PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Brian Holmgren, the prosecutor who took Maze to trial, was previously on the advisory board of the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, an organization dedicated to educating people about the diagnosis. He says that he and the jury got it right and that Maze should remain in prison. Anyone who disagrees “clearly did not understand what the heck they were talking about,” he told NBC News. But in 2023, nearly two decades after Maze’s conviction, Sunny Eaton decided that his case deserved a second look. Eaton, a former public defender, leads the conviction review unit in the Nashville district attorney’s office, reopening cases in which people were found guilty but may actually be innocent. The “shaken baby” diagnosis gave her pause. “I am a firm believer that whenever you have scientific testimony that has put someone in prison, we have to evaluate that scientific evidence and make sure that it still stands today,” she told NBC News. “The scientific evidence in this case was 25 years old.”
------------------------------------------
SUB-HEADING: "A medical examiner's testimony put a father behind bars for life. Now he says he 'made a mistake.'"
SUB-HEADING: Dr. Bruce Levy's finding that Alex Maze died of shaken baby syndrome was critical in the murder conviction of his father, Russell Maze. Decades later, Levy says he believes Maze is innocent."
GIST:" In the summer of 2024, Dr. Bruce Levy, the former chief medical examiner of Tennessee, got a call asking whether he remembered the death of a baby boy, Alex Maze.
The name, from nearly 25 years earlier, faintly stirred Levy’s memory. Levy had conducted an autopsy on the 19-month-old boy, and he had concluded that Alex’s death was a homicide, the result of being violently shaken.
Levy’s testimony was critical in helping Nashville prosecutors secure a murder conviction against Alex’s father, Russell Maze, who was sentenced to life in prison.
For decades, Maze has denied abusing his son. He had been home alone with Alex in May 1999 when the baby suddenly stopped breathing. At the hospital, a pediatrician who specialized in identifying child abuse found what she said were clear signs that Alex was the victim of shaken baby syndrome. Levy later agreed.
Now, decades later, Levy was being asked to re-examine Alex’s death amid an initiative in Nashville investigating potential wrongful convictions. Intrigued, Levy said yes.
This month, in his first public comments on the case, Levy told NBC News that after having received information he never knew about Alex’s medical history, he came to a startling conclusion: He was wrong about Alex’s being abused, and he believes Maze is innocent.
“I have to remember that I’m not perfect and I can make mistakes,” Levy said. “And the best that I can do, is when I come to realize that, is to admit that I have made a mistake and try to do what I can to rectify that.”
But in the decades since Maze was convicted, there has been a growing acknowledgment among experts that the symptoms once believed to be proof of shaken baby syndrome, also known as abusive head trauma, can appear in children for other reasons, like complex medical conditions. And with that shift in understanding, a movement has been growing to re-examine — and potentially reverse — some shaken baby convictions, particularly when the evidence of abuse now appears questionable.
In October, NBC News’ “The Last Appeal” podcast investigated the high-profile case of Robert Roberson, a condemned man on Texas’ death row who was convicted of fatally shaking and abusing his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki, in 2002. On Oct. 9, Texas’ highest criminal court halted the latest attempt to execute Roberson, sending his case back to a lower court for another review. “We are confident that an objective review of the science and medical evidence will show there was no crime,” Gretchen Sween, Roberson’s attorney, said at the time.
Maze is still waiting for a similar breakthrough.
After he reviewed Maze’s case, Levy wrote an affidavit in September 2024 recanting his homicide finding and determining that Alex had succumbed to a “natural” death. He joined an ongoing effort by the Nashville district attorney’s office, which has been working to free Maze.
Levy reclassified Alex's cause of death as "undetermined" and manner of death as "natural" in 2024. Alex's legal name was Bryan.
Yet despite supporters in law enforcement and forensics fighting for his release, Maze remains behind bars. Since last year, both the trial court and the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals have declined to vacate his conviction. Maze’s struggle is emblematic of the uphill climb parents face when they try to combat charges of shaking their babies.
The latest decisions were yet another disappointment for Maze’s wife, Kaye, who has never wavered in her belief in her husband’s innocence. She was not home when Alex stopped breathing in 1999, but like her husband, she was also charged. She accepted what is called an Alford plea, allowing her to maintain her innocence and stay out of prison while pleading to reckless aggravated assault. She remains a convicted felon.
Her home in East Tennessee, where she moved to be closer to her husband’s prison, is filled with framed pictures of Russell and Alex, their buoyant expressions frozen in time.
