades, no one knew who the baby’s mother was.

Then… DNA changed everything.

Ritchey, by then a suburban mother of three with a husband, adult children and an entirely different life, was linked to the long-unsolved case known as “Geauga’s Child.”

She was arrested and accused of murder. It sounds like the setup for a fairly straightforward true-crime documentary. But it isn’t.

In Baby Doe, director Jessica Earnshaw (Jacinta) takes viewers inside Ritchey’s case while forcing them to sit with a series of deeply uncomfortable questions: What if the person accused of something horrific doesn’t fit neatly into our idea of a murderer? 

What happens when shame becomes so powerful that a person appears capable of denying her own pregnancy? And how should the justice system deal with a woman decades after the alleged crime?

Earnshaw told Los Angeles Magazine she actually became interested in those questions before she ever met Ritchey.

Her research began with the case of Emily Weaver, another young Ohio woman whose story appears in the film. 

Weaver was initially sentenced to life without parole before later being resentenced to 20 years for leaving her newborn to die. 

As Earnshaw researched Weaver’s case and spoke with attorneys and experts around the country, she began noticing similarities among cases involving young women accused after concealed or denied pregnancies.

“I just found it so fascinating, especially the body’s response to that denial,” Earnshaw said, describing situations in which a pregnancy may not be recognized by the woman herself — or even by people around her.

Then she found Gail.

Ritchey’s case had gone cold for 27 years.

 By the time investigators came knocking, she was no longer the frightened young woman she had been when the baby was born.

 She was a mother and grandmother. 

Earnshaw traveled to Ohio and approached Ritchey and her husband, Mark, about filming them. Initially, Gail wanted nothing to do with it. 

The media attention surrounding her arrest had already been devastating to her family.

But when Earnshaw told her about Weaver, Gail changed her mind. According to Earnshaw, Ritchey agreed to participate because she hoped telling her own story might somehow help another woman facing life behind bars.

That decision gave Earnshaw extraordinary access to a family trying to understand how the woman they knew could possibly be the same woman described in the criminal allegations against her. 

And Baby Doe doesn’t make that easy for the viewer, either.

On a personal level, our own feelings about Ritchey changed repeatedly while watching the film. 

There were moments when I felt sympathy for her and others when I was horrified by what I was hearing. Earnshaw said that evolving reaction was remarkably similar to her own experience behind the camera.

When she first met Gail, Earnshaw said she liked her and immediately sensed that she was carrying an enormous emotional weight. 

Rather than immediately sitting her down for formal interviews, Earnshaw spent roughly three months simply filming around her… watching her interact with her family and observing preparations for trial.

But there were moments that left even Earnshaw scratching her head. Gail could remember certain factual details from decades earlier, she said, while seemingly having almost no access to the emotions surrounding them.

“There’s this whole period of time she’s completely blocked out,” Earnshaw explained. “The details she has, but how she felt about certain things is just not there.”

Slowly, Earnshaw said, the layers began coming off.

“The film is the journey I was on, actually, behind the camera,” she told me.

One of the biggest pieces of that puzzle involved Gail’s religious upbringing and the intense shame she associated with premarital sex.

 Earnshaw came to see denial itself as an important part of understanding Ritchey’s story (not as an excuse for what happened); as a psychological mechanism for avoiding a reality a person feels incapable of confronting. 

Ritchey and her husband Mark were and are deeply religious.

This is noteworthy because Baby Doe does not ask viewers to pretend that leaving a newborn alone is anything other than horrifying.

The film asks them to consider whether understanding why something happened matters when deciding how and how severely…someone should be punished.

And then the film drops another bombshell.

During the investigation, Ritchey revealed that “Geauga’s Child” was not the first baby she had delivered alone.

According to Earnshaw, detectives did not uncover that information independently. Gail told them about an earlier pregnancy herself when being questioned initially by police. 

She said she had not known she was pregnant until she suddenly gave birth while sitting on a toilet. 

Believing that baby was stillborn, she said, she placed the infant in a bag and left it outside a medical building.

Investigators searched for evidence of that child, but Earnshaw said no record was located showing that a dead baby had ever been found outside the building.

 That means one of the most startling questions raised by the documentary remains unanswered.

What actually happened to that baby?

