COUNTDOWN: 13  days to Wrongful Conviction Day: (Thursday October 2, 2014); Quote from participating lawyer Sal Caramanna:  "Wrongful convictions can be eradicated. It is a complex issue, but the question of attitude is not: all criminal justice participants need to step up and rise to the challenge. Defence counsel must fearlessly defend, relentlessly advocate and leave no stone unturned. Prosecutors must always be open to being wrong about their cases, to looking for exculpatory evidence and must never shy away from any lead that may undermine the prosecution theory. Judges must always be evenhanded, never letting the emotions and profile of a case skew their judgment."

STORY: "Murder charges dropped against MIT worker in death of 6-month-old son," by reporters John R. Ellement and Martin Finucane, published in the Boston Globe on September 18, 2014.

GIST:  "Middlesex County prosecutors have dropped first-degree murder charges in the case of Geoffrey Wilson, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology employee charged in 2010 with killing his 6-month-old son. Prosecutors dropped the case after questions were raised about a medical expert’s finding on the cause of the child’s death and after the state medical examiner’s office in August changed the manner of death in the case from “homicide” to “could not be determined.” Prosecutors said they acted today “in the interests of justice.” Wilson’s attorney, J.W. Carney Jr., said in August that the baby’s mother and grandmother had a rare genetic defect that can cause weaknesses in collagen, which would make a person more susceptible to ruptures of arteries or veins.
Carney said today that five experts hired by the defense had convinced the medical examiner that the death was not a criminal act. “It was every parent’s nightmare when Geoff Wilson was charged” with murdering his son, Carney said today. “All five of our medical experts offered the opinion that Nathan Wilson had died of natural causes, and not Shaken Baby Syndrome,’’ Carney said.  Prosecutors said in a nolle prosequi filing — notifying the court that they would not pursue the case further — that after the medical examiner’s original ruling, new information came to light on the family’s medical history. Prosecutors said that they had reviewed the family’s medical history; reviewed additional genetic tests; reviewed medical records and literature with the medical examiner; and consulted experts in clinical genetics and anatomic, clinical and forensic pathology. “Had this matter proceeded to trial, the Medical Examiner would not, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, have been able to opine as to whether the cause of death was due to inflicted injury or natural causes,’’ prosecutors wrote..........Defense attorneys in the case of Aisling Brady McCarthy, the nanny charged with killing a baby in Cambridge in 2013, have also raised questions in their case about Dr. Alice Newton, the expert who gave her opinion in both the McCarthy and Wilson cases."

The entire story can be found at: