PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
The Facebook page for the outstanding documentary 'The Syndrome" provides much valuable information this baseless, disproven theory that has wrongly sent many people to jail - and destroyed families in the process. The site can be reached at:
https://www.facebook.com/thesyndromefilm/
A good example is the post on the site which appeared on January 31, 2018: (I have provided background on each of the four cases at the links below.)
"The past year, four innocent people who were in prison over shaken baby syndrome were freed. Robert Wilkes (Montana Innocence Project), Maria Mendez (Project for the Innocent - Loyola Law School, Los Angeles), Zavion Johnson (Northern California Innocence Project) and Christopher Dodrill (West Virginia Innocence Project)."
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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Robert Wilkes: (Montana): "Overwhelming evidence helps overturn Missoula father's homicide conviction." by reporter Dillon Kato, published by The Missoulian on July 2, 2018..." A District Court judge has overturned the 2009 homicide conviction of Robert Wilkes, marking yet another court victory for the Montana Innocence Project. Wilkes’ 3-month-old son Gabriel died in October 2008. More than a year later, Wilkes was convicted in the baby's death, and sentenced to 40 years in prison. The Montana Innocence Project began to look into his case in 2012, finding that Gabriel had no signs of abuse and that the prosecution relied on the theory of Shaken Baby Syndrome in Wilkes' case. The Innocence Project gathered a series of medical experts from around the country to review the case. They determined a number of other likely causes of his death. Also, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy had listed the cause of death as “undetermined,” something Wilkes’ defense attorney did not present at trial. The Montana Innocence Project’s motion for a new trial for Wilkes was eventually appealed to the Montana Supreme Court, which sent it back down for further proceedings. In an order issued Thursday, District Court Judge James Haynes of Ravalli County, who was brought in to oversee the Wilkes case, overturned the conviction. As part of his order the judge concluded that Wilkes’ attorney at trial had been ineffective in his representation of his client. “The Court concludes (Scott Spencer) failed to subject the prosecution’s case to meaningful adversarial testing. … Wilkes has shown his Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel was violated to such a degree as to jeopardize the fundamental fairness and integrity of his trial,” the judge wrote. “I have been waiting, hoping, and praying for this moment for many years,” Wilkes said in a statement. “The Innocence Project works tirelessly on behalf of people like me, who are wrongfully convicted. The project gives us hope. I am very grateful for their amazing and dedicated work.”
https://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/crime-and-courts/overwhelming-medical-evidence-helps-overturn-missoula-father-s-homicide-conviction/article_3fc74661-8829-5da0-a6a7-4c79f741ce30.html
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Zavion Johnson: California: (Registry of Exonerations) Entry written by Maurice Possley.'
On November 24, 2001, 18-year-old Zavion Johnson called 911 in Sacramento, California when his four-month-old daughter, Nadia, stopped breathing. Emergency personnel managed to get the girl breathing again and rushed her to the hospital.
When Nadia arrived, doctors discovered she was suffering from serious head trauma. They suspected she had been physically abused and notified police. Although she showed no other outward signs of injury, there was a thumb-shaped red mark on her forehead.
When interviewed, Johnson told police that his one-year-old brother had struck Nadia on the mouth with a toy earlier in the day, but she otherwise had been fine. However, when he returned home at 3 a.m., he admitted to his wife, Racquel, that Nadia slipped from his grasp and hit her head on the bathtub when he had been bathing her in the shower.
By the next day, Johnson had told the rest of his family. He was crying and extremely distraught. His family believed him because they knew how well he cared for his own siblings as well as for Nadia. When Johnson said he wanted to tell the doctors, his family advised him to speak to a lawyer first.
However, before that occurred, a nurse told police that Racquel’s aunt reported that Johnson had admitted that he dropped Nadia in the shower. By then, the baby had been declared brain dead. Johnson was holding her in his arms when life support was disconnected and she died. Johnson fainted on the spot.
On December 4, 2001, the day of Nadia’s funeral, police arrested Johnson and charged him with murder and assault.
In November 2002, Johnson went to trial in Sacramento County Superior Court. The prosecution’s case consisted primarily of the testimony of three medical experts who concluded that Nadia had been violently shaken—that she was a victim of Shaken Baby Syndrome.
Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is a term coined to describe a condition first articulated in 1971. SBS is said to arise when an infant is shaken so hard that the brain rotates inside the skull, causing severe and potentially deadly brain injury, but often without any external signs of harm. SBS is said to involve a telltale “triad” of symptoms—brain swelling, brain hemorrhaging, and retinal hemorrhaging. When present in an infant who has no outward signs of abuse, this triad of symptoms indicates that the child has been violently shaken. According to prevailing medical wisdom at the time of the incident, no other injuries or pathologies could cause these three symptoms to occur at the same time. Moreover, it was thought that a victim of SBS became unresponsive immediately, and therefore the last person to have physical care of the baby must have caused the injuries.
Dr. Gregory Reiber, a forensic pathologist who performed Nadia’s autopsy, testified that he found bleeding behind her eyes, which was associated with a “rotational head injury, what some people call Shaken Baby Syndrome.” He was unequivocal in saying that the injuries could not have been the result of a fall.
Dr. Claudia Greco, a neuropathologist, testified that she found a brain injury near Nadia’s spine that was the “most convincing” evidence that the baby died from SBS and not from a fall of four feet.
Dr. Kevin Coulter was the pediatrician at University of California Davis Medical Center who treated Nadia in the hospital. He testified that physicians only see the constellation of injuries observed in Nadia in SBS cases, falls from “great heights” of 10 feet or higher, motor vehicle accidents, or similar events where there is a “really significant high velocity impact.”
There were no grip marks or broken bones associated with grabbing and shaking an infant, but the prosecution experts pointed to Nadia's bruising as evidence of abuse. They did not mention, however, that the bruising only appeared after medical intervention, in locations consistent with that intervention.
The defense called one expert, Dr. Richard Robertson, a biomechanical consultant who spent five hours preparing for his testimony. He told the jury that the injuries were consistent with a short fall onto a hard surface—such as Johnson had described. Robertson based much of his opinion on an article that Greco testified had been “torn apart basically because of the poor quality.”
Thirteen witnesses—mostly family members—testified that Johnson was a loving, caring, calm, gentle, and patient father who, as the oldest of seven children, had significant experience caring for young children.
Johnson testified and denied shaking Nadia. He maintained that she had slipped out of his hands while he was bathing her and fell, striking her head on the tub. He said that she did not have any mark on her. Because her breathing seemed raspy, Johnson asked his mother, Gatoi, to examine the child. She assured him Nadia was fine.
Nadia took a nap and when she awoke, she seemed tired. By the early afternoon, Johnson and his mother decided to take Nadia to a clinic near the home of Racquel’s stepmother. However, that clinic was closed. They tried another clinic, but it was closed too. By the time they arrived at the stepmother’s home, Nadia was nonresponsive and Johnson called 911. He attempted CPR, but broke down crying. The paramedics arrived at 3:20 p.m. and grasped Nadia by the head to intubate her.
On December 12, 2002, the jury convicted Johnson of second-degree murder and assault on a child resulting in death. The judge said the case was “one of those situations where an otherwise decent individual has one moment in their lives when they act out of character.” The judge also said that the medical evidence “was overwhelming that this was not an accident.” The judge then sentenced Johnson to 25 years to life in prison.
The California Court of Appeal upheld the convictions in 1994. Over the next several years, Johnson, acting without a lawyer, filed several state law petitions for a writ of habeas corpus challenging his conviction on various grounds, primarily related to his trial defense lawyer failing to properly investigate the case. All were denied without a hearing.
In April 2017, lawyers from the law firm of Keker, Van Nest & Peters and the Northern California Innocence Project filed a state law petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The petition asserted that medical research had subsequently shown that the same triad of symptoms said to be SBS could be caused by a fall.
“It is now…indisputable that scientific research and medical advances since the time of trial have undermined the prosecution's two claims that were the basis for Mr. Johnson's conviction…that Nadia’s injuries could not have been the result of an accidental short fall and that only SBS could have caused Nadia’s injuries,” the petition said.
In addition, two of the prosecution experts at Johnson’s trial provided sworn affidavits recanting their trial testimony. Dr. Greco, the neuropathologist who examined the brain and spinal cord after the autopsy, repudiated her testimony that only shaking could have caused the microscopic injury she observed in Nadia's spinal cord.
