Flawed Convictions: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" and the Inertia of Injustice, by Deborah Tuerkheimer
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Flawed Convictions: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" and the Inertia of Injustice, by Deborah Tuerkheimer
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The emergence of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) presents an object lesson in the dangers that lie at the intersection of science and criminal law. As often occurs in the context of scientific knowledge, understandings of SBS have evolved. We now know that the diagnostic triad alone does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an infant was abused, or that the last person with the baby was responsible for the baby's condition. Nevertheless, our legal system has failed to absorb this new consensus. As a result, innocent parents and caregivers remain incarcerated and, perhaps more perplexingly, triad-only prosecutions continue even to this day.Flawed Convictions: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" and the Inertia of Injustice is the first book to survey the scientific, cultural, and legal history of Shaken Baby Syndrome from inception to formal dissolution. It exposes extraordinary failings in the criminal justice system's treatment of what is, in essence, a medical diagnosis of murder. The story of SBS highlights fundamental inadequacies in the legal response to "science dependent prosecution." A proposed restructuring of the law contends with the uncertainty of scientific knowledge.
Flawed Convictions: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" and the Inertia of Injustice, by Deborah Tuerkheimer - Amazon Sales Rank: #682246 in Books
- Published on: 2015-03-02
- Released on: 2015-03-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.10" h x .80" w x 9.20" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
Flawed Convictions: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" and the Inertia of Injustice, by Deborah Tuerkheimer Review "Deborah Tuerkheimer's Flawed Convictions is a brilliant and timely book that meticulously presents a clear, comprehensive, and thoughtful analysis of the evolution of "shaken baby syndrome" homicide prosecutions, their impact on innocent caregivers, and the failure of the American legal system to self-correct in the face of staggering evidence of its biases and errors. It is a shocking indictment of how one form of junk science has led to scores of wrongful convictions and destroyed hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent lives and families. Tuerkheimer provides important historical context, a framework for understanding the roots of the problem as well as its persistence, and a roadmap out of the current quagmire. Flawed Convictions is an invaluable book that, well-heeded, will help prevent future miscarriages of justice." -Richard A. Leo, Dean's Circle Research Scholar and Professor, University of San Francisco School of Law
"Flawed Convictions is a brave and eye-opening exposé of the wrongful convictions of innocent caregivers in the death of a child based on 'shaken baby syndrome' (SBS). With meticulous research and gripping excerpts from police interrogations and criminal trials, Deborah Tuerkheimer traces the disturbing progression of SBS, from the scientific origins of the diagnosis to its role as a prosecution paradigm in child homicide cases. She uncovers major flaws in the criminal justice system, and offers a variety of reforms that have the potential to end the misuse of SBS, while reminding us of the reluctance of prosecutors to admit they were wrong. Flawed Convictions is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how grave errors occur in the criminal justice system and what it will take to correct them." -Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology, and Sadie & Raymond Pace Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, University of Pennsylvania
"This masterful interdisciplinary work is both a trenchant history and a roadmap toward sensible reform. Required reading for those who care about public health, criminal justice, and abused children." -Barry Scheck, Professor of Law, Cardozo Law School, Co-Director, Innocence Project
"Law professor Deborah Tuerkheimer's new book, Flawed Convictions: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" and the Inertia of Injustice, comprehensively and neatly describes the evolution of the SBS medical hypothesis-how it emerged, became entrenched in both the medical and legal communities, then unraveled under the scrutiny of evidenced-based medicine, shifted in form but still persists-and the problematic ways it is used in criminal cases. The book takes a hard and honest look at the issues that increasingly divided doctors and challenge the legal system's ability to adapt to the changing medical and scientific evidence upon which the legal system is increasingly dependent." -Keith A. Findley and Barry Scheck, American Bar Association Criminal Justice Magazine
"Tuerkheimer's book is a highly readable resource for anyone interested in the history of the SBS controversy and the current state of affairs." -David A. Moran, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Michigan Innocence Clinic, University of Michigan Law School, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books
"Tuerkheimer provides a convincing and well-written intellectual analysis of the problem...Tuerkheimer's book will be an eye-opening experience for anyone interested in understanding the controversy surrounding prosecution of SBS and the role of science in the courtroom." -Theodore P. Cross and Rebecca Fajnzylber, PsycCRITIQUES, American Psychological Association
"Tuerkheimer's account encompasses medical research, forensic science, child advocates, law enforcement, and prosecutorial tactics. Her stories engage and propel the book. In terms of style, Tuerkheimer writes with conviction, makes her points, and then keeps making them." -Jon M. Sands and Rachelle Jones-Rowe, Jurimetrics
"As a history of SBS, Tuerkheimer's book is the definitive account. She has traced the waxing and waning of a forensic explanation from criteria that raised questions to a syndrome that was unquestioned to now an explanation that can be flawed, and can only be used with skepticism and care. No certainty exists. Tuerkheimer's account encompasses medical research, forensic science, child advocates, law enforcement, and prosecutorial tactics." --Jurimetrics, The Journal of Law, Science, and Technology Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at ASU
About the Author Deborah Tuerkheimer is a Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law. From 2009 to 2014 she was Professor of Law at DePaul University College of Law. She earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard College and her law degree from Yale. After clerking for the Alaska Supreme Court, Professor Tuerkheimer served for five years as an Assistant District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney's Office, where she specialized in domestic violence and child abuse prosecution.
