Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #284 Jason Flom and Greg Glod with John Jones - RE-RELEASE

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#284 Jason Flom and Greg Glod with John Jones - RE-RELEASE · Wrongful Conviction

0:00
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful that many of our guests have been
0:03
Speaker 1: released from prison, either before or after our coverage was released,
0:07
Speaker 1: but others continued to languish behind bars for crimes they
0:10
Speaker 1: didn't commit, including the man whose case we're going to
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Speaker 1: highlight again today, John Jones. The Ohio Innis's Project is
0:18
Speaker 1: still hard at work to set him free, and this
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Speaker 1: is his story of how a grieving father's loss was
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Speaker 1: compounded by his wrongful conviction. John Jones and Deja Ruiz
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Speaker 1: had three children while working on their high school diplomas.
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Speaker 1: After celebrating Deja's mother's birthday on March eighteenth, twenty ten,
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Speaker 1: the young family laid down to sleep. Despite the expected
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Speaker 1: waking and feeding that comes with six month old twins,
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Speaker 1: the night was ordinary. When Deja left for school at
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Speaker 1: eight am, John propped some bottles on a blanket near
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Speaker 1: twins Jada and Jasmine and went back to sleep. Then,
0:54
Speaker 1: when John woke again at nine forty am, turned on
0:57
Speaker 1: cartoons for his son and went to attend to the twins.
1:00
Speaker 1: Jada was unresponsive. In a panic. He called family and
1:05
Speaker 1: nine one one. The dispatcher coached him through CPR until
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Speaker 1: first responders arrived and took over. He did everything a
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Speaker 1: concerned father would do, but when testing was done at
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Speaker 1: the hospital, doctors found what they mistakenly thought was conclusive
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Speaker 1: evidence of lethal child abuse. However, over the next decade,
1:24
Speaker 1: the science that they used to support John's conviction has
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Speaker 1: crumbled under the weight of reality. Had a jury heard
1:31
Speaker 1: all the other now logical explanations for the symptoms present
1:35
Speaker 1: in little Jada's body, John Jones never would have served
1:39
Speaker 1: a day of his fifteen to life prison sentence. This
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Speaker 1: is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful Conviction with Jason.
2:00
Speaker 1: That's me, of course, your host, and today we're here
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Speaker 1: to tell you the heartbreaking story of John Jones, who
2:06
Speaker 1: was just seventeen years old when his six month old daughter,
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Speaker 1: Jada Ruiz died, and shortly thereafter, the tragedy was compounded
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Speaker 1: by the hubris of some in the medical establishment and
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Speaker 1: legal system armed with the junk science of shaking baby syndrome.
2:22
Speaker 1: And today I'm joined by a phenomenal co host. Avid
2:26
Speaker 1: listeners will remember Greg glod from the Junk Science episode
2:29
Speaker 1: on roadside drug Testing. He is the criminal Justice fellow
2:33
Speaker 1: at Americans for Prosperity. Greg. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
2:38
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Jason, thank you so much for allowing
2:40
Speaker 2: me to co host. You and I have gotten close
2:43
Speaker 2: over the last couple of months. I've been working on
2:44
Speaker 2: criminal Justice Reformed since about twenty fifteen now, and to
2:48
Speaker 2: be able to do this today and co host, is
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Speaker 2: you know, really an honor? So no, I really thank
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Speaker 2: you again.
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Speaker 1: Well, I'm the one who really should feel honored, and
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Speaker 1: not just because you've joined us, but also because with
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Speaker 1: us is one of the world's lead experts in one
3:01
Speaker 1: of the most troubling aspects of our criminal legal system,
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Speaker 1: shaken Baby syndrome. Now she was also featured on Wrongful
3:07
Speaker 1: Conviction Junk Science when we covered this subject. The executive
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Speaker 1: director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences, Kate Judson,
3:15
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
3:17
Speaker 3: Hi, thank you so much, Jason, and Hi Greg.
3:21
Speaker 1: And last but not least, we have with us staff
3:23
Speaker 1: attorney at the Ohio Innocence Project, the man who's representing
3:27
Speaker 1: John Jones, Donald Caster. Donald, Welcome to Wroneful Conviction. Thanks
3:31
Speaker 1: for being here.
3:32
Speaker 4: Hi, Jason, thank you for having me on.
3:35
Speaker 1: And we'll be joined very soon by John Jones. Was
3:38
Speaker 1: going to be calling in from Lebanon Correctional Facility in Ohio.
3:41
Speaker 1: But first let's get a little background on what John
3:44
Speaker 1: was up against when Jada became unresponsive.
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Speaker 2: Kate, can you give a brief history on shaken baby syndrome?
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Speaker 2: You know where it came from, this hypothesis, and then
3:55
Speaker 2: how did it start to enter its way into the
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Speaker 2: criminal justice system as a viable scientific theory to convict
4:03
Speaker 2: caretakers of murder, Sure.
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Speaker 3: Greg, Shakin baby syndrome was originally proposed as a hypothesis
4:09
Speaker 3: to explain a phenomenon that a pediatric neurosurgeon in Great
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Speaker 3: Britain was seeing in his patients. He would sometimes have
4:15
Speaker 3: infants who died or were seriously ill without a clear
4:18
Speaker 3: cause and without external trauma, and yet the internal features
4:22
Speaker 3: looked a lot like kids who had suffered some kind
4:26
Speaker 3: of traumatic injury. So those findings were subdural hematoma, which
4:29
Speaker 3: is bleeding between the coverings of the brain, retinal hemorrhage
4:32
Speaker 3: which is bleeding at the back of the eye, and
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Speaker 3: encephalopathy and cerebral edema, which sort of acts together as
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Speaker 3: one leg of what sometimes people call the triad. Ceribril
4:42
Speaker 3: edema is brain swelling and encephalopathy is brain dysfunction. And
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Speaker 3: so doctor Guthkelch, the pediatric neurosurgeon, was seeing these findings
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Speaker 3: in kids and they looked injured on the inside but
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Speaker 3: not on the outside. And he thought that one reason
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Speaker 3: for that might be a common disciplinary technique in his
4:59
Speaker 3: home Northern England in the seventies, which was shaking. And
5:03
Speaker 3: so what doctor goth Kelch said is that these medical
5:07
Speaker 3: findings could be due to shaking. And doctor goth Kelch
5:10
Speaker 3: wasn't claiming to have the answers, but rather that he
5:12
Speaker 3: was hypothesizing about what might be causing these findings. So
5:16
Speaker 3: that started to evolve. A radiologist in New York, John Caffey,
5:20
Speaker 3: built on that and he published articles saying the same thing, right,
5:24
Speaker 3: that parents should be gentle with infants. But neither of
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Speaker 3: these doctors suggested that the medical findings that they associated
5:30
Speaker 3: with shaking were exclusively diagnostic to shaking, nor did they
5:35
Speaker 3: say that there was a reliable way to place blame
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Speaker 3: on a caregiver when a child had these medical.
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Speaker 2: Findings, right, and so where was the switch then, from
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Speaker 2: this just being you know, a hypothesist or an unexplained
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Speaker 2: phenomena to a verifiable medical diagnosis that actually began convicting
5:54
Speaker 2: visuals of murder of a child.
