Latest / NO FILTER / She was in prison for 11 YEARS for a crime she didn_t commit _ CSI On Trial

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She was in prison for 11 YEARS for a crime she didn_t commit _ CSI On Trial · NO FILTER

0:09
Speaker 1: Forensic science begins at the end of someone else's story,
0:16
Speaker 1: scrutinizing a violent moment in time, samples are collected and
0:23
Speaker 1: preserved the scene. Exhaustively photographed evidence prepared for forensic experts
0:32
Speaker 1: to examine. Television and movies fuel blind faith in the
0:38
Speaker 1: power of crime scene investigations or CSI. But since the
0:44
Speaker 1: emergence of DNA analysis, a disturbing trend has emerged. DNA
0:51
Speaker 1: pulled from evidence that spent decades gathering dust, has revealed
0:55
Speaker 1: a surprising number of wrongful convictions. In fact, in hundreds
1:01
Speaker 1: of exoneration cases, DNA did more free the innocent. It
1:06
Speaker 1: proved that the forensic evidence that convicted them was wrong.
1:11
Speaker 1: It's time to put CSI on trial to find out
1:15
Speaker 1: what's real science, what has scientific potentially, and what's just junk.
1:22
Speaker 1: The stakes couldn't be higher.
1:25
Speaker 2: They accused me of showing utter disregard to human life, and.
1:36
Speaker 3: That is when the nightmare started.
1:53
Speaker 1: On the morning of October sixteenth, nineteen ninety five, in Wannakee, Wisconsin,
1:58
Speaker 1: young mom Audrey Edmonds was starting another busy week. Audrey
2:08
Speaker 1: was running a daycare out of her home, and just
2:11
Speaker 1: before seven thirty am, her first child arrived photo. Seven
2:17
Speaker 1: month old Natalie was a fussy baby, and this day
2:20
Speaker 1: was no exception. Baby Natalie had been ill since the
2:25
Speaker 1: night before, and Audrey tried to calm her with a bottle,
2:31
Speaker 1: but Natalie's condition quickly deteriorated.
2:35
Speaker 2: When the formula started coming out of her nose. I
2:37
Speaker 2: instantly picked her up, held her, was patting her on
2:41
Speaker 2: the back.
2:41
Speaker 3: She was not responding.
2:43
Speaker 2: That's when I went so quickly through the house out
2:47
Speaker 2: to the front yard. I'm yelling and screaming at my
2:50
Speaker 2: neighbor ladies to come help me. I'm holding her up,
2:55
Speaker 2: trying to get her to be okay, thinking, you know,
2:58
Speaker 2: a baby has.
2:59
Speaker 4: Choked cane on one, I want to get you.
3:01
Speaker 3: That's when I went in and called nine one one.
3:04
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, I have a baby who's not breathing.
3:07
Speaker 4: Yes, that's right.
3:10
Speaker 5: You need to calm down and help her.
3:21
Speaker 2: When that MedFlight helicopter arrives in my backyard, I'm thinking
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Speaker 2: they're simply going to get her breathing correctly, she's going
3:30
Speaker 2: to go to the hospital for a checkup, and everything
3:32
Speaker 2: is going to be fine.
3:36
Speaker 3: And I was wrong.
3:42
Speaker 1: Baby Natalie was pronounced dead at nine pm that night.
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Speaker 2: The Wannakee Glease came to my house that day. They
3:54
Speaker 2: said this was just a normal investigation that they had
3:57
Speaker 2: to go through as protocol. Just put her in the
4:00
Speaker 2: They asked me some questions, she had a little bit,
4:03
Speaker 2: they had to take pictures, and I just thought, Okay,
4:07
Speaker 2: this is what happens. And then after a couple months,
4:16
Speaker 2: shortly before I had had my third baby, I got
4:19
Speaker 2: a call that the state was very strongly looking that
4:23
Speaker 2: this was a homicide case and I would be charged
4:26
Speaker 2: for it.
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Speaker 3: And I was just I was just devastated.
4:33
Speaker 2: I could not figure out what they were even talking
4:36
Speaker 2: about and why.
4:37
Speaker 3: This was even being considered.
4:43
Speaker 1: But according to police, baby Natalie's death was a clear
4:47
Speaker 1: case of child abuse called shaken baby syndrome. Professor of
4:55
Speaker 1: pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Howard Dubowitz,
5:01
Speaker 1: has diagnosed and studied shaken baby syndrome.
5:05
Speaker 6: When a child is say held by the trunk or
5:08
Speaker 6: arms and roughly vigorously shaken, that head can really bob
5:14
Speaker 6: around and move back and forth or sideways or rotate,
5:20
Speaker 6: and it's that movement especially that makes them susceptible to
5:26
Speaker 6: bleeding around the brain and to the brain being injured.
5:30
Speaker 1: The American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC, and the World
5:35
Speaker 1: Health Organization all describe shaken baby syndrome as a leading
5:39
Speaker 1: cause of child abuse death.
5:42
Speaker 7: Every single major medical organization in the world that deals
5:45
Speaker 7: with this topic recognizes that this is a real thing
5:48
Speaker 7: that children get shaken and abused, and these are the
5:49
Speaker 7: injuries that we typically see in those cases. We have
5:52
Speaker 7: decades of clinical experience to be able to tell us, like,
5:54
Speaker 7: this is what happens to kids when they get shaken.
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Speaker 1: Ryan Steinbiegel is the director of the National Center on
6:02
Speaker 1: Shaken Baby Syndrome.
6:04
Speaker 7: We'll say anywhere between twelve hundred and fourteen hundred cases
6:07
Speaker 7: per year that actually present to a hospital, but I
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Speaker 7: think there's actually many more.
6:12
Speaker 1: Than that, and according to experts, Natalie exhibited all the
6:18
Speaker 1: telltale signs of shaken baby syndrome, subdural hematoma or bleeding
6:24
Speaker 1: on the brain, retinal hemorrhaging or bleeding in the back
6:30
Speaker 1: of the eye, and brain swelling. Attorney Keith Findley was
6:39
Speaker 1: involved in Audrey Edmund's defense.
6:42
Speaker 8: The entire case against Audrey what has become known as
6:45
Speaker 8: the triad. The doctors came in and said this baby
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Speaker 8: as subdural hematoma, retinal hemorrhaging, and cerebral edema brain swelling,
6:55
Speaker 8: and they testified nothing can cause this except violence shaking.