“We don’t know anything about this baby,” Earnshaw said. “It was never found, never documented it was a dead baby. Maybe it was alive and maybe that baby is alive today. Who knows?”

The revelation makes Gail’s story substantially harder to process. 

But another pivotal moment comes when Gail is finally confronted with photographs of the baby at the center of the criminal case.

Earnshaw said she witnessed an unmistakable change.

Before seeing the images, Gail appeared profoundly disconnected from what had happened. Afterward, Earnshaw said, the way she spoke about the child was “completely night and day.”

“She no longer called it an ‘it,’” Earnshaw recalled. “It was a boy.”

Earnshaw said Gail now struggles to discuss the baby without breaking down.

That transformation sits at the heart of Baby Doe.

The film explores pregnancy denial and the complicated medical and psychological questions surrounding it, but it also looks at something much bigger: what happens when fear, religion, sexuality and shame collide? 

Particularly for young women who believe there is nobody they can safely tell they are pregnant.

Earnshaw said many of the women she encountered while researching these cases were teenagers or in their early 20s.

“For the girl to be so terrified…if I had nobody in my life I could tell I was pregnant, that is a tragedy to me,” she said. She believes society has to examine its own role in creating that fear.

“These are young people who, if they don’t have anybody they can turn to, that’s completely heartbreaking,” Earnshaw said. “It’s so driven by fear and stigma.”

When she has asked experts how cases like these can be prevented, she said the answer is often remarkably simple: Make sure your children know they can tell you if they’re pregnant.

“No one’s going to be mad,” Earnshaw said. “It’s a safe place.”

The film also brings up very difficult questions about punishment.

Is a woman who concealed a pregnancy and abandoned a newborn someone society needs to hold accountable? Of course. That’s not in dispute.

But what should that accountability look like? And if investigators identify that woman through DNA decades later, when she has built an entirely different life and has never been accused of similar violence since, does putting her in prison for life serve justice?

Those questions become even more complicated when pregnancy denial, mental health, family dynamics and religious shame enter the equation.

There aren’t comfortable answers here. That’s precisely why Baby Doe works.

It doesn’t require viewers to forgive Gail Ritchey. It doesn’t demand that they condemn her, either. 

Earnshaw leaves enough room for viewers to be horrified, empathetic, angry and confused… sometimes within the same scene. And that’s intentional.

“What I love about hearing from people who watch the film is just that they have conversations about it,” Earnshaw told me. “We see what’s on the news and it’s just kind of very one dimensional, but these cases are very interesting and very complex, and I think they deserve a conversation.”

After watching Baby Doe, that conversation may be unavoidable.

So what happened to Gail Ritchey? Did she go to trial? Was she convicted? You’ll have to watch the film.

Baby Doe debuted at the SXSW film festival and boasts Sarah Paulson as an executive producer. The film will be available on VOD beginning Sept. 17."

The entire story can be read at: 

https://lamag.com/crimeinla/she-left-her-newborn-in-the-woods-30-years-later-dna-led-police-to-her-door/

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

September 12: Russell and Kaye Maze: Tennessee: Shaken Baby Syndrome: More positive news in the battle against junk science: The Nashville couple have been cleared to fight 1999 baby death convictions after the doctor who performed the original autopsy (Dr, Bruce Levy HL) recanted his own testimony about how their son died, Hoodline (Reporter David Garcia) reports, noting that: "Dr. Bruce Levy, who performed the original autopsy, recanted his prior sworn testimony about Bryan Alexander's death in September 2024, according to the Banner's account of the case. Levy concluded that Bryan Maze's brain showed no indication of prior trauma or abuse at the time of death, and he attributed the residual brain lesions to a natural disease process rather than to inflicted trauma. Separately, according to the dossier's timeline, Levy stated in a recantation affidavit that he had never been provided critical medical records during his initial 2000 autopsy, including maternal obstetric records detailing a troubled pregnancy and neonatal intensive care logs, as reported by ProPublica."

PASSAGE ONE  OF THE DAY: "Two state prosecutors uninvolved in the Maze case, Amy Hunter and Jeff George, submitted sworn affidavits supporting review of the convictions.  Hunter said a responsible prosecutor would not proceed with a homicide prosecution based on inflicted head trauma without addressing evidence that the death was natural. George said he would not continue a prosecution if medical examiners concluded the death resulted from natural disease rather than homicide, according to the Banner's account. Even law enforcement's own investigators have acknowledged missteps."