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Speaker 3: And there's a little bit of a gap in understanding
5:59
Speaker 3: between the mid to late nine seventies and then when
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Speaker 3: we start to see these cases appear in published appellate
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Speaker 3: decisions in the late eighties, and we started to see
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Speaker 3: prosecutors and pediatricians in particular, also pathologists saying that when
6:13
Speaker 3: children had this collection of findings, which is sometimes called
6:16
Speaker 3: a triad of findings or a constellation of medical findings,
6:19
Speaker 3: that shaking could be diagnosed. And that's when it comes
6:22
Speaker 3: into the criminal legal system and we start to see
6:25
Speaker 3: the trajectory that we're on today where parents are wrongfully
6:28
Speaker 3: accused based on only the existence of a particular set
6:31
Speaker 3: of medical findings. And I mean to be totally clear,
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Speaker 3: there's no debate about whether abusive shaking, violent shaking of
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Speaker 3: an infant is dangerous. It is and no one should
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Speaker 3: do it. The debate is really whether shaking reliably explains
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Speaker 3: the findings that are often attributed to it, whether shaking
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Speaker 3: can be diagnosed as the cause of those findings.
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Speaker 2: Kate, and doing my research for this, there is a
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Speaker 2: large concentration of these shaken baby syndrome cases in the
6:58
Speaker 2: state of Ohio. And so I just wanted to see
7:01
Speaker 2: if you had any explanation behind why Ohio kind of
7:04
Speaker 2: had a higher rate of shaking baby syndrome cases than
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Speaker 2: many other jurisdictions across the nation.
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Speaker 3: Researchers aren't one hundred percent sure why some places have
7:12
Speaker 3: higher concentrations of diagnoses of SBS than others. It's probably
7:16
Speaker 3: a combination of factors. But some of those factors include
7:19
Speaker 3: prosecutors who are particularly aggressive in going after these are
7:23
Speaker 3: kinds of accusations, the media attention certain cases receive in
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Speaker 3: certain media markets, and the child abuse pediatricians or forensic
7:32
Speaker 3: pathologists who work on these cases, if they have a
7:34
Speaker 3: particular belief or bent, then there are more likely to
7:37
Speaker 3: be more accusations of shaking within that person's jurisdiction or
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Speaker 3: area of control. And Ohio is one of those places.
7:46
Speaker 1: And now we'll go to Lebanon Correctional Facility to speak
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Speaker 1: with a young man who was doing his best as
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Speaker 1: a young teenager to raise three kids while finishing high
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Speaker 1: school in the third largest shaken babyies syndrome epicenter in
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Speaker 1: the country, Akron, Ohio.
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Speaker 3: Hello, this is a prepaid debit call.
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Speaker 5: From an inmate. It's Elebanon correctional facility to accept this call.
8:14
Speaker 3: Press zero to prevent.
8:17
Speaker 2: This call is from a correction facility and is subject
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Speaker 2: to monitoring and recording.
8:22
Speaker 1: Thank you for using GTL. Hello John, Yeah this job John.
8:29
Speaker 1: Like I always say, I'm glad you're here with us,
8:32
Speaker 1: but I'm sorry because of the reason you're here, or
8:34
Speaker 1: more to the point, because of where you are.
8:37
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
8:38
Speaker 1: So I wanted you to take us back, if you will,
8:41
Speaker 1: to your life before this absolute horror happened. You were
8:44
Speaker 1: growing up in Akron.
8:45
Speaker 7: I grew up with four sisters who struggled.
8:47
Speaker 6: I grew up poor. He moved around a lot.
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Speaker 5: My mom has some struggles strugg edition alcohol addiction. My
8:53
Speaker 5: father as well had the same struggles. Regardless of what
8:56
Speaker 5: she was going through her own personal problems. My mom
8:58
Speaker 5: always was around, she was always with us. But my
9:00
Speaker 5: grandmother end up getting customery of me.
9:02
Speaker 6: When I was real young. She just put us on
9:04
Speaker 6: a path to try to be as successful as we could.
9:06
Speaker 6: Growing love.
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Speaker 5: I did real good at school, always was like an
9:09
Speaker 5: honor roll student. Once I became a teenager, and that's
9:11
Speaker 5: when I came.
9:12
Speaker 6: Into contact with my child's mother.
9:14
Speaker 5: I met her December sixteenth, my fourteenth birthday, and my
9:19
Speaker 5: son was can see nine days later.
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Speaker 7: On Christmas Eve, Christmas night.
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Speaker 6: So now on fourteen, I'm expecting a child on the way.
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Speaker 6: I knew that I had.
9:30
Speaker 7: A responsibility now, so school.
9:33
Speaker 6: No longer was a priority. My did what I needed
9:36
Speaker 6: to do to provide for him.
9:38
Speaker 5: As time progressed, me and her eventually began to establish
9:41
Speaker 5: a relationship get closer. A couple of years later, that's
9:44
Speaker 5: when my twins were can See.
9:47
Speaker 6: Jada and jazz Man. We ended up getting an apartment
9:50
Speaker 6: together on our own.
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Speaker 5: My grandmother was still technically my legal guardian, so I
9:55
Speaker 5: lived with them, but I spent most.
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Speaker 7: Nights with my child's mother just to be around my children.
10:01
Speaker 7: Growing up.
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Speaker 5: My father was always in my life, but like I said,
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Speaker 5: he was battling with addiction. Even though I loved him unconditionally,
10:08
Speaker 5: he just wasn't the best that he could have been.
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Speaker 6: So that it made me want to make sure I
10:11
Speaker 6: was the.
10:11
Speaker 5: Best I could have been, regardless of how old I was,
10:14
Speaker 5: regardless of school, whatever I was going through, I was
10:16
Speaker 5: going to be present every single day in their life,
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Speaker 5: no matter what, regardless of the status of me and
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Speaker 5: their mother's relationship, how healthy or how unhealthy it was,
10:24
Speaker 5: I was going to make sure I was there for
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Speaker 5: my kids no matter what.
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Speaker 1: And that's admirable. And so you, your children's mother, Desa,
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Speaker 1: your son Tyshan, and the twins Jada and Jasmine all
10:36
Speaker 1: moved into an apartment together. Dajo was eighteen, you're seventeen,
10:40
Speaker 1: and you were both finishing high school through an alternative
10:42
Speaker 1: school for young parents, and somehow you're making it work.
10:46
Speaker 1: Which brings us to March nineteenth, twenty ten.
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Speaker 7: The night before that morning it was actually her mother's birthday.
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Speaker 6: Everybody spent some time together. It was a cool little
10:56
Speaker 6: vibe though. Everybody was on the same page.
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Speaker 7: And we went to sleep like any other day.
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Speaker 6: We slept down in the living room.
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Speaker 5: I slept on the couch, my daughter, Jaded and she
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Speaker 5: slept down on the floor with my daughter, saying, and
11:09
Speaker 5: my son was down there with as well.
11:10
Speaker 7: But throughout the night she.
11:12
Speaker 5: Was waking me up, complaining about positioning or beating or
11:17
Speaker 5: you know, my daughter might have been hungry or whatever.
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Speaker 7: She was waking me up throughout the night.
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Speaker 5: But it was just a typical day, and then that
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Speaker 5: morning she had a test that she had to go take.
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Speaker 1: Right and from what I understand, you both fed the
11:30
Speaker 1: twins at five am and then went back to sleep.