In a report submitted in support of the petition, Dr. Reiber, who conducted the autopsy, said, “While the consensus view at the time of the autopsy, which I shared, led to a conclusion that the manner of death was homicide, the current reassessment has led me to conclude that accidental injury cannot be excluded and therefore the manner (of death) should be considered as undetermined.”
In addition, Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist who reviewed the case under the most recent medical and forensic standards, also concluded that Nadia's injuries were consistent with the fall Johnson described. She said there was “insufficient medical evidence based on the most current forensic science to support a determination of an intentionally inflicted traumatic injury.”
A fourth expert, Dr. Roger Haut, director of Orthopaedic and Biomechanics Laboratories at Michigan State University, reviewed the evidence in light of his studies on skull fractures. He concluded that Nadia's skull fracture was consistent with a three-foot fall onto a hard curved surface.
On December 8, 2017, Sacramento Superior Court Judge James Arguelles granted the petition and vacated Johnson’s convictions. Johnson was released later that day.
On January 19, 2018, the prosecution dismissed the charges.
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=5264
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Christopher Dodrill: (West Virginia): "Innocence Project client Dodrill released from prison, by James Jolly, published on August 16, 2018 : "The West Virginia Innocence Project Law Clinic at WVU Law has helped free a client from prison after proving he was convicted of a crime he did not commit. The Circuit Court for Tyler County, West Virginia, recently vacated the conviction of Christopher Dodrill. In 2016, Dodrill was found guilty of child abuse with serious bodily injury and unlawful assault after a child under his care became injured. He was sentenced to 3-15 years in prison. Dodrill consistently testified that the child fell and hit her head, and that he took her to the hospital. The child fully recovered, but because she had brain swelling and a subdural hematoma, the hospital diagnosed her with Shaken Baby Syndrome without eliminating other possible causes of her injuries. At his trial, Dodrill had no doctors or expert witnesses to consult or testify on his behalf, making it his word against the hospital’s diagnosis. On Dodrill’s behalf, the WVIP submitted to the court reports from a biomechanical expert and a pediatric neurologist, as well as depositions of the state’s primary expert and defense counsel. They proved that the child under Dodrill’s care had underlying health issues made worse by the fall and that Dodrill did not cause her injuries. Judge David W. Hummell, Jr. of the Tyler County Circuit Court found that Dodrill’s trial counsel was ineffective for failing to consult with or hire a defense expert when his client was on trial and subsequently reversed the conviction. “This is the second case in which a West Virginia Innocence Project client has been freed because defense attorneys did not investigate the controversial diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome, and experts have found and supported an alternative cause of injury,” said Valena Beety, professor of law and director of the West Virginia Innocence Project. “Chris should never have served time for a crime he did not commit, but at least his case shines a light on controversial and faulty Shaken Baby Syndrome prosecutions in our state.” Dodrill’s freedom is a result of work done by WVIP student-attorneys Cody Swearingen ‘17, Taylor Coplin ‘17, Zack Gray ‘18 and Britlyn Seitz ‘18, and supervising attorney Melissa Giggenbach. The students consulted extensively with experts and conducted depositions with the state’s medical expert, trial counsel and trial counsel’s supervisor. "Overturning this conviction took more than two years and the work of two teams of dedicated clinical law students,” said Giggenbach. “Hopefully, with this success, we can stop wrongful convictions based on faulty and misleading science." “The work I did with WVIP was some of the most rewarding I’ve done in my life. I’m thankful that the West Virginia justice system was able to see the controversy behind Shaken Baby Syndrome, and more specifically, the constitutional issues that plagued Mr. Dodrill’s trial,” said Swearingen, who is now lawyer in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps. The West Virginia Innocence Project Law Clinic is funded, in part, by Wilson, Frame and Metheney, PLLC."