7:00
Speaker 1: The damage done to that child's brain is equivalent to
7:03
Speaker 1: the damage done to a child who was in a
7:06
Speaker 1: severe motor accident and dies. The prosecution contended that the
7:12
Speaker 1: force required to produce the triad indicated clear intent.
7:18
Speaker 8: A child injured by shaking in this way would have
7:22
Speaker 8: to have suffered such severe force, such massive infliction of
7:26
Speaker 8: force equivalent to the force generated by it, or fall
7:29
Speaker 8: from a second or third floor, that no one could
7:32
Speaker 8: administer that much shaking force without recognizing that it was
7:36
Speaker 8: likely to harm or kill the child, and therefore has
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Speaker 8: had to have been done at least with recklessness.
7:44
Speaker 1: It was Audrey's word that she cared for and comforted
7:48
Speaker 1: Natalie against the triad.
7:51
Speaker 2: Had done the best that I could try to get
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Speaker 2: her to stop this crying.
7:57
Speaker 1: An expert after expert test that because the injuries were
8:02
Speaker 1: so severe, they must have occurred shortly before Natalie's collapse.
8:09
Speaker 7: It would be my opinion that it would be extremely
8:11
Speaker 7: unlikely to almost impossible that there would be any period
8:14
Speaker 7: of lucidity following those types of injuries.
8:17
Speaker 2: It's my opinion that the injuries had to have occurred
8:20
Speaker 2: between the time that this child was dropped.
8:22
Speaker 7: Off of the daycare center by her parents and the
8:24
Speaker 7: time that the officer responded.
8:28
Speaker 1: All the evidence pointed to Audrey.
8:32
Speaker 8: Forensic pathologist who had done the autopsy on the deceased child,
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Speaker 8: Doctor Robert Huntington, testified that because a child injured so
8:42
Speaker 8: severely would suffer almost immediate collapse, or at least after
8:47
Speaker 8: a very brief period of lucidity, it would have been
8:49
Speaker 8: virtually inconceivable to him that this child was injured much
8:53
Speaker 8: before the child was in Audrey's care, which helped pin
8:55
Speaker 8: it on Audrey.
8:57
Speaker 2: When I heard doctors at the trial talk about had
9:00
Speaker 2: trauma in being equivalent to a fall from a two
9:03
Speaker 2: story building, I just wanted to scream.
9:07
Speaker 3: Common sense tells.
9:08
Speaker 2: You that if a seven month old is falling from
9:10
Speaker 2: a two story building, there's going to be skull fractures.
9:14
Speaker 3: None of that was taken into consideration.
9:20
Speaker 1: Dan Berkland, a father of young girls himself, sat on
9:24
Speaker 1: the jury.
9:26
Speaker 9: It was pretty cut and dry as far as just
9:29
Speaker 9: with the facts. There was nothing else presented about Audrey
9:33
Speaker 9: that came into play at all. It was totally just
9:36
Speaker 9: the experts that had us to form this decision.
9:44
Speaker 1: The jury deliberated for eight hours, and on November twenty sixth,
9:49
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, Audrey Edmonds was found guilty of first
9:54
Speaker 1: degree reckless homicide and sentenced to eighteen years in prison.
10:07
Speaker 1: At Wisconsin's Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences, Kate Judson
10:12
Speaker 1: is an expert on shaken baby syndrome litigation.
10:16
Speaker 10: There's no question that children should never be abused, and
10:19
Speaker 10: the child abuse is a problem in our country. By
10:21
Speaker 10: the same token, there's no question in my mind that
10:23
Speaker 10: people are wrongfully accused.
10:25
Speaker 8: No one is advocating shaking. No one is denying child
10:29
Speaker 8: abuse exists. That's not the dispute. The dispute is about
10:34
Speaker 8: whether shaking alone can cause serious enough injuries to cause
10:38
Speaker 8: these brain injuries and death, or whether impact is required
10:42
Speaker 8: as well. Can physicians tell the difference from the brain
10:47
Speaker 8: injuries as to whether those injuries were sustained accidentally or intentionally.
10:52
Speaker 8: Those are the disputes.
10:53
Speaker 10: Nobody should violently shake a baby. It is abusive and
10:56
Speaker 10: nobody should do it. But that's really different from saying
11:00
Speaker 10: that when a child has intracranial bleeding that they must
11:05
Speaker 10: have been shaken. Those are really different things.
11:09
Speaker 1: For over three decades, biomechanical researchers have conducted experiments that
11:15
Speaker 1: go to the heart of the shaken baby syndrome dispute.
11:19
Speaker 1: Doctor Britney Coates leads the University of Utah's Head Trauma Lab,
11:24
Speaker 1: where she designs biomechanical models to simulate the conditions of
11:29
Speaker 1: head trauma and test the forces of impact.
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Speaker 11: One of the challenges with pediatric head trauma is, you know,
11:37
Speaker 11: we can't directly measure forces and get these thresholds of injury.
11:42
Speaker 1: Obviously, scientists can't test their theories by shaking an actual baby.
11:47
Speaker 11: So instead we have all these workarounds. Right, we have
11:50
Speaker 11: these Zurga dummies that we create and we shake them
11:53
Speaker 11: to estimate the forces, or we do other experiments with
11:56
Speaker 11: them to estimate the forces.
11:59
Speaker 1: Also, the University of Utah doctor Ken Monson's expertise is
12:04
Speaker 1: in what happens to the blood vessels in the brain
12:07
Speaker 1: during a head impact.
12:10
Speaker 12: Shaking baby syndrome was I think the right word is
12:14
Speaker 12: hypothesized in right around nineteen seventy was an idea largely
12:20
Speaker 12: based on experiments that had been conducted on primates in
12:24
Speaker 12: the sixties, where Iyaba Maaya, who was an aurosurgeon, had
12:27
Speaker 12: actually produced a whiplash type event in primates and had
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Speaker 12: shown without a significant head impact, that they could generate
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Speaker 12: bleeding on the brain.