11:33
Speaker 1: Then Dasia woke up at seven am to get ready
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Speaker 1: for school and left around eight.
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Speaker 5: So I get up, walking through the door, you know,
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Speaker 5: wishing her look on her task, give her a kiss.
11:43
Speaker 7: She go out.
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Speaker 5: At this point, my son's still asleep, my daughter's on
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Speaker 5: the couch, they laying down. It's early in the morning,
11:49
Speaker 5: so I'm still tired.
11:51
Speaker 7: I go up to my.
11:52
Speaker 5: Daughter's I popped the bottles. I learned later on now
11:54
Speaker 5: that this wasn't a smart.
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Speaker 7: Thing to due just because of the safety.
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Speaker 5: Concerns with a notewarm, But time I really wasn't aware
12:01
Speaker 5: of it, and it was more like a convenient being
12:04
Speaker 5: away of me going back to sleep, but also feeding
12:06
Speaker 5: them if they were having So I placed the bottles up.
12:10
Speaker 7: On the blanket and I'll prop them up so I'll put.
12:12
Speaker 5: Them right there, and just so when they do wake up,
12:15
Speaker 5: the bottle be right there, they'll be able to feed.
12:16
Speaker 5: I can be able to sleep about another hour or
12:18
Speaker 5: to whatever. Anbr everybody be cool. We did this every
12:23
Speaker 5: day must.
12:23
Speaker 6: Of a time, so it was just another I said,
12:25
Speaker 6: it was just another day.
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Speaker 1: But it's at this point, between eight and nine forty
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Speaker 1: am that, according to the state's theory and what passed
12:34
Speaker 1: for expert testimony, that you allegedly abused your daughter Jada
12:39
Speaker 1: in such a way that it caused all of these
12:41
Speaker 1: supposed injuries or symptoms that were later observed at the hospital,
12:46
Speaker 1: the same ones that Kate had mentioned earlier that make
12:49
Speaker 1: up the triad of shaking baby syndrome. But as we
12:53
Speaker 1: now know, there are a myriad of medical conditions that
12:57
Speaker 1: can and do cause these symptoms in addition to an
13:01
Speaker 1: accidental or intentional traumatic event, and even in those events,
13:05
Speaker 1: it's important to note that a child may be lucid
13:08
Speaker 1: up to seventy two hours or even more before the
13:11
Speaker 1: symptoms or injuries become a parent, and in this case,
13:14
Speaker 1: they became apparent to you when you checked on Jada
13:17
Speaker 1: and Jasmine at around nine forty am on that faithful,
13:21
Speaker 1: awful day. And you know, as a father myself, it's
13:25
Speaker 1: every parent's worst nightmare. So at nine forty am you
13:28
Speaker 1: woke up, put on cartoons for Tyshon and go to
13:32
Speaker 1: check on your daughters, only to find that Jada was unresponsive.
13:37
Speaker 7: That was the.
13:37
Speaker 5: Scariest moment in my life. That was the worst day
13:39
Speaker 5: of my life. I didn't know what to do in
13:42
Speaker 5: that moment. She wasn't breathing, she wasn't moving, she wasn't
13:44
Speaker 5: responsor for at all. I instantly get on the phone.
13:47
Speaker 5: My first reaction was to call our family because my
13:50
Speaker 5: daughters were born with accid reflects.
13:53
Speaker 6: They when they feed, they were regard to take the food.
13:55
Speaker 6: It would come up their most sometimes it would come
13:57
Speaker 6: up their mouth. It didn't happen every time, but it
13:59
Speaker 6: happened frequently.
14:00
Speaker 7: So at first I was wondering if this was the case.
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Speaker 5: So I actually called my mom and I tell them
14:05
Speaker 5: what's going on.
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Speaker 7: But I'm panicking, so I didn't want to stay on
14:07
Speaker 7: the phone with them too long because.
14:08
Speaker 5: I'm realizing she's not breathing or nothing. But I called
14:10
Speaker 5: her family as well to let them know. I get
14:12
Speaker 5: off the phone. I called nine one one tell them
14:14
Speaker 5: the whole situation is. I'm listening to the nine one
14:16
Speaker 5: one operator.
14:17
Speaker 7: She's explaining to me how to do the test confession
14:19
Speaker 7: and the mouth to mouth. I tried. I did everything
14:21
Speaker 7: I could.
14:22
Speaker 5: Nothing was working like so at this point, I'm becoming
14:24
Speaker 5: more scared, more upset. I'm crying, and I'm just waiting
14:29
Speaker 5: seem like a second favers. They finally arrived, They grab her,
14:32
Speaker 5: they take her out, and I begin to speak to
14:35
Speaker 5: the detectives or whatever.
14:36
Speaker 6: I'm telling them everything pretty much that I'm telling.
14:38
Speaker 7: You, this my recolation of that night.
14:39
Speaker 5: In the morning, nothing really stood out telling me. From
14:43
Speaker 5: that point, family members started rising.
14:45
Speaker 6: Everybody's fron sign.
14:47
Speaker 7: We all head down to the hospital, and then a
14:48
Speaker 7: couple hours later, that's when we.
14:50
Speaker 5: Hear the doctor's opinion about what they believed was the
14:55
Speaker 5: cause of everything.
14:57
Speaker 4: When the first responders arrived then see any signs of
15:01
Speaker 4: any external injuries. They didn't see any bruising or obvious
15:04
Speaker 4: deformities or bone fractures. They were under the impression that
15:09
Speaker 4: Jada might have suffered from SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome.
15:13
Speaker 4: And the police see John doing what you would expect
15:17
Speaker 4: a distraught father to be doing. It's an officer named
15:21
Speaker 4: Dennis Bard starts taking pictures of the scene. There are
15:24
Speaker 4: blankets that are collected. One of the things that's not
15:27
Speaker 4: collected is the bottles that were feeding two of the children.
15:31
Speaker 2: And that becomes critical later on in the state's theory
15:34
Speaker 2: of the case.
15:34
Speaker 4: The bottles are important, at least according to the state,
15:37
Speaker 4: because one of the doctors who testified on behalf of
15:40
Speaker 4: the state told the jury that how much milk and
15:44
Speaker 4: formula was in the bottle would have been really important
15:47
Speaker 4: in establishing the timing of abuse, because, according to the
15:50
Speaker 4: state's doctor, Jada wouldn't have been able to consume anything
15:55
Speaker 4: from the bottle after suffering the type of injuries that
15:59
Speaker 4: they Jada had suffered.
16:01
Speaker 1: And what we now know, and this is so important,
16:04
Speaker 1: is that a child can experience seventy two hours or
16:08
Speaker 1: more of lucidity after a traumatic event, whether accidental or intentional,
16:13
Speaker 1: which it's not entirely clear that this is in fact
16:15
Speaker 1: what happened to cause these symptoms. And I say symptoms
16:19
Speaker 1: because a myriad of medical conditions can cause what happened
16:23
Speaker 1: to Jada to happen. But we're getting a little bit
16:27
Speaker 1: of ahead of ourselves here. So the first responders see
16:30
Speaker 1: this situation as a non criminal death, not a homicide.
16:34
Speaker 1: So the bottle was just left there and the lead investigator,
16:37
Speaker 1: Detective Shady, drove John to.
