JUNK SCIENCE BRANDED HIM A RAPIST AND A BABY KILLER: THE BAD FORENSICS BEHIND SHAKEN BABY SYNDROME PUT JEFFREY HAVARD ON DEATH ROW IN MISSISSIPPI.

AuthorBalko, Radley

JEFFREY HAVARD'S STORY began the evening of February 21, 2002, when the Mississippi man was keeping an eye on Chloe, the 6-month-old daughter of his girlfriend, Rebecca Britt. According to Havard, Chloe had spit up on her clothes and bedding, so he gave the girl a bath. As he pulled her up out of the tub, she slipped from his grip and fell. As she fell, her head struck the toilet.

Havard would later say the bump on Chloe's head didn't appear serious, so he dressed her in clean clothes and put her to bed. Not wanting to worry Britt (or perhaps not wanting to anger her), he said nothing about the incident when she returned. When she did get home, Britt checked on the baby, who seemed fine. So she and Havard ate dinner and went about their evening.

Later that night, Chloe stopped breathing. Havard and Britt rushed her to a hospital. She died shortly thereafter.

When the emergency room doctors examined Chloe, they discovered that her anus was dilated--which isn't uncommon in infants shortly after death. It's also common in infants who are still alive but have lost brain function. Unfortunately, though, even trained medical staff sometimes mistake it for sexual abuse.

Medical examiner Steven Hayne performed an autopsy the following evening. In his write-up, he noted a one-centimeter contusion on Chloe's rectum, which he documented in a photograph. The report did not mention any evidence of sexual assault, but Hayne did find symptoms he said were consistent with "shaken baby syndrome."

Havard didn't admit that he'd dropped Chloe until a videotaped interview two days after her death, which meant his story had changed. That, plus statements E.R. staff made about possible sexual abuse and Hayne's shaken baby diagnosis, were enough for local officials to arrest Havard and charge him with capital murder. The district attorney said he would seek the death penalty.

THE CONCEPT OF shaken baby syndrome has, in fact, come under scrutiny over the last decade. It's obviously true that shaking too hard can kill a fragile newborn--that's not disputed. But prosecutors have become reliant on the idea that if a trio of specific symptoms are found in a dead child, the death could only have been caused by violent shaking. Those symptoms are bleeding at the back of the eye, bleeding in the protective area of the brain, and brain swelling.

This is a convenient diagnosis, since it provides prosecutors with a method of homicide (shaking), a likely suspect (the last person alone with the child), and intent (it is assumed that babies only die this way after exceptionally violent shaking). Yet new research has shown that falls, blows to the head, and even some illnesses and genetic conditions can cause the same set of symptoms. Many medical and legal authorities have therefore concluded that the trio of symptoms shouldn't be the sole basis of a conviction. Even the doctor who first came up with the theory has now expressed doubts about it.

In most shaken baby syndrome cases, prosecutors would first file murder charges, then later allow the defendant to plead down to a lesser charge like manslaughter. But sometimes they've gotten a murder conviction.

In recent years, thanks to increasing doubt around the diagnosis, a number of these shaken baby convictions have been overturned, and many more are under review. A 2015 study by The Washington Post and Northwestern University's Medill Justice Project found more than 2,000 cases in which a defendant was charged with shaking a child. Of those, 200 have either been acquitted, had the charges dropped, or had their convictions overturned. The National Registry of Exonerations lists 14 people convicted because of a shaken baby diagnosis who were later cleared.

Without DNA testing, however, it can be nearly impossible to overcome faulty forensic testimony--even when, on close examination, it turns out the courts went out of their way not to see problems with the arguments they were accepting.

AFTER JEFFREY HAVARD was arrested, the court assigned him a public defender. His attorney asked the district court judge for funds to hire his own forensic pathologist, but the judge turned him down, finding that there was no need for a separate pathologist when Hayne was available.

Hayne has since come under intense scrutiny for taking on improbable...

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