12:41
Speaker 1: Doctor Amaya's experiments were designed to mimic a rear end
12:44
Speaker 1: car collision without head impact. His results caught the attention
12:49
Speaker 1: of researchers studying infant brain injury. If whiplash could cause
12:54
Speaker 1: brain injury, perhaps shaking could as well. Nineteen eighty seven,
13:01
Speaker 1: researchers from the University of Pennsylvania set out to test
13:05
Speaker 1: this hypothesis with a biomechanical model of a baby.
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Speaker 11: They created their own surrogate dummy had different necks on it,
13:14
Speaker 11: so one was like a rubber hose two neck, another
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Speaker 11: was a hinge neck, and then they had some accelerometers,
13:20
Speaker 11: which are measurement tools to measure how fast.
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Speaker 12: The head moves, and they just asked a group of
13:25
Speaker 12: volunteers to grip the dummy by its torso and shake
13:28
Speaker 12: it as hard as they could, and they found that
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Speaker 12: the shaking accelerations were far below any of those thresholds
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Speaker 12: for injury, like ten times lower than what would be
13:39
Speaker 12: required to cause those injuries. So the conclusion of the
13:42
Speaker 12: paper was, well, shaking can't cause these.
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Speaker 1: Injuries because a human can't produce the same level of
13:49
Speaker 1: force as a crashing car.
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Speaker 11: The forces they were able to generate were so far
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Speaker 11: below the tolerances that they said that severe injury is
14:01
Speaker 11: likely going to also have some kind of impact involved.
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Speaker 1: So essentially shaking alone can't cause the triad. Over the years,
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Speaker 1: the field of biomechanics has advanced, but the results are
14:16
Speaker 1: the same.
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Speaker 12: Four or five studies have been conducted to repeat those
14:21
Speaker 12: initial experiments with more advanced stummies, and the accelerations that
14:26
Speaker 12: were measured associated with shaking have not really changed much.
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Speaker 11: We haven't been able in the biomechanics realm to recreate
14:34
Speaker 11: severe injury. So I think it's created a lot of
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Speaker 11: kind of controversy because you have on one side clinicians
14:41
Speaker 11: who have seen this constellation of injuries, but then you
14:44
Speaker 11: have a lot of biomechanics people who said, well, the
14:46
Speaker 11: forces are so low, how can they create those injuries.
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Speaker 1: Critics of the shaken baby hypothesis argue that impact and
14:56
Speaker 1: undiagnosed medical conditions cause the triad and question many of
15:01
Speaker 1: the assumptions that have sent thousands to prison. But back
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Speaker 1: in the late nineteen nineties, these discoveries were only beginning
15:11
Speaker 1: to emerge from labs, and on February twentieth, nineteen ninety seven,
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Speaker 1: Audrey Edmonds was locked behind bars.
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Speaker 3: My third child, my baby, my youngest.
15:25
Speaker 13: It was.
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Speaker 2: I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday, and
15:30
Speaker 2: my second one was just over almost three, and my
15:34
Speaker 2: oldest was in kindergarten.
15:37
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, yep. That's a tough day.
15:42
Speaker 1: Her eighteen year sentence meant she would miss their entire childhoods.
15:49
Speaker 3: I try to let it.
15:51
Speaker 2: Just fly through each year, but I mean, being locked
15:56
Speaker 2: in a brick room with a stranger and a tin
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Speaker 2: toilet is nothing I can even fathom to this day.
16:04
Speaker 3: I lived it, by the grace of God. I kept hope.
16:07
Speaker 3: That's tough. That is very, very hard time.
16:16
Speaker 1: Six years into Audrey's sentence, her husband filed for divorce.
16:22
Speaker 1: Audrey tried to keep her hopes up even when none
16:25
Speaker 1: of her appeals were successful. Then, after almost a decade
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Speaker 1: of hard time, she was given another chance. In two
16:38
Speaker 1: thousand and six, Keith Findley was leading the Wisconsin Innocence Project.
16:44
Speaker 8: The Innocence Project is one that focuses on representing people
16:49
Speaker 8: who have viable claims of actual innocence, and it was
16:53
Speaker 8: through that process that we received a request for assistance
16:57
Speaker 8: to help Audrey Edmonds. Knew her attorneys very very well,
17:02
Speaker 8: and I knew that they believed firmly in Audrey's actual innocence,
17:06
Speaker 8: and we assigned students to it who began investigating to
17:09
Speaker 8: determine if there might be some way to prove that
17:12
Speaker 8: she was innocent. It was a bizarre kind of case
17:15
Speaker 8: in that medical opinion evidence literally constituted the entirety of
17:20
Speaker 8: the case, So that made it very clear that the
17:23
Speaker 8: way to look into this would be to look at
17:26
Speaker 8: the science.
17:33
Speaker 1: Findley and his team scrutinized the testimony of experts like
17:37
Speaker 1: pathologists doctor Huntington, who had been key to Audrey's original conviction.
17:43
Speaker 8: At the trial. Doctor Huntington had testified that there was
17:48
Speaker 8: a small contusion or small bruise on the child's head,
17:53
Speaker 8: but it was so small that it couldn't have played
17:55
Speaker 8: a significant part, and therefore the only thing that could
17:59
Speaker 8: have caused this child's demise was violent shaking. Even though
18:04
Speaker 8: Audrey was the most patient, gentle, kindest woman you could
18:08
Speaker 8: ever meet, and even though she'd only had the child
18:10
Speaker 8: in her care for forty five or fifty minutes when
18:13
Speaker 8: the child collapsed. They built their case on those medical findings.
18:19
Speaker 1: But while Audrey languished in prison, new scientific studies were emerging.
18:27
Speaker 1: One directly challenged the medical arguments used against her. It
18:31
Speaker 1: was written by doctor John Plunkett in two thousand and one.
18:36
Speaker 10: He was a forensic pathologist who was frustrated by the
18:40
Speaker 10: idea that kids with this constellation of findings often associated
18:44
Speaker 10: with shaking, had to have been shaken. The study reviewed
18:48
Speaker 10: cases in the Consumer Product Safety Database where children had
18:52
Speaker 10: been injured fatally on playground equipment.
18:56
Speaker 1: Plunket identified eighteen cases in which children died from accidental
19:01
Speaker 1: falls on playgrounds. He reviewed all the medical records, autopsy reports,
19:08
Speaker 1: scene photographs, and video of these tragic accidents, and.