16:39
Speaker 4: The hospital, Detective Shady also does a very brief interview
16:45
Speaker 4: of John at the time. Detective Shady and John go
16:48
Speaker 4: to the hospital following the ambulance, and once they get
16:51
Speaker 4: to the hospital, they find out that Jada had been
16:55
Speaker 4: successfully resuscitated. John makes phone calls to family members to
17:00
Speaker 4: let them know that things were at least looking a
17:02
Speaker 4: little bit better now that they were at the hospital,
17:05
Speaker 4: and then doctors at the hospital start to do medical tests.
17:09
Speaker 4: They do a cat scan, other tests, and again, ultimately
17:13
Speaker 4: the doctors began to believe that there were actual injuries
17:17
Speaker 4: to Jada, and in fact, once they got to the hospital,
17:20
Speaker 4: John was confronted by a doctor who who did not
17:24
Speaker 4: testify a trial, but a significant to the case, a
17:27
Speaker 4: doctor Darryl Steiner, who came in and told John and
17:30
Speaker 4: the detective that Jada had suffered from what he called
17:34
Speaker 4: non accidental injuries. The hospital staff also claimed that there
17:38
Speaker 4: were old injuries, insinuating that abuse had taken place for
17:42
Speaker 4: a significant period of time.
17:45
Speaker 1: So, John, you had just been through one of the
17:47
Speaker 1: most harrowing experiences that anyone can ever go through, and
17:52
Speaker 1: you were waiting to hear what the path forward might
17:56
Speaker 1: be for your daughter and the doctors at Aquan Children's Hospital,
18:00
Speaker 1: again the number three epicenter for shaking baby syndrome diagnoses
18:04
Speaker 1: and prosecutions in the country. Those doctors tell you the
18:09
Speaker 1: family and detectives their opinion that the medical facts observed
18:14
Speaker 1: in Jata retinal bleeding, subdual bleeding and brain swelling, as
18:19
Speaker 1: well as a series of fractures, that these could only
18:22
Speaker 1: have been the result of a non accidental traumatic event,
18:25
Speaker 1: in other words, child abuse, violent shaking by Jada's caretaker
18:30
Speaker 1: at the time that she went unresponsive. And again, we
18:34
Speaker 1: now know that there are a slew of medical conditions
18:39
Speaker 1: that can cause these symptoms, and that children can experience
18:44
Speaker 1: seventy two hours or more of relatively normal behavior after
18:48
Speaker 1: such a traumatic event, if a traumatic event even ever
18:53
Speaker 1: occurred and was in fact what caused these symptoms. So
18:56
Speaker 1: back then many in the medical establishment, these doctors thought
19:00
Speaker 1: that they could diagnose a crime and the time of
19:04
Speaker 1: that crime, which we now know that they could not. Meanwhile,
19:07
Speaker 1: your story has remained consistent ever since that faithful day,
19:11
Speaker 1: and nowhere in your recollection of events does even a
19:15
Speaker 1: minor frustration occur, let alone violence shaking.
19:19
Speaker 5: Never, never, never, We all sitting in the weiting room
19:23
Speaker 5: or in the area when they come in and they
19:25
Speaker 5: tell us, well, we believe that what's wrong with her
19:29
Speaker 5: was my accident and was intentional, was caused by somebody,
19:33
Speaker 5: was caused by specifically somebody who was there.
19:35
Speaker 6: So then at that point I felt like I was.
19:38
Speaker 5: Being accused or even suspected of something.
19:42
Speaker 7: And the only other person that was there with me
19:45
Speaker 7: was their mother.
19:46
Speaker 6: I know I did do nothing to her. I never
19:48
Speaker 6: will so a man. Things running through my head at
19:52
Speaker 6: that moment.
19:52
Speaker 5: I'm scared first and foremost most completely for my daughter.
19:55
Speaker 5: Now I'm questioning it, like why are they saying somebody
19:58
Speaker 5: did this? Why they say somebody causes like like did
20:00
Speaker 5: she do something? So a conversation was had afterward outside
20:04
Speaker 5: with just.
20:05
Speaker 7: Me and her, and you know, I asked her straight up,
20:08
Speaker 7: like did she do something?
20:10
Speaker 6: And she did not.
20:11
Speaker 5: You know, I didn't do nothing. I don't know what
20:13
Speaker 5: they're talking about. Like, so now now I'm just confused,
20:17
Speaker 5: like I just don't know what.
20:18
Speaker 6: I don't know.
20:19
Speaker 5: But they take this, continue to question me, they keep
20:22
Speaker 5: talking to me. My natural reaction was to corrop grad
20:25
Speaker 5: with them. You know what I'm saying, it's my baby
20:26
Speaker 5: so however, I can help whatever I can say, But
20:28
Speaker 5: at the end of the day, I don't know much.
20:30
Speaker 7: I don't know what to say.
20:31
Speaker 6: I'm confused like anybody else, everybody else, I don't know
20:33
Speaker 6: what happened much.
20:35
Speaker 5: The finger was actually pointed and blame was cast and
20:39
Speaker 5: charges were brought apart me in indictments and hand cushy
20:43
Speaker 5: place on me not. That's when I started feeling like
20:46
Speaker 5: their antentions wasn't in the right place, because if they
20:49
Speaker 5: truly was, then you would have really saw out a
20:51
Speaker 5: real answer instead of just placed it on.
20:54
Speaker 6: Somebody shifted because they were physically and.
20:59
Speaker 7: The wrong.
21:11
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Porton and Garrison,
21:16
Speaker 1: a leading international law firm. Paul Weiss has long had
21:20
Speaker 1: an unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance
21:24
Speaker 1: to the most vulnerable members of our society and in
21:26
Speaker 1: support of the public interest, including extensive work in the
21:30
Speaker 1: criminal justice area. So with misplaced conference, they attribute injuries
21:42
Speaker 1: or symptoms to actions and persons when the science barely
21:46
Speaker 1: even supported it back then, let alone now. The causes
21:49
Speaker 1: of Jada's symptoms range from accidental or intentional drama to
21:52
Speaker 1: internal For instance, there's a well recognized condition where there's
21:56
Speaker 1: a little extra space in between the child's brain and
21:59
Speaker 1: skull wretches the veins that bridge that space, which causes
22:03
Speaker 1: chronic subdural bleeding. It still hasn't been determined what causes
22:07
Speaker 1: this overlying condition, but birth trauma has been suggested as
22:11
Speaker 1: a potential cause, whether natural or cesarian, and this condition
22:15
Speaker 1: usually manifests within the child second to six months. Jada,
22:19
Speaker 1: of course, was six months old when this occurred, and
22:22
Speaker 1: it's logical to think that being birthed as a twin
22:25
Speaker 1: could probably be described as a traumatic event, an event
22:28
Speaker 1: that could cause limb fractures as well. In these shaken
22:32
Speaker 1: baby syndrome cases, CT scans and MRIs will usually show
22:37
Speaker 1: the chronic subdural bleeding as they found in this case,
22:40
Speaker 1: which will then be used as evidence of repeated abuse. Well,
22:44
Speaker 1: it's misused, but used anyway, when all along there's a
22:48
Speaker 1: legitimate and logical medical explanation. Other potential causes for symptoms
22:53
Speaker 1: like Jada's. I mean, you could write a medical textbook
22:56
Speaker 1: on this right. They include bleeding disorderslogen disorders, copper disorders,
23:02
Speaker 1: genetic disorders, vitamin deficiencies, even your everyday average household slip
23:08
Speaker 1: and fall. But I seriously doubt whether the number three
23:12
Speaker 1: epicenter for diagnosing or misdiagnosing child abuse did a full
23:17
Speaker 1: genetic work up to rule out all of these potential
23:20
Speaker 1: causes before it just sort of cavalierly sending John up
23:23
Speaker 1: the river.