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "For Russell Maze, who entered prison in 1999 at age 33 and has spent more than two decades behind bars maintaining his innocence, the Tennessee Supreme Court's ruling represents the first real procedural opening in years. Whether it ultimately translates into a new trial, or into the exoneration his family has long sought, now rests with Judge Dozier's court."

---------------------------------------------

STORY: "Nashville couple cleared to fight 1999 baby death convictions after ME ( Medical Examiner. HL) recants," by Reporter David Garcia, published by Hoodlike, on September 9, 2026.

GIST: "Russell Maze has spent more than two decades in prison for the death of his infant son, convicted twice in connection with injuries the state said killed the boy in 1999. 

Now the Tennessee Supreme Court has cleared the way for Russell and his wife, Kaye Maze, to pursue post-conviction relief, after the doctor who performed the original autopsy recanted his own testimony about how their son died.

The case centers on Bryan Alexander Maze, known as Alex, who stopped breathing while alone with his father on May 3, 1999, and died in October 2000, about 17 months later, according to facts reported by the Nashville Banner. 

Alex was placed in foster care after the initial incident, per the same reporting. Russell Maze was convicted twice of abusing his son and causing injuries that ultimately killed him, while Kaye Maze accepted a best-interest plea deal for reckless aggravated assault and received a two-year suspended sentence with three years of probation.

A Medical Examiner Changes His Mind

Dr. Bruce Levy, who performed the original autopsy, recanted his prior sworn testimony about Bryan Alexander's death in September 2024, according to the Banner's account of the case. 

Levy concluded that Bryan Maze's brain showed no indication of prior trauma or abuse at the time of death, and he attributed the residual brain lesions to a natural disease process rather than to inflicted trauma. 

Separately, according to the dossier's timeline, Levy stated in a recantation affidavit that he had never been provided critical medical records during his initial 2000 autopsy, including maternal obstetric records detailing a troubled pregnancy and neonatal intensive care logs, as reported by ProPublica.

Those medical gaps carry extra weight given how fragile Alex's health already was. 

The infant was born prematurely in 1999 and spent 13 days in a neonatal intensive care unit, undergoing seven separate medical evaluations over his first five weeks of life before he stopped breathing on May 3, 1999, according to FindLaw.

Medical experts testified in March 2024 that Alex likely died because of a birth defect, per the Banner's reporting.

Prosecutors Who Already Believe the Convictions Were Wrong

The Davidson County District Attorney's Conviction Review Unit asked Judge Steve Dozier's trial court to vacate both Mazes' convictions in December 2023.

 District Attorney Glenn Funk said at the time that his office knew of clear and convincing evidence that Kaye and Russell Maze were convicted of crimes they did not commit. 

That request drew on a report incorporating findings from five independent medical experts who all rejected shaken baby syndrome in favor of natural disease causes, according to the Nashville Scene.

Two state prosecutors uninvolved in the Maze case, Amy Hunter and Jeff George, submitted sworn affidavits supporting review of the convictions. 

Hunter said a responsible prosecutor would not proceed with a homicide prosecution based on inflicted head trauma without addressing evidence that the death was natural. George said he would not continue a prosecution if medical examiners concluded the death resulted from natural disease rather than homicide, according to the Banner's account.

Even law enforcement's own investigators have acknowledged missteps. 

A detective who investigated the 1999 incident submitted a statement to the court in early 2024 acknowledging that police erred during the initial inquiry by relying heavily on an early hospital prognosis of shaken baby syndrome, which led them to exclude other medical possibilities, the Nashville Scene reported.
Judge Dozier Declined to Reconsider

Despite that mounting agreement among prosecutors and outside experts, Judge Dozier declined to change his ruling after a March 2024 post-conviction hearing. 

Kaye Maze's attorneys had requested an evidentiary hearing on the credibility of Levy's testimony, and later requested a new trial, but Dozier has not personally seen Levy's affidavit inside his own courtroom, per the dossier's account of the proceedings.

The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals then took up the matter and, in a decision authored by Judge Kyle Hixson on October 31, 2025, ruled that Levy's affidavit did not qualify as truly new scientific evidence of innocence. 

That three-judge panel split 2-1, with a dissenting judge arguing that a medical examiner recanting the cause and manner of death does constitute genuine new scientific evidence warranting 

reconsideration, according to CaseMine's summary of the ruling. 