19:14
Speaker 10: What he found was that many of those children exhibited
19:18
Speaker 10: the exact same symptoms as kids who would normally have
19:21
Speaker 10: been diagnosed as having been shaken, and that some of
19:24
Speaker 10: them experienced intervals of lucidity. They were walking and talking,
19:28
Speaker 10: maybe they were eating, maybe they were interacting with others.
19:32
Speaker 1: In other words, if baby Natalie's triad of symptoms were
19:36
Speaker 1: caused by an injury, that injury could have occurred days
19:41
Speaker 1: earlier and not while in Audrey's care. Plunkett's groundbreaking study
19:47
Speaker 1: got the attention of the pathologist in Audrey's case, doctor Huntington.
19:52
Speaker 8: He went back and did research and looked at the
19:55
Speaker 8: literature and found that, in fact, the research literature was
19:57
Speaker 8: beginning to show that what became known as lucid intervals
20:01
Speaker 8: were real, that they can last hours, twenty four hours,
20:05
Speaker 8: forty eight hours, seventy two hours, even longer. It could
20:08
Speaker 8: have happened earlier, especially because this child was indeed fussy clingy,
20:13
Speaker 8: hadn't fed properly the night before, all recognized signs of
20:17
Speaker 8: brewing intracranial injury.
20:20
Speaker 1: And then the unexpected happened.
20:23
Speaker 8: We learned that doctor Robert Huntington had actually written a
20:27
Speaker 8: letter to the Journal of the National Association of Medical Examiners,
20:31
Speaker 8: in which he had said, basically, we used to think
20:34
Speaker 8: we knew how to time these injuries and therefore how
20:37
Speaker 8: to identify who did it. We were wrong, and so
20:41
Speaker 8: our students called him up. Doctor Huntington, You know we
20:44
Speaker 8: are representing Audrey Edmunds, and he immediately cut in and said,
20:48
Speaker 8: oh goodness, Audrey Edmonds, what are we going to do
20:52
Speaker 8: about Audrey Edmonds. At that point, he said, the whole
20:56
Speaker 8: question about whether shaking can even cause these injuries, and
21:01
Speaker 8: if so, whether it is the only mechanism, has become
21:04
Speaker 8: so medically and scientifically fraught and contentious that he no
21:09
Speaker 8: longer could even be sure that there was any shaking involved.
21:14
Speaker 8: That was powerful, powerful evidence on Behff Audrey.
21:23
Speaker 1: It took eleven years, but the world was about to
21:26
Speaker 1: learn of Audrey's innocence that day.
21:30
Speaker 2: I was working off grounds at minimum security, and I
21:34
Speaker 2: knew nothing about it, and it had been all over
21:36
Speaker 2: the news since noontime. So people are calling my kids,
21:40
Speaker 2: They're calling my mom. Everybody knows. My mind was just
21:45
Speaker 2: raising you guys. I just I still look at me.
21:48
Speaker 2: I get goosebumps. I'm like, oh my gosh. I call
21:53
Speaker 2: my kids.
21:54
Speaker 13: They already know. They're like, Mommy, we hear this great news.
21:57
Speaker 13: They're all on the phone with me taking turn. Mommy,
22:00
Speaker 13: you finally get to get out of that prison. You're
22:03
Speaker 13: no longer going to be in jail.
22:06
Speaker 2: So then that Wednesday, when the snow was falling, and
22:11
Speaker 2: twelve o'clock I had my hearing. It was your conviction
22:14
Speaker 2: has been overturned. Oh, by the grace of God. It
22:17
Speaker 2: was wonderful. I can't tell you how grateful I was
22:20
Speaker 2: to hear all these doctors explain exactly, truthfully, scientifically that
22:27
Speaker 2: nothing had happened in my care, that I was innocent.
22:30
Speaker 3: There was no doubt about it.
22:33
Speaker 1: When she was released, Audrey's daughters were twelve, fourteen, and
22:38
Speaker 1: sixteen years old.
22:40
Speaker 2: I could never try to make up for that time,
22:43
Speaker 2: because you just can't. But you just enjoy and move forward.
22:51
Speaker 1: She was ultimately exonerated of all charges.
22:57
Speaker 8: It became the first case in the world in which
23:00
Speaker 8: a shaken baby syndrome or abusive head trauma conviction was
23:04
Speaker 8: overturned on the basis of new scientific evidence, challenging the
23:10
Speaker 8: hypothesis upon which the prosecution rested.
23:15
Speaker 1: But how did a scientific hypothesis send an innocent mom
23:19
Speaker 1: to jail for eleven years? Some of it can be
23:25
Speaker 1: traced back to the nineteen eighties, when many more mothers
23:29
Speaker 1: were working outside the home. Daycare facilities proliferated, and the
23:35
Speaker 1: guilt induced anxiety around leaving young children with people outside
23:40
Speaker 1: their family triggered a kind of hysteria.
23:44
Speaker 10: There was a lot of panic about mothers leaving their
23:46
Speaker 10: children with other caregivers.
23:49
Speaker 4: There was a lot of.
23:51
Speaker 10: Panic about those caregivers. It captured the nation's attention.
23:57
Speaker 1: At its height, the anxiety sparked of anhenomenon called Satanic panic.
24:07
Speaker 1: Award winning investigative journalist Susan Goldsmith covers child abuse, the
24:13
Speaker 1: foster system, and criminal justice.
24:17
Speaker 14: People believed that there were clubs of Satanists operating.
24:23
Speaker 3: In childcare settings.
24:26
Speaker 14: Pediatricians went into court and said we saw physical signs
24:32
Speaker 14: of pule abuse in these Satanic panic cases. It went
24:36
Speaker 14: on for about a decade. There were many, many prosecutions.
24:41
Speaker 14: People went to prison, people's lives were ruined.
24:45
Speaker 1: The Satanic panic frenzy was ultimately debunked, but distrust of
24:50
Speaker 1: daycare providers lingered.
24:53
Speaker 14: What connects the two theories syndromes, whatever you want to
24:57
Speaker 14: call them, between Satanic panic and shaken baby syndrome is
25:01
Speaker 14: it involves a hysteria around children being harmed. You can
25:06
Speaker 14: get very far with stuff that is not scientific and
25:11
Speaker 14: credible when you make the allegation that children are being harmed.