23:24
Speaker 3: So the allegation was that Jada had a series of
23:29
Speaker 3: fractures and that perhaps those fractures were of different ages,
23:33
Speaker 3: and that, combined with the findings of bleeding and of
23:36
Speaker 3: brain swelling, were thought to indicate trauma, and specifically trauma
23:40
Speaker 3: from abuse.
23:42
Speaker 4: So, unfortunately, one of the things that we know happens
23:45
Speaker 4: in wrongful conviction cases all the time is that once
23:49
Speaker 4: the police and in this case, doctors start to head
23:53
Speaker 4: in a certain direction, it begins to be very difficult
23:55
Speaker 4: for them to turn to a new path. And that's
23:58
Speaker 4: what happened here. The police and the doctors didn't look
24:02
Speaker 4: for any other causes. They seized on this diagnosis of
24:06
Speaker 4: shaking baby syndrome and that's where they went. It's one
24:10
Speaker 4: of the things that makes it harder for us to
24:14
Speaker 4: successfully represent John. Not impossible. We think we'll be successful
24:18
Speaker 4: in this case ultimately, but it's one of the things
24:20
Speaker 4: that hampers our work some is that we don't have
24:24
Speaker 4: the medical records for Jada from Jada's birth up until
24:28
Speaker 4: March nineteenth. And the reason is that they were never
24:32
Speaker 4: gathered by either the medical investigators or the law enforcement
24:35
Speaker 4: investigators to look at and to determine whether there was
24:40
Speaker 4: other symptomology, other pathology, other things going on with Jada
24:46
Speaker 4: prior to March nineteenth, instead of just the medical records
24:50
Speaker 4: from March nineteenth going forward.
24:52
Speaker 2: Particularly with the SBS, we've seen over two hundred cases overturned.
24:56
Speaker 2: In a lot of these, you know, it seemed clear
24:58
Speaker 2: cut that there was abuse, and later on it was
25:00
Speaker 2: either some sort of minor accident or some sort of
25:03
Speaker 2: genetic cause to this. And so, you know, I think
25:06
Speaker 2: people have this notion of what SBS is, and we
25:10
Speaker 2: see clearly that there's a lot of varying reasons for
25:12
Speaker 2: that to potentially see these findings within a child and
25:15
Speaker 2: then they're just you know, initially ignored, but then later
25:18
Speaker 2: come out later on when you have a full examination
25:20
Speaker 2: or full medical history.
25:22
Speaker 3: Well, and there's a lot of overlap here, greg because
25:24
Speaker 3: a lot of the factors that caused children to have
25:27
Speaker 3: either have health problems or have their health problems not
25:30
Speaker 3: be appropriately diagnosed or treated, are also the factors that
25:33
Speaker 3: doctors and child protection workers will look at to say
25:37
Speaker 3: that statistically, a child is more likely to be abused.
25:40
Speaker 3: And so what I mean by that is parents who
25:41
Speaker 3: are young and parents who are people of color are
25:45
Speaker 3: both more likely to be accused of crimes and more
25:50
Speaker 3: likely to receive disparate treatment within the medical establishment. So
25:55
Speaker 3: those things actually work together to create an unjust result
25:58
Speaker 3: in many cases.
26:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's worth noting that just as we record,
26:03
Speaker 1: a study was just published which showed that there is
26:06
Speaker 1: intense cognitive bias amongst medical examiners, so much so that
26:11
Speaker 1: when given the same exact evidence, two different groups and
26:14
Speaker 1: we're talking large groups of medical examiners look at exactly
26:17
Speaker 1: the same evidence of a three year old that was
26:19
Speaker 1: brought to the hospital with head trauma and died were
26:22
Speaker 1: four times more likely to rule it a homicide when
26:24
Speaker 1: they were told that the child was black and that
26:27
Speaker 1: the child was brought in by the boyfriend of the mother,
26:29
Speaker 1: as opposed to the other group that was told with
26:32
Speaker 1: exactly the same evidence that the child was white and
26:35
Speaker 1: was brought in by a grandparent. So just to really
26:37
Speaker 1: put a stamp on what you were saying, Kate, So
26:40
Speaker 1: let's turn to the arrest.
26:42
Speaker 4: So John was not arrested right away, although it was
26:47
Speaker 4: clear that once Jada was taken off of life support
26:50
Speaker 4: and passed away, that they were going to charge him
26:53
Speaker 4: with murder. John didn't have a lot of money as
26:57
Speaker 4: a teenager charged with a crime. He had council appointed
27:00
Speaker 4: to represent him, and then council got the court to
27:04
Speaker 4: provide some funds for an additional expert witness to help
27:08
Speaker 4: prepare for trial.
27:09
Speaker 2: So at trial, what was the state's theory, what was
27:12
Speaker 2: the evidence behind that, and then what did the defense
27:15
Speaker 2: put together to refute.
27:17
Speaker 4: So Deja agreed with everything that John had said previously
27:21
Speaker 4: about what happened in the hour or so before Deja
27:25
Speaker 4: left for school that day, So there was no inconsistency
27:28
Speaker 4: between what John's been saying and what Deja said happened. Deja,
27:33
Speaker 4: of course, claimed that she didn't do anything to any
27:37
Speaker 4: of the children. According to her testimony at trial, she
27:40
Speaker 4: believed John may have lied to her about any wrongdoing,
27:45
Speaker 4: but das's being told by the people who were supposed
27:48
Speaker 4: to know what they're talking about. The John killed her
27:51
Speaker 4: child and Kate.
27:53
Speaker 2: What were the medical findings that the state witnesses had
27:56
Speaker 2: and what they concluded.
27:58
Speaker 3: The medical facts presented at trial in this case included
28:01
Speaker 3: a series of fractures, mostly fresh but at least one
28:04
Speaker 3: older fracture, retinal hemorrhaging, subdural hemorrhaging, signs of previous subdural hemorrhaging,
28:10
Speaker 3: and brain swelling. As I said before, this is the
28:13
Speaker 3: classic triad of shaken baby syndrome. Then the state put
28:16
Speaker 3: on three medical witnesses. Doctor Paul McPherson testified that the
28:20
Speaker 3: child would not have been able to suck any milk
28:22
Speaker 3: after sustaining these kinds of injuries. But we now know
28:25
Speaker 3: that a child can experience seventy two hours of lucidity
28:28
Speaker 3: after the injuries associated with shaken baby syndrome, and that's
28:32
Speaker 3: what published case reports have shown us. It could be
28:35
Speaker 3: even greater than that. So doctor macpherson conceded that the
28:38
Speaker 3: injuries may have been sustained before John woke at eight
28:41
Speaker 3: am to give Jada a bottle. The injuries may not
28:43
Speaker 3: have been apparent, and the state had to seal up
28:46
Speaker 3: that concession. With doctor Paul Besunder, who testified that the
28:49
Speaker 3: causal injury could not have been sustained prior to eight am. Again,
28:53
Speaker 3: we now know that a child can experience seventy two
28:56
Speaker 3: hours of lucidity or more after the injuries associated with us.