“We had a whole life planned out,” Kaye told NBC News in her first interview about the ordeal. “You know, you have a baby with so much hope, so much promise. And to have it all just ripped away from you is just — it’s sorrow and anger. And anger is pretty high up there.”
The Tennessee Department of Correction declined to make Russell Maze available to comment in person or by phone.
The Mazes’ experience as parents was fraught from the very beginning.
Alex was born prematurely in March 1999, weighing just 3 pounds, 12 ounces. He spent his first days in a neonatal intensive care unit for ailments including jaundice, anemia and a racing heart rate.
The Mazes, in their 30s, were vigilant first-time parents. Russell worked for a trucking company, and Kaye picked up a couple shifts as a vendor at a music festival. Alex was sent home from the hospital wearing a heart monitor. The Mazes took him to doctors seven times over the next three weeks, Kaye said.
In May 1999, when Alex was 5 weeks old, Kaye stepped out to buy formula. She returned home less than 30 minutes later and saw an ambulance. Russell said he had dialed 911 after Alex, who had been fussy and vomiting, stopped breathing. He said he attempted CPR until the paramedics arrived and resuscitated the baby.
At Nashville’s Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, one of the first doctors to see Alex mistakenly described him as a “full term baby” with “no significant past medical history.” They examined his tiny body and noted head and abdominal bruising, bleeding in the eyes, a fractured clavicle and irreparable brain damage, court records show. Dr. Suzanne Starling, then the director of Vanderbilt’s child abuse and neglect program, wrote that “this constellation of injuries is seen in abusive head trauma.”
Police were called to the hospital. Russell was interrogated for hours and insisted he would never harm his son. He told investigators that he may have “jostled” Alex when he tried to revive him.
After extensive treatment, Alex was discharged from the hospital. He was separated from his parents and a judge placed him into special-needs foster care. Kaye said she was told she could see her son only once every two weeks for an hour.
"I carried him in my womb for all those 34 weeks," Kaye Maze recalled of her son, Alex, who was born prematurely.
“It feels like I have lost a part of my soul,” she recalled of that time. “He’s no longer there. I carried him in my womb for all those 34 weeks. For me to have to give him up almost immediately was just unbelievable.”
That June, the Mazes were placed in handcuffs. A grand jury had indicted Russell on a charge of aggravated child abuse and Kaye on a charge of aggravated assault after prosecutors alleged that she knew about the bruises but failed to protect her son.
Kaye was placed on probation after she accepted the plea deal. She said she was told that would help her get her son back, but he remained in foster care. The family never reunited: Alex’s health declined rapidly in October 2000, and he was removed from life support over the Mazes’ objections.
Alex Maze's health deteriorated in October 2000 and he was taken off life support. He died at 19 months old.
Maze was taken from prison to the hospital room, but he remained shackled and could not touch his son or kiss him goodbye, Kaye recalled.
She insisted on a white casket for the funeral. Alex was dressed in overalls and tennis shoes, his fragile frame hugged by his favorite stuffed animals. A family friend played the bagpipes at his gravesite. Russell was not allowed to attend.
“He’s alone and without his mother. Without his father,” said Kaye, who felt as if she were abandoning her son as she walked away from his grave.
Upon the boy’s death, prosecutors sought a new charge against Russell Maze: first-degree felony murder.
In 2004, a jury found him guilty. The evidence at his trial included the autopsy conducted by Levy, who as the prosecution’s lead forensic witness testified that Alex’s death was a homicide, a direct result of the “shaken baby” diagnosis from 1999.
Brian Holmgren, the prosecutor who took Maze to trial, was previously on the advisory board of the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, an organization dedicated to educating people about the diagnosis. He says that he and the jury got it right and that Maze should remain in prison. Anyone who disagrees “clearly did not understand what the heck they were talking about,” he told NBC News.
Brian Holmgren, a former Nashville prosecutor, took Russell Maze to trial and stands by the first-degree felony murder charge.
But in 2023, nearly two decades after Maze’s conviction, Sunny Eaton decided that his case deserved a second look. Eaton, a former public defender, leads the conviction review unit in the Nashville district attorney’s office, reopening cases in which people were found guilty but may actually be innocent. The “shaken baby” diagnosis gave her pause.
“I am a firm believer that whenever you have scientific testimony that has put someone in prison, we have to evaluate that scientific evidence and make sure that it still stands today,” she told NBC News. “The scientific evidence in this case was 25 years old.”
A New York Times Magazine/ProPublica profile last year highlighted how Eaton reinvestigated Maze’s conviction, bringing national attention to his case.
Over the course of nearly two years, Eaton said, her unit consulted more than a half-dozen experts to review the original findings. All of them said Alex’s death was most likely from natural causes, not abuse.