25:19
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety seven, the same year Audrey Edmonds was convicted.
25:23
Speaker 1: Shaken baby became a household term when nanny Louise Woodward
25:28
Speaker 1: was accused of shaking an eight month old infant to death.
25:33
Speaker 10: In that case, there was a family who had two
25:36
Speaker 10: young children and the youngest died unexpectedly with central haematoma,
25:41
Speaker 10: renal hemorrhage, and brain smelling.
25:43
Speaker 1: The same classic triad of symptoms that led to Audrey's conviction.
25:51
Speaker 10: Parents were physicians, and they had hired a British au
25:54
Speaker 10: pair to care for their kids, a young woman named
25:58
Speaker 10: Louis Woodward. And because she was the one who called
26:00
Speaker 10: me on one, because she was alone with the children
26:03
Speaker 10: when the baby collapsed, she was immediately the suspect mtic.
26:09
Speaker 1: Woodward was arrested and her trial was broadcast gavel to
26:13
Speaker 1: gavel on court TV. Not due to shaking, No, I
26:16
Speaker 1: see no evidence of shakings.
26:18
Speaker 10: It was a very robust offense, and by many of
26:21
Speaker 10: the same people who had been involved in sort of
26:24
Speaker 10: the background of the shaken baby syndrom.
26:26
Speaker 1: Hypothesis, including doctor Ayubamaya, whose whiplash study was used to
26:33
Speaker 1: develop the shaken baby syndrome hypothesis. He testified that his
26:39
Speaker 1: research had been misconstrued that the primates exposed to whiplash
26:44
Speaker 1: inducing force all sustained neck injuries.
26:49
Speaker 15: ES central part of shaking, if shaking is in place,
26:52
Speaker 15: is damaged to the neck.
26:54
Speaker 1: The baby in the Woodward case did not have an
26:57
Speaker 1: injured neck, but doctor Patrick Barnes, a Harvard neuro radiologist,
27:04
Speaker 1: maintained that the baby was shaken.
27:08
Speaker 15: My opinion is if this is the classic picture of
27:12
Speaker 15: the acute or hyper acute shaken impact head injury seen
27:18
Speaker 15: with non accidental trauma.
27:21
Speaker 1: The jury's verdict shocked the nation. On appeal, the charges
27:39
Speaker 1: against Woodward were reduced. The judge didn't believe she acted
27:44
Speaker 1: out of malice, and she served less than a year.
27:49
Speaker 1: And in the years after the trial, doctor Barnes began
27:53
Speaker 1: to question his own conclusions.
27:56
Speaker 8: He began saying, what's the evidence base for this? And
28:00
Speaker 8: that's when he concluded that the evidence base simply wasn't there.
28:04
Speaker 10: Patrick Barnes began to dig into the science and really
28:09
Speaker 10: came to the conclusion that his prior testimony had been incorrect,
28:12
Speaker 10: that he was wrong, and he thereafter dedicated portion of
28:17
Speaker 10: his career to righting those wrongs.
28:20
Speaker 4: And it was really a turning point.
28:22
Speaker 8: It takes a lot of moral courage to step up
28:24
Speaker 8: and take a look at the developments in the science
28:28
Speaker 8: and step forward and say, you know what I was wrong.
28:37
Speaker 1: While some pediatric scholars were beginning to question the science,
28:41
Speaker 1: proponents of the shaken baby hypothesis were expanding their reach.
28:47
Speaker 7: We've got you know Brochure's pamphlet.
28:49
Speaker 1: The National Center for Shaken Baby Syndrome was at the
28:53
Speaker 1: forefront of this effort.
28:55
Speaker 7: The National Center's been around since July of two thousand. Now,
28:59
Speaker 7: this is a very specific subset of child abuse, but
29:02
Speaker 7: it's also the most devastating form of child abuse.
29:06
Speaker 1: Their period of Purple Crying Abuse Prevention program is implemented
29:11
Speaker 1: in two thousand sites worldwide.
29:14
Speaker 7: Well, this is a program that educates moms and dads
29:17
Speaker 7: and other caregivers about infant crying, which has been shown
29:20
Speaker 7: to be the number one trigger for shaking baby. Centerumbis
29:23
Speaker 7: of fed trauma and how to respond to that crying
29:25
Speaker 7: when you're feeling frustrated. They can shake the doll and
29:28
Speaker 7: shows what's happening when it's baby shaking. How the next
29:31
Speaker 7: movie in the hospital, there's like a bedside education that
29:35
Speaker 7: takes place.
29:38
Speaker 1: These advocacy efforts combined with medical training, have institutionalized shaken
29:44
Speaker 1: baby syndrome as part of a physician's creed.
29:48
Speaker 6: Most residents will get somewhere between maybe a week to
29:53
Speaker 6: a month of training on this topic. So definitely it's
29:58
Speaker 6: on everyone's radar screen, and medical students are well aware
30:04
Speaker 6: that this is unfortunately a prevalent problem and that their
30:08
Speaker 6: eyes and ears need to be open.
30:12
Speaker 1: But critics point to a disconnect between what students are
30:16
Speaker 1: taught and what biomechanical researchers have been unable to prove.
30:22
Speaker 8: The hypothesis is perpetuated through medical training every day because
30:27
Speaker 8: that's what medical students are still taught.
30:30
Speaker 10: What's the most influential is that child abuse pediatrics has
30:33
Speaker 10: become its own forward certified subspecialty, and many of the
30:38
Speaker 10: people who originated these ideas and were really at the
30:43
Speaker 10: forefront of prosecuting these cases are now training the next generation.
30:48
Speaker 8: Of doctors, and so most physicians never have the opportunity
30:52
Speaker 8: to look beyond what was in the textbooks, never question it,
30:56
Speaker 8: and so it becomes sort of self perpetuating and continues
31:00
Speaker 8: without any form of feedback to tell them whether they
31:02
Speaker 8: were right or wrong. They could have been diagnosing it
31:04
Speaker 8: wrong every single time for thirty years, and they would
31:07
Speaker 8: never know it. Clinical judgment in this context is no
31:12
Speaker 8: substitute for science.
31:15
Speaker 1: But institutionalized practices resist change.