The majority, by contrast, treated the recantation as competing expert opinions rather than definitive new proof.

Russell and Kaye Maze appealed that Court of Criminal Appeals decision to the Tennessee Supreme Court in December 2025.

 On August 27, 2026, the state's high court opened the way for the couple to pursue further legal action seeking post-conviction relief, and designated the Court of Criminal Appeals opinion as not for citation. 

Kaye Maze filed a petition with Dozier's court on September 8, asking him to review his ruling, correct the original convictions, and grant a new trial, claiming that Levy's testimony would establish that she is actually innocent because no homicide occurred.

A High Bar for Actual Innocence

Any relief will still have to clear a demanding legal standard. The applicable post-conviction standard requires factual allegations to be established by clear and convincing evidence. That threshold is now squarely in front of Judge Dozier as he weighs whether Levy's recantation, combined with the newer pediatric evidence, meets it.

The Maze case is not happening in isolation. Views of shaken baby syndrome have continued to evolve, ProPublica has reported.

 Levy himself served as Nashville's medical examiner for 13 years. 

According to a 2021 systematic review available through the National Institutes of Health's PubMed Central, shaken baby syndrome was the most commonly used definition in recent decades, while abusive head trauma had been proposed as newer terminology. 

According to a 2025 NCBI Bookshelf entry, pediatric abusive head trauma—commonly known as shaken baby syndrome—can result from violent shaking, blunt-force trauma, or both.

For Russell Maze, who entered prison in 1999 at age 33 and has spent more than two decades behind bars maintaining his innocence, the Tennessee Supreme Court's ruling represents the first real procedural opening in years.

Whether it ultimately translates into a new trial, or into the exoneration his family has long sought, now rests with Judge Dozier's court.

The entire story can be read at:

nashville-couple-cleared-to-fight-1999-baby-death-convictions-after-me-recants

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

September 11: Robert Roberson: Death. Row Texas: Junk shaken baby syndrome science: Major (Welcome) Development: The lawyers defending this man on death row for the death of his child have cited a new case (The Moore Decision) which was released on September 8) to support their claim that their client needs a new trial, KLTV (Reporter Jeff Awtrey) reports, noting that: “Mr. Moore, like Robert Roberson, was accused of child abuse after he sought medical care for his daughter. Moore’s daughter, like Robert’s daughter Nikki, experienced breathing apnea, turned blue, and went into cardiopulmonary arrest before she arrived at the hospital, where CT scans then revealed subdural bleeding, brain swelling, and retinal hemorrhage. In both cases, the child’s condition followed a short fall out of bed, which was the only explanation both men were able to provide, and which treating doctors rejected as insufficient to explain the child’s serious intracranial condition.”

PUBLISHER' NOTE:  Dear readers: You can read the San Francisco Chronicle story by Bob Egelko  on the 'Moore case'  (September 8) further down in this post. 

Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;

--------------------------------------------------

PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "In October 2025, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals paused Roberson’s execution just days before he was set to be the first person in the U.S. to be executed for a conviction tied to “shaken baby syndrome.” The defense filed a new notice of new persuasive authority, citing a California appeals court decision to remand a shaken baby case back to the trial court."

-------------------------------------

PASSAGE TWO  OF THE DAY: "The Moore Decision notes that, only in 2020, did the American Academy of Pediatrics finally acknowledge that ‘short falls can be fatal and that there is no pattern of injury unique to.’ The Moore Decision also emphasizes that the ‘first and only systemic review of the evidence for [shaken baby syndrome] was conducted’ years after Moore’s (and Robert’s) trial and this study concluded that the evidence purportedly supporting the SBS/AHT hypothesis ‘is insufficient and unreliable, largely due to the circular reasoning in classifying cases and controls and other methodological flaws."

----------------------------------------

PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "This is the second such notice from Roberson’s attorneys. The first was on Aug. 10, citing another similar case, this time in Georgia."

---------------------------------------

STORY: "Defense cites new case in Robert Roberson death row appeal," by Digital Content Manager Jeff Awtrey, published by KLTV, on September 10, 2026.

SUB-HEADING: "Attorneys file second notice of persuasive authority in shaken baby syndrome case."