29:00
Speaker 3: Their last medical witnesses testimony was based on the testimony
29:03
Speaker 3: of Detective Shady, who said that John told him in
29:07
Speaker 3: an unrecorded interview that Jada began to suck the bottle
29:10
Speaker 3: when he made it available by propping it on the
29:12
Speaker 3: blanket nearby. This is refuted by two other recorded interviews
29:17
Speaker 3: with John, as well as Deja's uncontested statement that Jada
29:20
Speaker 3: had drunk half her bottle before Dasa left for school.
29:23
Speaker 3: So you can see that the state was trying to
29:24
Speaker 3: box the cause of Jada's death into the window that
29:27
Speaker 3: Jada was under John's care alone. Summit County Coroner doctor
29:31
Speaker 3: Lisa Kohler testified that, based on the secondhand information that
29:35
Speaker 3: the child drank a significant portion of the milk after
29:38
Speaker 3: eight am, the injuries were a result of being shaken,
29:41
Speaker 3: because if she could still muster the energy to drink
29:44
Speaker 3: milk after eight am, then the trauma must have been
29:47
Speaker 3: committed by John to cause her to go unconscious. However,
29:50
Speaker 3: and I know that I sound like a broken record here.
29:52
Speaker 3: If there was causal trauma, it could have happened seventy
29:54
Speaker 3: two hours into the past from when Jada became unresponsive.
29:58
Speaker 1: So the state's case was completely undermined by what we
30:01
Speaker 1: now know about the junk science that they were relying
30:04
Speaker 1: on to convict John. The defense, however, called renowned forensic
30:08
Speaker 1: pathologist doctor John Arden, who agreed that these could have
30:13
Speaker 1: been injuries from abuse or not, and that they could
30:17
Speaker 1: have occurred between seven and nine forty five am. However,
30:21
Speaker 1: the evidence available did not permit a medical opinion with
30:25
Speaker 1: any degree of specificity regarding the timing of any of
30:29
Speaker 1: the fresh injuries, and that it is not medically reasonable
30:32
Speaker 1: to make any such determinations. Subdural hemorrhaging does not typically
30:37
Speaker 1: cause immediate incapacitation, So the way the state was trying
30:41
Speaker 1: to fence in this crime to that eight to nine
30:45
Speaker 1: forty am window just doesn't hold water. Doctor Arden testified
30:50
Speaker 1: that Jada's medical records corroborate John's telling of events to
30:54
Speaker 1: a reasonable degree of medical certainty.
30:57
Speaker 2: And doctor Arden, isn't you know, I'll say for lack
30:59
Speaker 2: of a better term, one of these defense witness gun
31:03
Speaker 2: for hire that'll kind of say, you know what he wants.
31:06
Speaker 2: I mean, he was a believer of SBS for a
31:08
Speaker 2: very long time, and he's mentioned very recent like you said,
31:10
Speaker 2: in more recent studies that doctors need to be very
31:13
Speaker 2: mindful of diagnosing this and they're really missing key facts.
31:17
Speaker 2: And Kate, you mentioned it, and I'll ask the tough question.
31:20
Speaker 2: I mean, you have fractures and limbs at least diagnosed
31:24
Speaker 2: by state's witnesses and other things at trial. Were there
31:27
Speaker 2: any explanations about where potentially these injuries may have come
31:32
Speaker 2: because you know, I think you're on a jury, you're
31:34
Speaker 2: seeing you know, multiple fractures and damage to the head
31:37
Speaker 2: and then also to the extremities.
31:40
Speaker 3: What is important to know about medical findings in these
31:43
Speaker 3: kinds of cases is that medical findings might look like abuse,
31:47
Speaker 3: but they might not necessarily be abused. And that can
31:50
Speaker 3: happen for a few reasons. One is that injuries that
31:54
Speaker 3: are accidental can be misinterpreted by medical providers and investigators
31:59
Speaker 3: as a b and another is related to this assumption
32:03
Speaker 3: that sometimes medical providers make that because they don't know
32:08
Speaker 3: about the child's underlying medical conditions. If the child doesn't
32:13
Speaker 3: have any, so maybe a child has a bone disorder,
32:17
Speaker 3: they might fracture very easily. The classic example of this
32:22
Speaker 3: is little babies in a neonatal intensive care unit who
32:25
Speaker 3: are born, for example, very premature, and they can experience
32:29
Speaker 3: fractures with totally normal handling, changing their diaper, things like that.
32:34
Speaker 3: But that's not the only scenario in which children can
32:37
Speaker 3: have what appear to be really serious injuries from little
32:40
Speaker 3: or no trauma. And because we don't know enough about
32:44
Speaker 3: Jada's medical condition, it's really hard for us to know
32:48
Speaker 3: what kind of actions were required for her to sustain
32:53
Speaker 3: the injuries that she had.
32:54
Speaker 1: So after the presentation of dueling experts, the defense called
32:58
Speaker 1: John to the stand, who said what you've already heard here,
33:01
Speaker 1: that he did not hurt those children. Ever, that he
33:04
Speaker 1: did not see Jada drink from the bottle after eight am,
33:07
Speaker 1: but simply propped up a half full bottle on a blanket,
33:11
Speaker 1: consistent with Daja's uncontested statement. And again, all this fucking
33:17
Speaker 1: nonsense about the bottle is completely irrelevant because current science
33:21
Speaker 1: supports that in the case of a traumatic event, it
33:25
Speaker 1: could have happened anytime over the prior three days or
33:28
Speaker 1: even longer. So, whether it was intentional or an accident,
33:32
Speaker 1: Jada could have fallen off the couch the changing table.
33:35
Speaker 1: Knowing what we know now, one cannot maintain that those
33:39
Speaker 1: injuries could have only happened one way, the way that
33:42
Speaker 1: the state maintains still maintains violent shaking while Jada was
33:47
Speaker 1: alone in John's care. And that's if the cause even
33:50
Speaker 1: was a traumatic event rather than a pre existing medical condition.
33:54
Speaker 1: And like I've already mentioned here, there are and we've
33:57
Speaker 1: counted them. There are eighty eight potential conditions that we
34:00
Speaker 1: know of so far, and the research is ongoing. Now,
34:03
Speaker 1: I want to quote the man that first hypothesized shaken
34:08
Speaker 1: baby syndrome back in the nineteen seventies, doctor Norman Guthkelch.
34:12
Speaker 1: We mentioned him earlier, and he wrote an article in
34:15
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. I'll never forget this that it was titled
34:19
Speaker 1: after forty years of Consideration, and that article was harshly
34:23
Speaker 1: critical of his very own hypothesis and everything that has
34:26
Speaker 1: happened since. And so in a twenty twelve interview, doctor
34:30
Speaker 1: Guthkelch said, and I quote, I think we need to
34:34
Speaker 1: go back to the drawing board and make a more
34:36
Speaker 1: thorough assessment of these fatal cases. And I'm going to
34:39
Speaker 1: bet that we are going to find in every or
34:42
Speaker 1: at least the large majority of cases, that the child
34:45
Speaker 1: had another severe illness of some sort which was missed
34:49
Speaker 1: until too late. End the quote. I mean that's the
34:54
Speaker 1: man himself. But unfortunately that was twenty twelve and trial
35:00
Speaker 1: was in twenty eleven. So after hearing the state's witnesses
35:03
Speaker 1: up against John's witness and not knowing really a fraction
35:07
Speaker 1: of what we know now, John was convicted almost predictably
35:11
Speaker 1: and sentenced to fifteen years to life. John, can you
35:15
Speaker 1: take us back to that terrible moment when the jury
35:18
Speaker 1: came back in.