31:21
Speaker 10: You know, I wonder how difficult it would be if
31:23
Speaker 10: you devoted a serious chunk of your professional life to
31:27
Speaker 10: stamping out this particular form of child abuse.
31:29
Speaker 4: It might be very difficult to hear conflicting information.
31:33
Speaker 8: And there's been an entire industry built up around it,
31:37
Speaker 8: this whole entire subfield of child abuse pediatrics, and so
31:40
Speaker 8: to all of a sudden reverse course, it's like trying
31:43
Speaker 8: to use a rowboat to turn around a massive ship.
31:46
Speaker 8: It's just this just enormous investment and inertia in this hypothesis.
31:56
Speaker 1: Advocates like Steinbiegel argue that exaggerated me reports have created
32:01
Speaker 1: a false controversy.
32:03
Speaker 7: I don't think all the major medical organizations, the American Academy,
32:07
Speaker 7: the CDC, World Health Organization, they all recognize that shake
32:11
Speaker 7: and baby syndrome is a very real thing. I think
32:13
Speaker 7: the controversy comes from the fact that in the media
32:17
Speaker 7: it gets reported. You've seen the articles in the Washington
32:21
Speaker 7: Post or the New York Times that make claims that
32:24
Speaker 7: the science is in question, or that there's new science,
32:26
Speaker 7: or the science is changing. It's absolutely not the case.
32:30
Speaker 6: A tiny minority sometimes people with fancy titles at top institutions,
32:37
Speaker 6: are in that small camp of what has been termed denialists,
32:42
Speaker 6: and this presents I think a serious problem for us.
32:48
Speaker 1: The concern is that denying the shaken baby hypothesis will
32:53
Speaker 1: make it harder to protect children. In two thousand and four,
33:00
Speaker 1: investigative journalist Susan Goldsmith produced a documentary about the shaken
33:05
Speaker 1: baby hypothesis. The film generated a storm of backlash.
33:13
Speaker 14: The effort to discredit those who challenge this theory. There
33:18
Speaker 14: isn't an attempt to destroy them, to call them child
33:22
Speaker 14: abuse deniers. They've had seminars where they compare questioning shaken
33:29
Speaker 14: baby syndrome to being a Holocaust denier and being a
33:33
Speaker 14: climate change denier.
33:35
Speaker 1: The National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome threatened to sue
33:39
Speaker 1: Goldsmith and film festivals that screened her film.
33:43
Speaker 14: I myself was called a child abuse denier, and it
33:48
Speaker 14: was most absurd in my case because as a journalist
33:51
Speaker 14: I've written about child abuse and gotten state laws passed
33:55
Speaker 14: to help children in foster care, so it wasn't so
33:59
Speaker 14: easy to write me off as a child abuse denier,
34:02
Speaker 14: although they tried.
34:05
Speaker 8: Child abuse. Pediatricians are not pure objective scientists. Their child advocates,
34:12
Speaker 8: which is wonderful we want child advocates, but child advocates
34:17
Speaker 8: are not well positioned to objectively assess the science because
34:22
Speaker 8: their perspective is our job is to protect the children,
34:26
Speaker 8: and when in doubt, we will always err on the
34:29
Speaker 8: side of the child. In other words, if in doubt
34:33
Speaker 8: they are going to presume child abuse, we hear.
34:37
Speaker 10: That's so often in child abuse cases, so we just
34:39
Speaker 10: want to err on the side of the child. But
34:41
Speaker 10: the truth is you can if you say that someone
34:43
Speaker 10: who was abused who wasn't, then their group to potentially
34:47
Speaker 10: miss their medical problem, or separate them from people who
34:50
Speaker 10: love them, or disrupt their family life. And what studies
34:53
Speaker 10: have shown is that separation of a family, even briefly,
34:58
Speaker 10: it causes lasting trauma.
35:00
Speaker 1: Doctor Patrick Barnes's new research showed that the triad of
35:03
Speaker 1: symptoms could be explained by other medical problems, problems that
35:08
Speaker 1: would go untreated if the doctor misdiagnosed shaken baby syndrome,
35:13
Speaker 1: problems that could have been the source of baby Natalie's
35:16
Speaker 1: unexplained brain injury and tragic death. By two thousand and nine,
35:22
Speaker 1: the science finally started to break through. The American Academy
35:26
Speaker 1: of Pediatrics issued a policy statement addressing shaken baby.
35:31
Speaker 10: They published a new position statement in which they started
35:34
Speaker 10: to acknowledge some of the other possible causes, though they
35:38
Speaker 10: downplayed them, you know, they really implied that they were
35:40
Speaker 10: very rare.
35:42
Speaker 8: They had to back off in subtle ways from some
35:45
Speaker 8: of their original claims, and they changed the terminology, saying
35:49
Speaker 8: we recommend no longer calling it shaken baby syndrome, but
35:51
Speaker 8: rather calling it abusive head trauma.
35:58
Speaker 1: Then in twenty sixteen, a decisive blow to the shaken
36:02
Speaker 1: baby syndrome hypothesis came from a compelling study by the
36:06
Speaker 1: Swedish government.
36:11
Speaker 10: So there was a big supreme court case in Sweden
36:13
Speaker 10: where the Supreme Court of Sweden reversed a conviction, and
36:16
Speaker 10: so they did a big study and what they found
36:19
Speaker 10: was the evidence supporting shaken baby syndrome diagnoses was of very.
36:23
Speaker 4: Low or very low quality.
36:25
Speaker 3: We look through.
36:26
Speaker 8: Thousands of published medical articles, whittled it down to thirty
36:29
Speaker 8: some that were really relevant, and of those they concluded
36:33
Speaker 8: that something like twenty eight of the papers were of
36:37
Speaker 8: low scientific quality, two were of medium scientific quality, and
36:44
Speaker 8: zero were of high scientific quality.
36:49
Speaker 10: A lot of us who work on wrongful convictions in
36:51
Speaker 10: shaking baby syndrome cases were really hoping that the Swedish
36:55
Speaker 10: study would make something change in this country.
37:00
Speaker 4: Hasn't been the case.
37:03
Speaker 1: Instead, there are more people like Audrey Edmonds accused of
37:07
Speaker 1: shaking babies.