"This was not a healthy baby," Sunny Eaton, who leads the Nashville district attorney’s office's conviction review unit, said of Alex Maze.
Eaton said Starling, the child abuse pediatrician whose shaken baby diagnosis helped build the case, did not review Kaye’s pregnancy records and made her determination before many tests were conducted on Alex.
“This was not a healthy baby,” Eaton said, “and he was not a healthy baby even before he was born.”
Post-birth, doctors said Alex Maze suffered from jaundice, anemia and an abnormal heart rhythm.Courtesy Kaye Maze
Starling did not respond to requests for comment.
In March 2024, Eaton took her findings to court. The case landed before Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Steve Dozier, who had presided over Maze’s past trials and unsuccessful appeals. Eaton and Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk asked for the Mazes’ convictions to be overturned. Several medical experts, including pediatric neurologists and radiologists “using current science,” concluded that Alex suffered from an undiagnosed medical condition, Funk said.
When one of the prosecution’s experts, a medical examiner, suggested that Levy, the original medical examiner on the case, would now agree that Alex died from natural causes, Dozier was skeptical.
“You are going to be able to say that ‘I can bring in the doctor who testified and did the autopsy and he’s going to admit he was wrong’?” Dozier asked.
The judge denied the Mazes’ attempt to dismiss their convictions.
Kaye was devastated.
“What is he losing by letting Russell go?” Kaye asked. “It’s not like he has not served 26 years already.”
Russell and Kaye Maze welcomed their only child, Alex, on March 25, 1999. He weighed 3 pounds, 12 ounces.Juan Diego Reyes for NBC News
Dozier declined to comment on the Mazes’ case but referred NBC News to his orders; in his ruling last year, he wrote that he was “unconvinced” by testimony from additional medical experts, which he categorized as merely “new ammunition in a ‘battle of the experts.’”
Not long after Dozier’s decision, Levy got a call from the medical examiner who had testified in the recent hearing, asking whether he would review his autopsy findings from decades earlier.
He was living in Pennsylvania, where he had moved to work for a hospital system. Since Alex’s death, he had learned more about shaken baby syndrome. He attended an abusive head trauma conference where he heard about brain injuries in the military and professional sports, widening his view of other possible causes of symptoms.
“I started realizing that some of the mechanisms that had been proposed early on with shaken baby syndrome, maybe we were a little bit too certain about them than we first thought, that maybe there are alternatives,” Levy said.
Levy said he revisited Alex’s case with an open mind. He reread the records and re-examined the slides of the boy’s brain. He also absorbed information he had not previously seen about Alex’s premature birth and racing heart. “That history should have been there” during his initial autopsy, he said.
He produced a sworn affidavit for Nashville prosecutors recanting his homicide finding and determining that Alex had succumbed to a “natural” death.
He ultimately could not say for sure what killed Alex, but he no longer thought the evidence pointed to abuse. He believed the Mazes were innocent.
But in October, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Russell Maze’s conviction in a 2-1 ruling. The majority opinion brushed off Levy’s affidavit, finding it presented only a “bare allegation of a possibility” of a natural cause of Alex’s death.
“Dr. Levy’s changed opinion as expressed in his affidavit is merely a matter of witness recantation, rather than providing new scientific evidence of actual innocence,” they wrote.
Appeals court Judge Tom Greenholtz disagreed. He was swayed by Levy’s reversal, writing in a dissenting opinion that “the medical examiner’s recanting of his testimony establishing the cause and manner of death, separate from the reasons for the recantation, is itself the new scientific evidence warranting reconsideration.”
Maze, 60, has few options left. He could petition the Tennessee Supreme Court, although it is not guaranteed his case will be heard. He could also seek a pardon from Tennessee’s governor, who did not respond to requests for comment.
Kaye, 62, said that while she fights for her husband’s freedom, her anger also gives way to gentler moments, loving memories of Maze sweetly rocking Alex to sleep when the world revolved around her family of three.
“The bad thing is we are in our 60s now,” Kaye said. “We were in our 30s when this happened. So now we are closer to the end of our road. How much time we have left together, nobody knows.”
Levy remains hopeful the legal system can find a way to free Maze. He winced as he thought of his role in the case, how a couple has been separated through decades and how he believes an innocent man remains in prison.
“I would like Russell to come home,” Levy said. “I think he has paid a horrible price for mistakes that I and others have made.”
The entire story can be read at:
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. 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/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html 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.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
———————————————————————————————
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!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
-------------------------------------------------------------------