PALESTINE, Texas (KLTV) - The defense team for a man on death row for the death of his child has cited a new case to support their claim that their client needs a new trial.

Robert Roberson, of Palestine, was convicted in 2003 of the 2002 murder of his daughter, Nikki.

In October 2025, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals paused Roberson’s execution just days before he was set to be the first person in the U.S. to be executed for a conviction tied to “shaken baby syndrome.”

The defense filed a new notice of new persuasive authority, citing a California appeals court decision to remand a shaken baby case back to the trial court.

Defense compares cases

“Mr. Moore, like Robert Roberson, was accused of child abuse after he sought medical care for his daughter. Moore’s daughter, like Robert’s daughter Nikki, experienced breathing apnea, turned blue, and went into cardiopulmonary arrest before she arrived at the hospital, where CT scans then revealed subdural bleeding, brain swelling, and retinal hemorrhage. In both cases, the child’s condition followed a short fall out of bed, which was the only explanation both men were able to provide, and which treating doctors rejected as insufficient to explain the child’s serious intracranial condition.”

“The Moore Decision notes that, only in 2020, did the American Academy of Pediatrics finally acknowledge that ‘short falls can be fatal and that there is no pattern of injury unique to.’ The Moore Decision also emphasizes that the ‘first and only systemic review of the evidence for [shaken baby syndrome] was conducted’ years after Moore’s (and Robert’s) trial and this study concluded that the evidence purportedly supporting the SBS/AHT hypothesis ‘is insufficient and unreliable, largely due to the circular reasoning in classifying cases and controls and other methodological flaws.’”
Second notice filed

This is the second such notice from Roberson’s attorneys. The first was on Aug. 10, citing another similar case, this time in Georgia.

https://www.kltv.com/2026/09/10/defense-cites-new-case-roberson-death-row-appeal/

-----------------------------------------------------------------

THE MOORE DECISION:  The San Francisco Chronicle (Staff Writer Bob Egelko: September 8, 2026: : 'California father’s murder conviction overturned in shaken baby syndrome case.' 

A California appeals court on Tuesday overturned the conviction of a Riverside man sent to prison for killing his child, citing new evidence that a short, accidental fall from bed was a more likely cause of her death.James M. Shannon/Hearst Connecticut Media

Jason Harley Moore has spent over a decade in prison for the death of his infant daughter after three doctors told a jury the child was violently struck or shaken to death by her father.

But medical science has changed since Moore’s 2014 trial, and on Tuesday, a state appeals court overturned the Riverside County man’s conviction and cited new evidence that a short, accidental fall from bed was a more likely cause of her death.

“We no longer have confidence in the outcome of Moore’s trial,” the 4th District Court of Appeal said. The court did not declare him to be innocent, but said the prosecution’s expert witnesses had presented “false evidence” that the 3½-month-old child could not have suffered fatal injuries in a short fall from her bed, the defense claim in the case.


It’s the latest of several cases addressing shaken baby syndrome, ascribed to parents who habitually and violently shake their young children. Medical scientists still agree that shaking can cause serious and even fatal brain injuries, but it has been challenged in cases like Moore’s when evidence emerges of other possible causes of harm.

Carla Spain, spokesperson for the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University, which represents Moore, said his is the third case they’ve gotten the courts to overturn “based on changes in the science.”

“Jason’s case sets precedent about the underlying falsity of the testimony that was repeatedly used across the country to convict innocent caregivers for decades,” Spain said.

The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

The child, Charlotte, lived with her mother, Laura Morales, and Moore in the San Jacinto Valley town of Hemet, southeast of Riverside. Moore, then 31, called Morales at work one afternoon in July 2010 and said she should come home because Charlotte was not breathing. She died at a hospital about a week later.

Moore testified that he was taking a shower when he heard Charlotte crying, and he came out and found her on the floor. He said he picked her up and held her, but she soon stopped breathing, and he tried to revive her while calling 911 and her mother.

In an autopsy for the county coroner’s office, however, Dr. Mark McCormick said Charlotte had suffered a fractured skull and other brain injuries that were probably inflicted deliberately.

McCormick testified for the prosecution along with Dr. Mark Massi, who said he saw bleeding in the child’s brain that was “mainly caused by some sort of trauma such as shaking,” although he found no bruises or other evidence of shaking. Dr. Christina Stanley, a forensic pathologist, said an examination of Charlotte’s brain “suggested inflicted head trauma.”