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. 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. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/
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Robert Wilkes: (Montana): "Overwhelming evidence helps overturn Missoula father's homicide conviction." by reporter Dillon Kato, published by The Missoulian on July 2, 2018..." A District Court judge has overturned the 2009 homicide conviction of Robert Wilkes, marking yet another court victory for the Montana Innocence Project. Wilkes’ 3-month-old son Gabriel died in October 2008. More than a year later, Wilkes was convicted in the baby's death, and sentenced to 40 years in prison. The Montana Innocence Project began to look into his case in 2012, finding that Gabriel had no signs of abuse and that the prosecution relied on the theory of Shaken Baby Syndrome in Wilkes' case. The Innocence Project gathered a series of medical experts from around the country to review the case. They determined a number of other likely causes of his death. Also, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy had listed the cause of death as “undetermined,” something Wilkes’ defense attorney did not present at trial. The Montana Innocence Project’s motion for a new trial for Wilkes was eventually appealed to the Montana Supreme Court, which sent it back down for further proceedings. In an order issued Thursday, District Court Judge James Haynes of Ravalli County, who was brought in to oversee the Wilkes case, overturned the conviction. As part of his order the judge concluded that Wilkes’ attorney at trial had been ineffective in his representation of his client. “The Court concludes (Scott Spencer) failed to subject the prosecution’s case to meaningful adversarial testing. … Wilkes has shown his Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel was violated to such a degree as to jeopardize the fundamental fairness and integrity of his trial,” the judge wrote. “I have been waiting, hoping, and praying for this moment for many years,” Wilkes said in a statement. “The Innocence Project works tirelessly on behalf of people like me, who are wrongfully convicted. The project gives us hope. I am very grateful for their amazing and dedicated work.”
https://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/crime-and-courts/overwhelming-medical-evidence-helps-overturn-missoula-father-s-homicide-conviction/article_3fc74661-8829-5da0-a6a7-4c79f741ce30.html
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Maria Mendez: California): "Great grandmother freed from prison after 11 years for crime she did not commit," by reporter Gordon Tokumatsul, published by NBC Bay area on July 11, 2018..." A great grandmother who served
11 years in state prison for a crime she did not commit was released
from custody last week after a verdict was overturned. Maria Mendez was a mix of emotions.
"I
can feel the air outside, I can see the birds, I can see the sun when
it rises, I feel so happy to be outside," she said in Spanish via Skype
from her native Mexico where she was reunited with her family. "Right
now I don't want to think about those sad days, because I feel bad." Attorney
Brian Hennigan, of Hueston Henningan LLP, and Loyola's Project for the
Innocent dug deep into the evidence that resulted in Mendez's
conviction. "She was going
to wind up, at the age of 64, likely dying in prison," said Brian
Hennigan, an attorney with Loyola Law School's Project for the Innocent. They
found hours of testimony that convinced the jury her baby grandson,
Emmanuel, had died from massive brain swelling. A doctor and a coroner
testified that it was consistent with shaken baby syndrome, a
controversial, catchall term used to explain injuries that are hard to
pinpoint.
Paula Mitchell, the legal director of LPI said it's more of a legal backstop. "There just seemed to be very little, in the way of medical evidence, from the very beginning," Mitchell said. Jurors
did not see the results of two CT scan taken right after Emmanuel was
hospitalized. The LPI team says they showed conclusively that he did not
have massive brain swelling. The court also did not see autopsy photos, which showed he may have died from injuries suffered in a fall, two days earlier. "The
fact that anybody is convicted under those circumstances, frankly
overall, is a bit of a red flag," said Adam Grant, the program director
at LPI."
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/california/Great-Grandmother-Freed-From-Prison-Innocent-Project-487936841.html-----------------------------------------------------------
Zavion Johnson: California: (Registry of Exonerations) Entry written by Maurice Possley.'
On November 24, 2001, 18-year-old Zavion Johnson called 911 in Sacramento, California when his four-month-old daughter, Nadia, stopped breathing. Emergency personnel managed to get the girl breathing again and rushed her to the hospital.
When Nadia arrived, doctors discovered she was suffering from serious head trauma. They suspected she had been physically abused and notified police. Although she showed no other outward signs of injury, there was a thumb-shaped red mark on her forehead.
When interviewed, Johnson told police that his one-year-old brother had struck Nadia on the mouth with a toy earlier in the day, but she otherwise had been fine. However, when he returned home at 3 a.m., he admitted to his wife, Racquel, that Nadia slipped from his grasp and hit her head on the bathtub when he had been bathing her in the shower.
By the next day, Johnson had told the rest of his family. He was crying and extremely distraught. His family believed him because they knew how well he cared for his own siblings as well as for Nadia. When Johnson said he wanted to tell the doctors, his family advised him to speak to a lawyer first.
