BACKGROUND: From a previous post of this Blog: (August 23): "Katie’s attorneys with the Southern Center for Human Rights say their investigation has revealed that she was convicted of a crime that never occurred. Experts retained by her legal team — a neurologist and a forensic pathologist — have concluded that Tucker died of undiagnosed epilepsy, which was caused by an undetected arteriovenous malformation (AVM) in his brain. AVM is a life-threatening condition that typically develops in utero, in which a person has abnormally tangled blood vessels that disrupt blood flow, deprive tissue of oxygen, and face risk of rupture. Forty-four people have been exonerated in SBS/AHT cases, according to the National Registry of Exonerations." --------------------------------------
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "In another Georgia case this summer, a Gwinnett County judge vacated the murder conviction of a man who has spent more than two decades in prison tied to his son, noting that shaken baby syndrome, also known as abusive head trauma, is no longer treated as an automatic or presumptive proof of child abuse in modern medical and legal evaluations and that other possible explanations must be ruled out first. Lucio-Maymon (Southern Center for Human Rights Attorney Paulina Lucio-Maymon). worked on that case, too, and said these outcomes are a step in the right direction. “I hope these cases are just signaling that we all have a responsibility to revisit these convictions that are based on science that has undisputedly changed,” she said." -----------------------------------------------------
PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Augusta Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jared Williams told WABE that even if Smith was retried and convicted a second time, “the question would remain whether the result was just” and that he “did not get into this work to be uncertain about justice. “The job of a prosecutor is to find the truth and seek justice, not to ‘win,’ not to get the max sentence,” Williams said. “The job is simply to find the truth and pursue the just result. In the course of fighting to preserve the conviction and sentence against Mary Katherine Smith, we heard testimony and received evidence that removed our previous certainty that her conviction should stand."
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STORY: "'Nightmare is finally over': Augusta woman at center of 'shaken baby' case is freed from prison, by Criminal Justice Reporter Chamian Cruz, published by WABE, on August 27 2026. (I cover criminal justice for WABE, meaning you can often find me reading through court documents, sitting in a courtroom, or covering a protest or press conference. I follow that by speaking with people directly impacted by an incident or policy to help explain the big picture. My job is not to just recount the biggest crime story of the day. I also take great pride in being a Spanish-speaker, because it allows me to connect and tell stories of the Latino community in Georgia.)
GIST: An Augusta woman who spent more than a decade in prison is back home after prosecutors heard testimony this week that she was convicted of a crime that never occurred, highlighting how Georgia courts are continuing to catch up on what’s increasingly seen as junk science: shaken baby syndrome.
Mary Katherine Smith, who goes by Katie, was seeking a new trial, arguing that advances in medical science have produced new evidence in the shaken-baby death of her 2-year-old son, Tucker. Several medical experts testified over two days that Tucker’s 2014 death is now understood to have resulted from undiagnosed epilepsy.
Prosecutors then offered Smith a time-served Alford plea, allowing her to plead guilty but maintain her innocence to second-degree murder, said Southern Center for Human Rights Attorney Paulina Lucio-Maymon.
“It was the fastest way home, which is what she wants,” Lucio-Maymon said. “She wants to go back home, and so I would say it was a compromise for both parties.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Smith was released from north Georgia’s McRae Women’s Facility surrounded by her family and attorneys. Lucio-Maymon said she’s looking forward to attending her older son’s wedding in a couple of weeks.
“It was just such a happy and, honestly, unexpected moment,” she said. “We did not think that it was going to happen […] as fast, so we are very happy that she’s finally back home. She served 12 years and 27 days, and the nightmare is finally over.”
Lucio-Maymon said Tucker was always described as “a very happy kid, very chill and calm,” including by the staff at his day care facilities, but that’s partly because he was having seizures, causing him to become limp and lethargic. Medical records show he had at least six documented seizures, but because they weren’t looked at like they would be today, he never got the help he needed.
“The teachers knew that he had these ‘breath-holding episodes,’ so [they] were always making sure that he was fine,” Lucio-Maymon said. “I think that’s why the testimony was so impactful. Now we know that he was sick and that he was too young to be able to tell the adults around him what was going on. He was just a toddler.”
Augusta Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jared Williams told WABE that even if Smith was retried and convicted a second time, “the question would remain whether the result was just” and that he “did not get into this work to be uncertain about justice.”
“The job of a prosecutor is to find the truth and seek justice, not to ‘win,’ not to get the max sentence,” Williams said. “The job is simply to find the truth and pursue the just result. In the course of fighting to preserve the conviction and sentence against Mary Katherine Smith, we heard testimony and received evidence that removed our previous certainty that her conviction should stand.”
In another Georgia case this summer, a Gwinnett County judge vacated the murder conviction of a man who has spent more than two decades in prison tied to his son, noting that shaken baby syndrome, also known as abusive head trauma, is no longer treated as an automatic or presumptive proof of child abuse in modern medical and legal evaluations and that other possible explanations must be ruled out first.
Lucio-Maymon worked on that case, too, and said these outcomes are a step in the right direction.
“I hope these cases are just signaling that we all have a responsibility to revisit these convictions that are based on science that has undisputedly changed,” she said.
The Augusta district attorney said while his office is open to evaluating the integrity of past convictions, he does not believe Smith’s case “necessarily affects other convictions” there.""The entire story can be read at: https://www.wabe.org/nightmare-is-finally-over-augusta-woman-at-center-of-shaken-baby-case-is-freed-from-prison/
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;