A defense witness, Dr. Ronald Gabriel, said the child could have been fatally injured after a short fall from her bed. But jurors convicted Moore in 2014 of a fatal assault on his daughter, and Riverside County Superior Court Judge Timothy Freer sentenced him to 25 years to life in prison.

The state appeals court upheld Moore’s conviction in 2016. Tuesday’s ruling, however, was based on new evidence and legal arguments presented by his lawyers in 2022 in a motion for habeas corpus, a challenge to imprisonment due to developments since the trial.

They cited scientific studies finding that short accidental falls can cause serious or fatal injuries. In a 2020 report, the American Academy of Pediatrics found that “short falls can be fatal and that there is no pattern of injury unique to” abusive head trauma.

Dr. Gregory Reiber, a forensic pathologist with the Placer County sheriff and coroner’s office, said recent studies show that impacts from short falls can result in “hemorrhage and brain injury, while shaking alone does not.”

The prosecution’s expert witnesses stood by their testimony that Moore had killed his daughter. Their lawyers told the trial judge and the appeals court that the new defense evidence amounted only to “differences of opinion” that did not show the conviction was based on false testimony.

Freer, the trial judge in 2014, said in a recent ruling that some of the prosecution’s testimony had been false but that the defense had failed to show the conviction relied on falsehoods.

The appeals court disagreed.

“There is a reasonable probability the result of Moore’s trial would have been different had the jury not heard the testimony of these three medical experts that a short fall absolutely could not have caused Charlotte’s injuries,” Justice Jose Castillo wrote in the 3-0 ruling.

“There is no evidence Moore abused Charlotte on any other occasion,” Castillo said.

Morales, the child’s mother, “portrayed Moore as a devoted stay-at-home father to Charlotte and Morales’s two other children,” he wrote. “Nor was there any sign of other injury to Charlotte’s body from this incident that was suggestive of abuse.”

The court, however, did not order Moore to be immediately released from prison. First, Castillo said, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office should decide whether to request a new trial or to drop the case and allow Moore to go free.

His lawyers will argue that Moore should be released and the charges dismissed, said Spain, the Northern California Innocence Project spokesperson.

“Based on the current understanding of his daughter’s injuries, the prosecution’s experts could not testify today the same way they did in 2014,” she told the Chronicle after Tuesday’s ruling. "

(Bob Egelko has been a reporter since June 1970. He spent 30 years with the Associated Press, covering news, politics and occasionally sports in Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento, and legal affairs in San Francisco from 1984 onward. He worked for the San Francisco Examiner for five months in 2000, then joined The Chronicle in November 2000.)

----------------------------------------------------------------

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true

September 11: Megan Trussell: Colorado: Murder or suicide? Axios (Reporter Mitchell Byers reports on the controversy surrounding her death, in a story headed, "Megan Trussell review raises new questions," which notes that: "Driving the news: After a seven-month review, the CBI concluded last week that the Boulder County Sheriff's Office's response and investigation were "reasonable, substantial, and supported by the available evidence." CBI presented the case to its roughly 40-member Cold Case Review Team, including prosecutors, investigators, forensic specialists, toxicologists, analysts and victim advocates. The review found no evidence of homicide or physical assault and no unfinished investigative step that would have changed the determination that Trussell died by suicide.?

BACKGROUND: (From a previous  (September 19, 2025) post of this Blog): "BOULDER, Colo. — The family of Megan Trussell, a University of Colorado student whose body was found in Boulder Canyon in February, gathered on Pearl Street during parents' weekend to raise awareness about her death and push for authorities to reopen the case that investigators ruled a suicide. Trussell was reported missing in February, and her body was discovered days later near the 40-mile marker of Boulder Canyon. Boulder County investigators determined Trussell died by suicide, but her family has criticized the police investigation and conducted their own work, including tracking down her missing cellphone themselves. "I will never know what happened exactly to Megan, especially since they aren't investigating, but maybe we can prevent it from happening again by spreading awareness," said Vanessa Diaz, Trussell's mother."

https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/megan-trussell-family-push-for-case-to-reopen/73-31dcb08e-b552-4ac7-80d7-07b7b67bd654

-------------------------------------------

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The other side: Trussell's parents sharply criticized the process, telling Axios Boulder that reviewers appeared unprepared in a meeting to present the findings last week."There was a lot of shoulder shrugging," her father Joe Trussell told Axios Boulder. They said CBI didn't know until their meeting that family members had located Megan's phone and key video evidence.Meanwhile, the CBI agent that the Trussell family worked with throughout the review was on vacation and not present. They also said a pathologist at the meeting repeatedly referred to the substance in Megan's body as "meth" rather than the prescription amphetamine."