35:20
Speaker 5: I stand up, I'm listening to the verdict on Ka one.
35:23
Speaker 5: Kyle one was the highest degree of murder charts.
35:25
Speaker 6: We finally defended.
35:26
Speaker 7: Johnsones not guilty.
35:28
Speaker 5: I actually turned back to my family and that the
35:30
Speaker 5: whole sense and feeling of relief just come over me,
35:33
Speaker 5: and I'm just like, finally, like everything just all the way,
35:36
Speaker 5: everything just went away.
35:38
Speaker 7: I'm still agreeving with the loss of my daughter, but
35:40
Speaker 7: like the stress.
35:40
Speaker 5: And the worry of the jail situation and all of this,
35:44
Speaker 5: it just went away.
35:45
Speaker 7: Because I heard the words not guilty, not knowing.
35:47
Speaker 5: That they got the whole rest of the indictment to read.
35:50
Speaker 5: So how too murder as a result of fluxus saw
35:54
Speaker 5: that we find.
35:54
Speaker 7: That defending don zounds guilty.
35:57
Speaker 6: It's just like all the life in my body.
35:58
Speaker 5: Just let Initially with his tears, it was just like
36:01
Speaker 5: I can't even explain the feeling, like I look at my.
36:04
Speaker 7: Mind, she crying, my sister, everybody crying, even.
36:08
Speaker 6: My bang mind she crying. At that moment, I just
36:11
Speaker 6: knew life.
36:12
Speaker 7: You know, it's about to be the longest, hardest part
36:14
Speaker 7: in my life.
36:15
Speaker 8: And they said me to fifteen years of life.
36:32
Speaker 6: I'm in here with grown men, I'm fresh eighteen. I'm
36:36
Speaker 6: here with convictive killers. I'm in here with people serve
36:39
Speaker 6: all types of different type of crimes. And I gotta survive.
36:42
Speaker 6: I started trying to educate myself.
36:45
Speaker 7: I got my ged I just.
36:46
Speaker 6: Got to survive.
36:47
Speaker 5: I'm here now, so I gotta try to do everything
36:48
Speaker 5: I can to grow and prosper the best that I can.
36:53
Speaker 6: I've seen a lot of hair, I learned a lot
36:54
Speaker 6: of here. I grew up.
36:55
Speaker 5: I found myself in here, I was a kid when
36:57
Speaker 5: I came in. I'm almost twenty nine hours, learned a
37:00
Speaker 5: lot of air, all another person perspective, my mentality, my
37:04
Speaker 5: outlook on life, everything is different.
37:08
Speaker 1: Don What is being done now for this young man?
37:11
Speaker 1: Is there any other exculpatory evidence that we haven't already
37:14
Speaker 1: outlined here, or any evidence that the state hid constitutional violations?
37:20
Speaker 4: In terms of constitutional violations, a defendant has a right
37:26
Speaker 4: not to be convicted on the basis of unreliable, quasi
37:30
Speaker 4: scientific evidence. And that's what happened in John's case, and
37:34
Speaker 4: that's what happens in these so called shaken Baby syndrome
37:38
Speaker 4: prosecutions around the country, and particularly in Ohio, and even
37:42
Speaker 4: more particularly in Summit County, which is where Akron is.
37:46
Speaker 4: As Kate pointed out near the beginning today, Ohio is
37:49
Speaker 4: a particular hotspot for these sorts of cases, and not
37:53
Speaker 4: just Ohio, but Summit County and Akron specifically. So either
37:57
Speaker 4: the people of Akron really like to use their children,
38:01
Speaker 4: or there's something going on at Acron Children's Hospital and
38:04
Speaker 4: in the Summit County Prosecutor's office with respect to their
38:08
Speaker 4: proclivity for jumping to the conclusion of child abuse. And
38:11
Speaker 4: bringing these types of cases. We are preparing to bring
38:15
Speaker 4: post conviction litigation on John's path. We will argue that
38:19
Speaker 4: the science in this field has changed considerably over the
38:23
Speaker 4: last ten or eleven years, that if a jury could
38:26
Speaker 4: have heard in twenty ten what it could hear today,
38:29
Speaker 4: that a conviction simply wouldn't have happened.
38:32
Speaker 2: So really, what you have here, and taking a step back,
38:35
Speaker 2: is you have a horrible tragedy. You have a conviction
38:39
Speaker 2: based upon science that, if it was tried today, would
38:43
Speaker 2: not be a viable theory, and you have a man
38:46
Speaker 2: still behind bars based upon that unreliable theory of shaking
38:51
Speaker 2: Babysitcrome correct.
38:52
Speaker 1: Absolutely so for our listeners, I'm sure you're feeling the
38:57
Speaker 1: same outrage that I'm feeling now. And what can people do?
39:03
Speaker 4: I certainly think that people can start writing letters to
39:06
Speaker 4: the parole board. John won't be eligible for parole until
39:10
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five, and hopefully by that time will have
39:14
Speaker 4: successfully completed litigation on his behalf in parole won't matter,
39:18
Speaker 4: But I certainly think that that people can start writing
39:21
Speaker 4: to the parole board about these issues. Because John isn't
39:23
Speaker 4: the only person in Ohio who has to come before
39:26
Speaker 4: a parole board ultimately and convince the parole board that
39:30
Speaker 4: shaking baby syndrome just shouldn't serve as the underpinning for
39:34
Speaker 4: a conviction that keeps someone in prison for the rest
39:37
Speaker 4: of their lives. So that's something that people can do.
39:39
Speaker 4: The other thing I would say that people should do,
39:41
Speaker 4: even apart from John's case, is be informed. If you
39:45
Speaker 4: get a jury duty summons, show up and then don't
39:49
Speaker 4: just believe what the government scientists tell you, think about it,
39:55
Speaker 4: decide whether or not what they're saying is credible and
39:57
Speaker 4: makes sense, and listen with open ears the experts that
40:00
Speaker 4: Defense Council puts on the stand as well.
40:03
Speaker 1: And remember it's innocent until proven guilty, not the other
40:08
Speaker 1: way around. So with that, John, we're thinking of you
40:11
Speaker 1: all the time, and we're going to do everything we can.
40:14
Speaker 1: You have an extraordinary team, not just on this call,
40:18
Speaker 1: but at the Ohio Innocence Project and throughout the innocence community.
40:22
Speaker 1: I encourage people to donate to the Ohio Innocence Project
40:26
Speaker 1: so that we can help John and so many others
40:28
Speaker 1: who have been wrongfully convicted in the state of Ohio.
40:31
Speaker 1: So with that, now, of course it's the part of
40:34
Speaker 1: the show called closing arguments. First of all, I think
40:37
Speaker 1: our distinguished guests even we'll call it a panel today.
40:40
Speaker 1: First time I've ever used that word of closing arguments.