37:11
Speaker 8: People are still being convicted because the mainstream pediatric community
37:15
Speaker 8: still embraces the shaking baby center hypothesis and indeed has
37:19
Speaker 8: become extremely defensive and reactionary in response to any criticisms
37:26
Speaker 8: of the hypothesis, and so the prosecutions continued. Acquittals happen,
37:31
Speaker 8: but so do many, many, many convictions.
37:35
Speaker 1: And thousands remain incarcerated. Noel Quavado has been in prison
37:45
Speaker 1: for eighteen years, convicted of a crime he says he
37:49
Speaker 1: did not commit, shaking his eight month old son Alex
37:53
Speaker 1: to death. Private investigator Sylvia Bassaja Katie believe Noel is innocent.
38:02
Speaker 1: She has spent the last two years building a case
38:06
Speaker 1: to overturn his conviction.
38:08
Speaker 5: It was my first case involving shaken baby syndrome. I
38:13
Speaker 5: just you know, went through an entire case file and
38:15
Speaker 5: I realized, like, oh my god, this guy is in
38:17
Speaker 5: prison for the crime he did not commit, like I
38:19
Speaker 5: want to help him.
38:22
Speaker 1: During the investigation, Noel and his wife were interrogated for
38:26
Speaker 1: hours on end all without counsel.
38:30
Speaker 5: He was interrogated three times and the third time they
38:35
Speaker 5: kept asking like crazy questions.
38:37
Speaker 3: So it was in the middle of the night.
38:41
Speaker 9: Clara not.
38:47
Speaker 5: Is the very last time to they interrogated him in
38:50
Speaker 5: the room. They said, Okay, Noel, we believe you probably
38:54
Speaker 5: didn't do anything to your baby, but then we think
38:57
Speaker 5: your wife did. And he's like, no, my wife could
39:00
Speaker 5: never do anything to our children. So well, if you
39:03
Speaker 5: don't confess, she's gonna go to prison.
39:12
Speaker 9: To speak, that is a game.
39:14
Speaker 4: See a while.
39:17
Speaker 16: Naa Lasa, I told him, I'm telling you the truth.
39:26
Speaker 17: You don't believe me, and they tell me don and
39:30
Speaker 17: then later the US your hands coming out and talk
39:33
Speaker 17: to me and told me that look, man, if you
39:35
Speaker 17: don't tell me what you digitally all the time, we
39:37
Speaker 17: will take away your own the son and enjoy your
39:39
Speaker 17: Why I'm going to jimp for her own time.
39:44
Speaker 16: I've been telling you, I'll be I don't know your
39:47
Speaker 16: home my mom.
39:48
Speaker 17: I owe my mom.
39:53
Speaker 1: But in a moment of desperation, Noel says he falsely confessed.
40:00
Speaker 16: Then when I come up with the idea, they lie
40:02
Speaker 16: to kill my wife breed so he give back.
40:07
Speaker 2: But that want to lie.
40:10
Speaker 5: He was young, he was scared because you know, you
40:12
Speaker 5: are a young individual from different country and now you're
40:15
Speaker 5: sitting in front of like police officers. Your son just died,
40:19
Speaker 5: so you're scared of Fred. You're shocked, You're confused.
40:22
Speaker 16: When I went more and more than I like saying
40:26
Speaker 16: the I did it only to protect my wife. Didn't
40:29
Speaker 16: get out and get our fun back.
40:33
Speaker 17: I'm only one on my mother, not people are telling
40:36
Speaker 17: me they want to take away my other.
40:39
Speaker 7: Not only that, I mean, they are telling me that
40:41
Speaker 7: they wanted more.
40:42
Speaker 17: You know, me and my wife, because we don't want
40:46
Speaker 17: for me. They con they didn't they look.
40:49
Speaker 16: Man, I got to protect my mother.
40:53
Speaker 4: That what I like them.
40:57
Speaker 1: Eighteen years later, Noel Can continues to maintain his innocence.
41:03
Speaker 5: The only thing I know that he is innocent. I
41:06
Speaker 5: strongly believe he did not commit that crime. He did
41:09
Speaker 5: not kill the baby. He did not want to kill
41:11
Speaker 5: the baby.
41:13
Speaker 1: But he was charged with first degree murder and sentenced
41:17
Speaker 1: to thirty five years in prison. Noel is not alone.
41:28
Speaker 1: False confessions in shaken baby syndrome cases are surprisingly common.
41:33
Speaker 10: Of all the things that we know that make people
41:35
Speaker 10: particularly vulnerable to giving a false confession, shaken baby syndrome
41:39
Speaker 10: cases have many of those things. So people are often
41:43
Speaker 10: extremely distraught when they're being interrogated by police because a
41:47
Speaker 10: child has died in their care or has been seriously injured,
41:50
Speaker 10: and you may feel feelings of guilt even if you
41:55
Speaker 10: didn't do anything.
41:57
Speaker 1: Police interrogations are often most aggressive in cases involving children.
42:03
Speaker 10: And that often happens in these kinds of cases because
42:05
Speaker 10: it is so shocking that you know, we're talking about
42:08
Speaker 10: the murder of an infant.
42:09
Speaker 4: It's shocking, it's upsetting.
42:13
Speaker 1: Because shaking baby syndrome is still commonly accepted, interrogators assume
42:18
Speaker 1: a crime has been committed and can present scenarios that
42:22
Speaker 1: encourage false confessions.
42:44
Speaker 17: So quarto to.
42:51
Speaker 3: Yes yes.
43:03
Speaker 10: When interrogators will ask the accused person or the suspect,
43:07
Speaker 10: we know this had to have happened from trauma, right, tell.
43:10
Speaker 4: Us what you did. Now, here's your choice.
43:14
Speaker 8: Either you're a monster who went out to kill this child,
43:17
Speaker 8: or to abuse this child, or you're a loving, kind,
43:21
Speaker 8: caring caregiver who just understandably snapped in the moment and
43:25
Speaker 8: shook the child. Now, which is it. That's the kind
43:28
Speaker 8: of thing we see repeatedly in these interrogations.
43:33
Speaker 1: False confessions play a role in the shaken baby saga
43:36
Speaker 1: that extends far beyond the fate of a single individual.
43:41
Speaker 10: When it became clear that the medical findings that were
43:45
Speaker 10: associated with shaking are both unlikely to be caused by
43:48
Speaker 10: shaking and.