------------------------------------------

STORY: "Megan Trussell review raises new questions," by Mitchell Byars,  published on September 9, 2026, by Axios. (Mitchell was born and raised in South Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. He went to the University of Colorado Boulder and graduated in 2011 with a degree in journalism. After school, he went to work for the Daily Camera, where he worked for almost 15 years in various roles.)

GIST: "A first-of-its-kind state review supports local authorities' conclusion that University of Colorado Boulder student Megan Trussell died by suicide in 2025.

Yes, but: Trussell's family tells Axios the review only deepened their concerns about the investigation and left them with "more questions than answers" about their daughter's death.

Driving the news: After a seven-month review, the CBI concluded last week that the Boulder County Sheriff's Office's response and investigation were "reasonable, substantial, and supported by the available evidence."

• CBI presented the case to its roughly 40-member Cold Case Review Team, including prosecutors, investigators, forensic specialists, toxicologists, analysts and victim advocates.
• 
  
• The review found no evidence of homicide or physical assault and no unfinished investigative step that would have changed the determination that Trussell died by suicide.
• 
  

The other side: Trussell's parents sharply criticized the process, telling Axios Boulder that reviewers appeared unprepared in a meeting to present the findings last week."There was a lot of shoulder shrugging," her father Joe Trussell told Axios Boulder.

They said CBI didn't know until their meeting that family members had located Megan's phone and key video evidence.

Meanwhile, the CBI agent that the Trussell family worked with throughout the review was on vacation and not present.

They also said a pathologist at the meeting repeatedly referred to the substance in Megan's body as "meth" rather than the prescription amphetamine.

What they're saying: Boulder County Sheriff Curtis Johnson thanked the CBI in a statement."We recognize that none of these findings lessen the profound grief felt by Megan's family and loved ones.
"We also recognize the importance of independent review to her family and the community, and we hope it brings some measure of closure and understanding."

Between the lines: Trussell's family requested the review — the first granted under a provisionof Colorado's 2022 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives law."I think the intent behind the law is great," Trussell told us. "But the law as it's written, is broad and vague and allows entirely too much latitude for the CBI.
"That's what I would tell a family in our situation: Do not expect results until this law is tweaked."

Trussell's mother Vanessa Diaz said they didn't conduct any outside investigation or interviews.

What's next: The family says they plan to seek Trussell's complete autopsy report and photographs, which have repeatedly been denied by the coroner's office.They'd like to have the materials reviewed by an independent expert. But Diaz worries that won't happen before tissue samples are destroyed, and is pleading with other state officials to step in.

"[The CBI] made a mistake … because now we're just gonna be really loud and the people who are in power, the people who are in office, they have some answering to do.""

The entire story can be read at:

megan-trussell-cbi-review-boulder-investigation

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

September 10: Christa Pike: UN experts condemn shameful Tennessee's lust to kill her on September 30 - even though the court that sentenced her to death did not consider crucial mitigating factors, noting that "Christa Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for a murder committed when she was 18 years old. The experts expressed concern that significant mitigating evidence concerning her history of severe childhood sexual and gender-based violence, neurological impairments, mental health conditions and developmental immaturity were not adequately presented to the jury by her court-appointed counsel - and even though "The experts "expressed serious concerns about the method and circumstances of Pike’s proposed execution by lethal injection with pentobarbital, which increase the risk of physical suffering."

 

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Following her sentencing, Pike was reportedly held in solitary confinement for roughly 28 years, often alone in her cell for 22 to 23 hours a day. While death row detention itself raises serious human rights concerns, her conditions were even more restrictive than those of men sentenced to death in Tennessee, as the prison had no equivalent arrangements for women on death row, raising serious concerns of discrimination on the basis of sex and gender. “The extraordinary duration of Pike’s isolation on death row, her detention conditions, compounded by her vulnerable situation and prolonged awareness of her impending execution, amounts to torture,” the experts said. “The absence of appropriate facilities for women cannot justify discriminatory treatment of women or harsher conditions for them than for men in a similar situation.”