40:43
Speaker 1: So from Greg and I thanks again for being here. Greg,
40:47
Speaker 1: thank you for co hosting with me as well.
40:49
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for allowing me to co host here. Jason.
40:51
Speaker 1: Okay, and now we'll go to Donald and save Kate
40:55
Speaker 1: for last just because of alphabetical order, and then over
40:57
Speaker 1: to you John of course for the closing arguments.
41:00
Speaker 4: Thank you Jason and Greg for having us on today
41:03
Speaker 4: and for talking about this really, really important issue and
41:07
Speaker 4: this important part of the criminal justice system that hasn't
41:10
Speaker 4: gotten enough attention recently. When I work with my clients
41:15
Speaker 4: who have been convicted of child abuse through this shaken
41:18
Speaker 4: Baby syndrome theory, and as I talk to their families,
41:21
Speaker 4: I alternate between sadness and anger. I'm angry, as is
41:25
Speaker 4: everybody in the podcast today, that people go to prison
41:29
Speaker 4: over cases that looked like this, and I'm sad because
41:32
Speaker 4: of what it does to people and their families. John
41:36
Speaker 4: went to prison when he was teenager, and if the
41:39
Speaker 4: state of Ohiouse has its way he'll never get out
41:42
Speaker 4: again for something that wasn't a crime. It was a
41:46
Speaker 4: crime that never happened. These cases are enormously difficult to undo.
41:52
Speaker 4: I compare these cases sometimes to like trying to poke
41:55
Speaker 4: a hole through jello. It's easier to make a hole
41:57
Speaker 4: through a very solid object than it is through something
42:00
Speaker 4: that's weak and weekly it just closes up around the
42:04
Speaker 4: hole that you've just made, and trying to undo these
42:07
Speaker 4: shaken baby convictions can be exactly like that. We need
42:11
Speaker 4: to do better in our criminal justice system. We need
42:14
Speaker 4: to pay attention to the science. We need to make
42:17
Speaker 4: it a little bit easier to discover the evidence to
42:20
Speaker 4: undo these convictions after they happen. In Ohio, for instance,
42:23
Speaker 4: we really need the ability to do discovery before we
42:26
Speaker 4: file an action so we can get things like Jada's
42:30
Speaker 4: medical records from birth up until five months, so that
42:33
Speaker 4: we can put together the full medical history that we
42:36
Speaker 4: need to do the work in this kind of case.
42:39
Speaker 3: Okay, The prosecution of these types of cases are based
42:44
Speaker 3: on a laudable goal, and that's to protect children and
42:47
Speaker 3: protect the most vulnerable. Nobody wants child abuse, Nobody wants
42:51
Speaker 3: to see abuse at all. Unfortunately, what's happened is that
42:55
Speaker 3: doctors and other experts believe that in these cases they
42:59
Speaker 3: can do what's called err on the side of the child.
43:02
Speaker 3: They can accuse someone of abuse when they're not sure
43:06
Speaker 3: or when all of the science doesn't unerringly point to
43:10
Speaker 3: the defendant, and you can't err on the side of
43:14
Speaker 3: the child in these kinds of cases. It's impossible. Any
43:18
Speaker 3: error is going to harm both the child who may
43:20
Speaker 3: be a victim and everyone else involved in the case.
43:23
Speaker 3: And that's because when these cases are investigated improperly or
43:27
Speaker 3: charges are broad that are wrongful, that means that a
43:30
Speaker 3: child can be separated from a loving family, or that
43:33
Speaker 3: a grieving parent who's lost a child can be punished
43:36
Speaker 3: for something that they didn't do. And it also might
43:39
Speaker 3: mean that a child who is ill or who has
43:42
Speaker 3: had an accident might not get the right medical care
43:45
Speaker 3: for their illness. There's no way to err on the
43:48
Speaker 3: side of the child in these cases, and that's why
43:50
Speaker 3: we have to be so careful. We cannot have convictions
43:54
Speaker 3: that are premised on science that is shaky or science
43:58
Speaker 3: that is ambiguous. Why the Center for Integrity in Forensic
44:02
Speaker 3: Sciences exists because everybody's right to justice and a fair
44:08
Speaker 3: result depends on a fair process and a fair trial,
44:11
Speaker 3: and you can't have that when there is testimony or
44:14
Speaker 3: opinion introduced at the trial that is overstated or just
44:19
Speaker 3: playing wrong.
44:20
Speaker 1: And now of course over to you, John, I.
44:24
Speaker 7: Just want to sign light on my situation.
44:26
Speaker 5: I want people to realize what I'm going through. And
44:28
Speaker 5: I'm not even the only person going through this is
44:29
Speaker 5: possibly being accused of causing that there are children child
44:33
Speaker 5: science like something that's not even le g It's a
44:36
Speaker 5: lot of whole period and the whole theory and the
44:38
Speaker 5: whole concept of.
44:39
Speaker 7: The saying big potentional. So I just want to shed
44:41
Speaker 7: light on that situation.
44:43
Speaker 6: First and foremost, I know that it's going to get better.
44:45
Speaker 5: I know that.
44:46
Speaker 7: I know that. I know that because I know I
44:47
Speaker 7: deserve it. I know that the truth gonna come out.
44:50
Speaker 5: I love my.
44:51
Speaker 7: Daughter not conditionally. I love all my children. I have
44:53
Speaker 7: three children, including my daughter who goshed the way first
44:56
Speaker 7: of the people. I love them unconditionally, do anything.
44:59
Speaker 6: For them, will give my life for them. I gotta
45:02
Speaker 6: continue to fight for my life.
45:03
Speaker 7: I gotta continue to fight for my freedom, and I
45:05
Speaker 7: got to continue to fight for justice.
45:06
Speaker 6: For my daughter, because at the end of the day,
45:08
Speaker 6: that's what it's truly about. When we find out the
45:11
Speaker 6: real cause of what happened with her.
45:13
Speaker 5: That's gonna automatically vindicate me, that's automatically gonna rate me,
45:17
Speaker 5: But it's gonna also bring closer to my family, my
45:20
Speaker 5: child's mother's family, everybody.
45:22
Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying, because it's gonna give.
45:23
Speaker 7: Us the truth.
45:24
Speaker 5: It's gonna let us know, it's gonna aswer the questions
45:26
Speaker 5: that we all got. But at the end of the day,
45:28
Speaker 5: it's about my daughter. It's about Jaden's like, it's all
45:30
Speaker 5: about Jaded for her. Yeah, I want my freedom, Yeah
45:32
Speaker 5: I desire my freedom, but knowing what happened with her,
45:35
Speaker 5: getting the closure that our families need, and then finally
45:38
Speaker 5: being able to get to a place where we can
45:39
Speaker 5: move forward.
45:40
Speaker 7: Because I never really ever even been able to heal
45:42
Speaker 7: from me.
45:43
Speaker 5: I never found clothes because not only did I suffer
45:47
Speaker 5: to one of the deepest losses that anybody on this earth.
45:49
Speaker 6: Can suffer is losing a child.
45:51
Speaker 7: Not only did our experience thing and have to deal
45:54
Speaker 7: with that, I gotta deal with sitting here every single day.
46:03
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
46:06
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis,
46:10
Speaker 1: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
46:13
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
46:16
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
46:20
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at
46:24
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
46:27
Speaker 1: all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
46:30
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flahm. Wrongful Conviction is
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