However, before that occurred, a nurse told police that Racquel’s aunt reported that Johnson had admitted that he dropped Nadia in the shower. By then, the baby had been declared brain dead. Johnson was holding her in his arms when life support was disconnected and she died. Johnson fainted on the spot.
On December 4, 2001, the day of Nadia’s funeral, police arrested Johnson and charged him with murder and assault.
In November 2002, Johnson went to trial in Sacramento County Superior Court. The prosecution’s case consisted primarily of the testimony of three medical experts who concluded that Nadia had been violently shaken—that she was a victim of Shaken Baby Syndrome.
Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is a term coined to describe a condition first articulated in 1971. SBS is said to arise when an infant is shaken so hard that the brain rotates inside the skull, causing severe and potentially deadly brain injury, but often without any external signs of harm. SBS is said to involve a telltale “triad” of symptoms—brain swelling, brain hemorrhaging, and retinal hemorrhaging. When present in an infant who has no outward signs of abuse, this triad of symptoms indicates that the child has been violently shaken. According to prevailing medical wisdom at the time of the incident, no other injuries or pathologies could cause these three symptoms to occur at the same time. Moreover, it was thought that a victim of SBS became unresponsive immediately, and therefore the last person to have physical care of the baby must have caused the injuries.
Dr. Gregory Reiber, a forensic pathologist who performed Nadia’s autopsy, testified that he found bleeding behind her eyes, which was associated with a “rotational head injury, what some people call Shaken Baby Syndrome.” He was unequivocal in saying that the injuries could not have been the result of a fall.
Dr. Claudia Greco, a neuropathologist, testified that she found a brain injury near Nadia’s spine that was the “most convincing” evidence that the baby died from SBS and not from a fall of four feet.
Dr. Kevin Coulter was the pediatrician at University of California Davis Medical Center who treated Nadia in the hospital. He testified that physicians only see the constellation of injuries observed in Nadia in SBS cases, falls from “great heights” of 10 feet or higher, motor vehicle accidents, or similar events where there is a “really significant high velocity impact.”
There were no grip marks or broken bones associated with grabbing and shaking an infant, but the prosecution experts pointed to Nadia's bruising as evidence of abuse. They did not mention, however, that the bruising only appeared after medical intervention, in locations consistent with that intervention.
The defense called one expert, Dr. Richard Robertson, a biomechanical consultant who spent five hours preparing for his testimony. He told the jury that the injuries were consistent with a short fall onto a hard surface—such as Johnson had described. Robertson based much of his opinion on an article that Greco testified had been “torn apart basically because of the poor quality.”
Thirteen witnesses—mostly family members—testified that Johnson was a loving, caring, calm, gentle, and patient father who, as the oldest of seven children, had significant experience caring for young children.
Johnson testified and denied shaking Nadia. He maintained that she had slipped out of his hands while he was bathing her and fell, striking her head on the tub. He said that she did not have any mark on her. Because her breathing seemed raspy, Johnson asked his mother, Gatoi, to examine the child. She assured him Nadia was fine.
Nadia took a nap and when she awoke, she seemed tired. By the early afternoon, Johnson and his mother decided to take Nadia to a clinic near the home of Racquel’s stepmother. However, that clinic was closed. They tried another clinic, but it was closed too. By the time they arrived at the stepmother’s home, Nadia was nonresponsive and Johnson called 911. He attempted CPR, but broke down crying. The paramedics arrived at 3:20 p.m. and grasped Nadia by the head to intubate her.
On December 12, 2002, the jury convicted Johnson of second-degree murder and assault on a child resulting in death. The judge said the case was “one of those situations where an otherwise decent individual has one moment in their lives when they act out of character.” The judge also said that the medical evidence “was overwhelming that this was not an accident.” The judge then sentenced Johnson to 25 years to life in prison.
The California Court of Appeal upheld the convictions in 1994. Over the next several years, Johnson, acting without a lawyer, filed several state law petitions for a writ of habeas corpus challenging his conviction on various grounds, primarily related to his trial defense lawyer failing to properly investigate the case. All were denied without a hearing.
In April 2017, lawyers from the law firm of Keker, Van Nest & Peters and the Northern California Innocence Project filed a state law petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The petition asserted that medical research had subsequently shown that the same triad of symptoms said to be SBS could be caused by a fall.