-------------------------------------

RELEASE: "USA: UN experts urge immediate halt to Christa Pike’s execution," published  by the United  Nations, on Sept. 7, 2026.

GIST:  GENEVA:  UN experts* today urged the Government of the United States of America and Tennessee state authorities to immediately halt Christa Pike’s execution, scheduled for 30 September 2026, and commute her death sentence.

“Pike’s execution would mark the culmination of a trajectory of severe physical and psychological suffering marked by childhood abuse and nearly three decades of solitary confinement on death row,” the experts said.

Christa Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for a murder committed when she was 18 years old. The experts expressed concern that significant mitigating evidence concerning her history of severe childhood sexual and gender-based violence, neurological impairments, mental health conditions and developmental immaturity were not adequately presented to the jury by her court-appointed counsel.

“Pending abolition, States that retain the death penalty may impose it only subject to the strictest safeguards under international law,” the experts said. “These include full respect for fair-trial guarantees, individualised consideration of all mitigating circumstances, including histories of trauma and abuse, and a genuine opportunity to seek pardon or commutation.”

“Failure to respect these safeguards renders a death sentence arbitrary and its execution unlawful under international law,” they said.

Following her sentencing, Pike was reportedly held in solitary confinement for roughly 28 years, often alone in her cell for 22 to 23 hours a day. While death row detention itself raises serious human rights concerns, her conditions were even more restrictive than those of men sentenced to death in Tennessee, as the prison had no equivalent arrangements for women on death row, raising serious concerns of discrimination on the basis of sex and gender.

“The extraordinary duration of Pike’s isolation on death row, her detention conditions, compounded by her vulnerable situation and prolonged awareness of her impending execution, amounts to torture,” the experts said.

“The absence of appropriate facilities for women cannot justify discriminatory treatment of women or harsher conditions for them than for men in a similar situation.”

The experts also expressed serious concerns about the method and circumstances of Pike’s proposed execution by lethal injection with pentobarbital, which increase the risk of physical suffering.

Shortly before the planned execution, Pike will be transferred to a men’s maximum-security prison, placed in isolation and physically restrained by male officers. Given her history of experiencing sexual violence and trauma, these measures are likely to retraumatise her, causing particularly severe psychological suffering.

“Viewed cumulatively and in light of her individual vulnerabilities, Pike’s proposed execution violates the absolute prohibition of torture and other forms of ill-treatment,” the experts said. “We reiterate the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ request that the United States refrain from executing Christa Pike, and its recommendation that her death sentence be commuted.”

The experts acknowledged the gravity of the murder and the profound and enduring suffering it caused. They expressed deep sympathy for and solidarity with the victim’s family.

“Victims and their families are entitled to justice and support. An execution does not constitute reparation. Justice and accountability must be pursued in accordance with international human rights law.”

The experts have been in contact with the Government of the United States on this matter.

*The experts:Morris Tidball-Binz, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão, Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health
Pau Pérez Sales, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
Reem Alsalem, Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences
Claudia Flores (Chair), Ivana Krstić (Vice-Chair), Dorothy Estrada-Tanck, Haina Lu, and Laura Nyirinkindi, Working Group on discrimination against women and girls

Special Rapporteurs/Independent Experts/Working Groups are independent human rights experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Together, these experts are referred to as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. While the UN Human Rights office acts as the secretariat for Special Procedures, the experts serve in their individual capacity and are independent from any government or organization, including OHCHR and the UN. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the UN or OHCHR.

Country-specific observations and recommendations by the UN human rights mechanisms, including the special procedures, the treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review, can be found on the Universal Human Rights Index https://uhri.ohchr.org/en/

UN Human Rights, country page – United States of America

For inquiries and media requests, please contact: Yasmine Ashraf (yasmine.ashraf@un.org)

For media inquiries related to other UN independent experts, please contact Maya Derouaz (maya.derouaz@un.org) or Dharisha Indraguptha (dharisha.indraguptha@un.org)

Follow news related to the UN’s independent human rights experts on X: @UN_SPExperts."

The entire release can be read at:

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/09/usa-un-experts-urge-immediate-halt-christa-pikes-execution

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;