43:48
Speaker 4: Are more likely to be caused by other things, physicians.
43:51
Speaker 10: Started to rely on the fact that people had confessed
43:53
Speaker 10: to support the idea.
43:54
Speaker 1: That these babies had been shaken, so cases like Noel's
43:59
Speaker 1: reinforce the existence of shaken baby syndrome.
44:04
Speaker 10: One of the reasons why doctors have said they continue
44:06
Speaker 10: to rely on it is because people have confessed to it.
44:10
Speaker 1: With a confession in hand, the police investigation is over.
44:17
Speaker 10: If you look at the studies where they have analyzed
44:19
Speaker 10: confessions to shaking, they don't do any of the background
44:24
Speaker 10: that is necessary to know whether the confession is a
44:28
Speaker 10: consistent with the facts of the case and be a
44:31
Speaker 10: false or coerced confession.
44:34
Speaker 1: A thorough investigation of Noel's background would have revealed a
44:38
Speaker 1: history of family illness. Noel's own brother died in infancy,
44:44
Speaker 1: and as his parents recall, his son Alex, also had
44:48
Speaker 1: a history of health problems.
44:52
Speaker 18: Quees comor ladeosca tamenazio in fermito nino it was.
45:00
Speaker 9: Respiraar he is the.
45:04
Speaker 18: Corientes whereones medico pero medical care do commento.
45:16
Speaker 9: Kees And.
45:19
Speaker 10: Often in these cases, especially these really complex medical ones,
45:23
Speaker 10: it's a child who got sick.
45:25
Speaker 4: And they had a complicated course. He was not a
45:29
Speaker 4: healthy baby.
45:30
Speaker 3: He had all kinds of problem.
45:31
Speaker 5: I have like a huge pile of his medical records.
45:36
Speaker 4: And it's just, in some ways a lot easier to
45:39
Speaker 4: point a finger at a boogeyman. It's seductive.
45:42
Speaker 10: It's a seductively simple answer for what is probably a
45:47
Speaker 10: complex tragedy.
45:49
Speaker 1: Noel's parents left their home in Mexico almost two decades
45:53
Speaker 1: ago when their son was arrested. They came to support
45:58
Speaker 1: him and to find him an attorney.
46:01
Speaker 18: No sentimo malus ver jegando keiraic on musastadius is any presta.
46:27
Speaker 10: It's so difficult because no matter how many resources an
46:30
Speaker 10: individual has they don't have more resources.
46:34
Speaker 1: Than the government, and those disparities are even more profound
46:38
Speaker 1: when defendants are dealing with the effects of poverty and
46:41
Speaker 1: racism and the only option for many is pro bono
46:47
Speaker 1: legal assistance.
46:49
Speaker 5: We found attorney for you, I told you, and he's
46:52
Speaker 5: gonna work for pro bono. He's going to file executive clemency.
46:59
Speaker 3: So okay, I don't want to give hopes, but I
47:03
Speaker 3: want to. I want you to have this hope, and
47:05
Speaker 3: I really really pray, you know, he will help us.
47:09
Speaker 1: After eighteen years of heartache, Noel and his family have
47:13
Speaker 1: renewed faith.
47:15
Speaker 16: Yes, by my mom, and I just tell my mom,
47:17
Speaker 16: I don't worry, don't cry, every It's gonna be fine.
47:20
Speaker 16: I just want to take you some from here sometimes.
47:23
Speaker 16: But I'm thinking and hoping that justice one day is
47:28
Speaker 16: want to be with my side, you know, because I'm
47:32
Speaker 16: a beauty.
47:33
Speaker 17: I know what I'm a heart.
47:37
Speaker 1: Audrey Edmonds knows this struggle all too well.
47:41
Speaker 2: I see people that sat so many years longer than
47:44
Speaker 2: me trying trying to get help, and nobody was helping them.
47:48
Speaker 3: So I am very, very grateful that all the years
47:51
Speaker 3: that I was in I constantly.
47:54
Speaker 2: Had legal authority, and it was very, very frustrating for
47:57
Speaker 2: all of my attorneys. It should have happened at least
48:00
Speaker 2: eight years before that, and unfortunately the court systems do
48:05
Speaker 2: not act like they are supposed to.
48:07
Speaker 3: Which is very very sad, and it is a tragedy.
48:11
Speaker 1: Writ large.
48:16
Speaker 14: Do you tell often these stories one by one to
48:19
Speaker 14: understand the issue, and people don't understand that's one of
48:25
Speaker 14: hundreds and possibly thousands of people.
48:29
Speaker 3: Who are in prison right now.
48:31
Speaker 14: It's estimated that at least a thousand innocent people are
48:34
Speaker 14: sitting in American prisons right now. For this, I have
48:41
Speaker 14: a Google alert and I read every day about cases
48:45
Speaker 14: being prosecuted around the country.
48:48
Speaker 18: Of course, Sa Cabarel, Mundo, kumol Coasson, La Sala de
48:59
Speaker 18: Los and Denzi.
49:05
Speaker 4: That's very sinks.
49:17
Speaker 1: The ripple effects of trauma run deep. Noel's wife has remarried,
49:23
Speaker 1: he has lost contact with his older son, and faces
49:27
Speaker 1: possible deportation if granted clemency. Audrey's three daughters grew up
49:36
Speaker 1: without a mom, her marriage ended in divorce, and after
49:41
Speaker 1: serving over a decade in prison, the state of Wisconsin
49:46
Speaker 1: refused to grant her any compensation.
49:51
Speaker 3: But the same.
49:51
Speaker 1: Outlook that allowed her to survive prison keeps her going.
49:57
Speaker 2: It's been twelve years, yeah, twelve years since I've been out,
50:01
Speaker 2: so eleven in twelve.
50:03
Speaker 3: That's a good feeling. One of my biggest hopes while
50:08
Speaker 3: I was away was that with all this new.
50:10
Speaker 2: Medical evidence coming to service and more and more people
50:13
Speaker 2: working on these kind of cases, that it would help others.
50:20
Speaker 2: The scar in my life will always be there, but
50:23
Speaker 2: it fades and I am just trying to do my best.
50:28
Speaker 2: I know I can't change the past, I cannot make
50:31
Speaker 2: up for what I have been through, but I keep
50:34
Speaker 2: moving forward. O