Editorial: Not all shaken baby convictions are sound
NO ONE doubts that parents and babysitters can and do inflict horrendous and sometimes fatal brain injuries on young children by violently shaking them. Shaken baby syndrome is given as the cause of death in around half of child abuse fatalities.
But there is something badly wrong with the way so many child fatalities are blamed on shaking. As we report, many infants who appear to have been shaken to death may simply have tumbled, suffocated or met with some other accident.
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For 40 years, mainstream medical experts who give evidence in court have largely agreed that shaken baby syndrome can be unambiguously diagnosed by a triad of symptoms at post-mortem: swelling of the brain, haemorrhages at the back of both eyes, and diffuse bleeding at the rear of the brain. Murder convictions are often secured on the basis of these alone, even in the absence of other signs of abuse such as a severely damaged spinal cord or obvious bruising.
The result of this 鈥渕edically diagnosed murder鈥�, as one senior lawyer in the US recently described it, is that thousands of people may be serving time for murders they did not commit.
鈥淭housands of people may be in jail for child murders they did not commit鈥�
Over the past decade, evidence has emerged to challenge the idea that the triad of symptoms constitutes unambiguous evidence of death through violent shaking. In 2005 this magazine reported that doubts were surfacing over shaken baby syndrome. A handful of convictions have been quashed on appeal, yet the dogma persists in the courts.
If anything, things are going backwards. In the UK, a pathologist who acts as an expert witness for people who protest their innocence in shaken-baby cases has been banned from giving evidence in court. This has made other doubters too frightened to give expert evidence lest they suffer the same fate.
Thankfully, there is a surge of activity in the US to identify and challenge unsafe convictions for shaken baby syndrome. There are also calls for an independent re-evaluation of all the science behind the triad. Given how polarised the debate has become, it will be difficult to find a genuinely impartial broker who can focus solely on the reliability of the science.
Ironically, the biggest block to research on shaken baby syndrome in the UK is the Human Tissue Act of 2004, which was passed in part to prevent researchers taking liberties with the bodies of dead children. The act makes it a criminal offence to retain tissues removed during a post-mortem without parental consent. That effectively blocks detailed research on exactly those brain tissues which will reveal the truth behind infant brain damage, as abusive parents are not likely to give their consent.
We urgently need a reappraisal of all aspects of shaken baby syndrome. An estimated 1500 people are in jail in the US right now after being found guilty of causing death or injury by shaking; 200 more join them each year. Everyone wants child abusers to go to jail, but we must not allow unsound science to send the innocent there too.
It has been clear for at least five years that shaken baby syndrome needs to be reassessed. It would surely be a crime to delay any longer.