“It is now…indisputable that scientific research and medical advances since the time of trial have undermined the prosecution's two claims that were the basis for Mr. Johnson's conviction…that Nadia’s injuries could not have been the result of an accidental short fall and that only SBS could have caused Nadia’s injuries,” the petition said.
In addition, two of the prosecution experts at Johnson’s trial provided sworn affidavits recanting their trial testimony. Dr. Greco, the neuropathologist who examined the brain and spinal cord after the autopsy, repudiated her testimony that only shaking could have caused the microscopic injury she observed in Nadia's spinal cord.
In a report submitted in support of the petition, Dr. Reiber, who conducted the autopsy, said, “While the consensus view at the time of the autopsy, which I shared, led to a conclusion that the manner of death was homicide, the current reassessment has led me to conclude that accidental injury cannot be excluded and therefore the manner (of death) should be considered as undetermined.”
In addition, Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist who reviewed the case under the most recent medical and forensic standards, also concluded that Nadia's injuries were consistent with the fall Johnson described. She said there was “insufficient medical evidence based on the most current forensic science to support a determination of an intentionally inflicted traumatic injury.”
A fourth expert, Dr. Roger Haut, director of Orthopaedic and Biomechanics Laboratories at Michigan State University, reviewed the evidence in light of his studies on skull fractures. He concluded that Nadia's skull fracture was consistent with a three-foot fall onto a hard curved surface.
On December 8, 2017, Sacramento Superior Court Judge James Arguelles granted the petition and vacated Johnson’s convictions. Johnson was released later that day.
On January 19, 2018, the prosecution dismissed the charges.
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Christopher Dodrill: (West Virginia): "Innocence Project client Dodrill released from prison, by James Jolly, published on August 16, 2018 : "The West Virginia Innocence Project Law Clinic at WVU Law has helped free a client from prison after proving he was convicted of a crime he did not commit. The Circuit Court for Tyler County, West Virginia, recently vacated the conviction of Christopher Dodrill. In 2016, Dodrill was found guilty of child abuse with serious bodily injury and unlawful assault after a child under his care became injured. He was sentenced to 3-15 years in prison. Dodrill consistently testified that the child fell and hit her head, and that he took her to the hospital. The child fully recovered, but because she had brain swelling and a subdural hematoma, the hospital diagnosed her with Shaken Baby Syndrome without eliminating other possible causes of her injuries. At his trial, Dodrill had no doctors or expert witnesses to consult or testify on his behalf, making it his word against the hospital’s diagnosis. On Dodrill’s behalf, the WVIP submitted to the court reports from a biomechanical expert and a pediatric neurologist, as well as depositions of the state’s primary expert and defense counsel. They proved that the child under Dodrill’s care had underlying health issues made worse by the fall and that Dodrill did not cause her injuries. Judge David W. Hummell, Jr. of the Tyler County Circuit Court found that Dodrill’s trial counsel was ineffective for failing to consult with or hire a defense expert when his client was on trial and subsequently reversed the conviction. “This is the second case in which a West Virginia Innocence Project client has been freed because defense attorneys did not investigate the controversial diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome, and experts have found and supported an alternative cause of injury,” said Valena Beety, professor of law and director of the West Virginia Innocence Project. “Chris should never have served time for a crime he did not commit, but at least his case shines a light on controversial and faulty Shaken Baby Syndrome prosecutions in our state.” Dodrill’s freedom is a result of work done by WVIP student-attorneys Cody Swearingen ‘17, Taylor Coplin ‘17, Zack Gray ‘18 and Britlyn Seitz ‘18, and supervising attorney Melissa Giggenbach. The students consulted extensively with experts and conducted depositions with the state’s medical expert, trial counsel and trial counsel’s supervisor. "Overturning this conviction took more than two years and the work of two teams of dedicated clinical law students,” said Giggenbach. “Hopefully, with this success, we can stop wrongful convictions based on faulty and misleading science." “The work I did with WVIP was some of the most rewarding I’ve done in my life. I’m thankful that the West Virginia justice system was able to see the controversy behind Shaken Baby Syndrome, and more specifically, the constitutional issues that plagued Mr. Dodrill’s trial,” said Swearingen, who is now lawyer in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps. The West Virginia Innocence Project Law Clinic is funded, in part, by Wilson, Frame and Metheney, PLLC."
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. 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. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/