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Most helpful customer reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful. Gripping - and pulls it all together for policemen, lawyers, doctors, day care providers, parents, social workers, judges By R. Auer The book is a masterpiece that has rendered me up-to-date on the legal issues after reading the medical literature (I am an MD/PhD clinical neuroscientist who is now involved in these kinds of cases). It primed me for my recent introduction to dealing with police and prosecutor attitudes on this issue. Many are well-intentioned people but misguided by sticking to old beliefs that are now known to be scientifically wrong. Nimble attitudes to developing science and to what is knowable must prevail. This book is required reading for every policeman, lawyer, medical doctor, biomechanics researcher, day care provider, parent, child protection worker, psychologist, social worker, prosecutor and judge who deals with the so-called shaken baby syndrome. Clarity of thought, and justice will result from this book.As a neuropathologist and brain scientist now working in pediatric neuropathology, it was necessary for me to get up to speed on "shaken baby syndrome", something I was taught many years ago categorically involved a triad of retinal hemorrhage, subdural hemorrhage and encephalopathy (something wrong with the brain) to convict someone of shaking their baby. Luckily, I was never confronted with such a case, nor asked to testify on any case of shaken baby syndrome for had I believed the unchallenged non-scientific dogma which has reigned for far too long, I probably would have assisted helping wrongfully convict an innocent person who just happen to call 911 and ended up getting sent to jail because the baby they were calling about developed hemorrhages somewhere from whatever cause. That cause could be many things such as infectious septicemia or reperfusion hemorrhage, but was falsely believed to be indicative of shaking for the triad. This could have possibly rendered me party to a wrongful conviction. I am thankful this never happened, as it would be a nightmare. I cannot fathom how people who are medical doctors and expert witnesses such as myself can live with themselves after doing this and now reading this book. Indeed, the book recounts many who have recanted their former testimony.Unassailable, this book goes a long way to help correct the nonsensical, unscientific, and never-proven belief that the triad (of retinal hemorrhage, subdural hemorrhage and encephalopathy) means a baby was shaken. The book does this by recounting individual cases that could not be so, but were so according to prosecutors, resulting in periods of imprisonment up to life, of people who did nothing wrong but were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and at the wrong time in our medical/scientific evolution. The book gives pause, although one cannot stop reading it once one has begun. The number of cases is heartbreaking. The lives destroyed number in the hundreds, incarcerated in jail now. One can only imagine what it is like to be separated from one's children after losing a child or someone else's child while in your care, and then going to prison and permanently losing your spouse as well as your children because of a false belief.The magnitude of the injustice has been multiplied by the number of cases, as recounted by Tuerkheimer. I only read the book once (so far) but remember only one true case of shaking, despite nanny-cams and other cameras. These are innocent people like us, whose lives have been ruined because they happened to have a baby or a toddler under their care. I have been approached at medical/scientific congresses by delegates from other countries such as Sweden and the United Kingdom, where a similar legal problem exists. There is little chance for the justice system to spring the hundreds of innocent parents, grandparents and day care providers from jail in all these countries. What a horrendous multinational injustice in Western countries. Less well developed countries seem to not have engaged in the folly described by Tuerkheimer.Some who are clinging to the old beliefs that an epidemic of shaking has actually led to an epidemic of the triad, may doubt that this book is on solid medical & scientific ground, but it is, despite actually being a compendium of legal miscarriages of justice.The book describes something unique in the history of my specialty of pathology - the use of the microscope for a medical diagnosis of murder. This has never happened in the entire history of medicine. It happened here because doctors simplistically accepted that bleeding always means trauma. But bleeding can result from anything that damages cells called endothelium, and I here mention only systemic blood infection and reperfusion after cardiorespiratory arrest, as 2 other causes, because this is a book review. Autopsy results are essential here, to help the parents heal their hearts rather than put them in jail when they did nothing wrong.As the book correctly states, let us give space between our doctor (MD and/or PhD) expert witnesses and prosecutors. Let us as a society devise a rapid way to reduce public expenditure for keeping innocent people in jail because of these hundreds of flawed convictions.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful. A Need for Justice By A. Cohen Unfortunately, the inertia of bad science that has previously been accepted by the courts is hard for many medical and criminal justice professionals to reject. There are probably scores of parents, relatives, family friends, nannies and other caretakers who have unnecessarily been imprisoned, and may still languish in prison because the courtroom has not kept pace with evidence-based medicine.Deborah Tuerkheimer, a former prosecutor of so-called shaken baby syndrome cases, has truly given a gift to the medical-legal communities by writing this book.Once you read this book, you will want to share your knowledge with others; by raising awareness, perhaps we all can participate in righting some wrongs.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful. Righting the wrong By J. Praay This book sheds light in the issue of wrongful convictions based upon the medical diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome. There is a firmly held belief that certain patterns of bleeding within the brain and eyes is an indication that the infant must have been shaken. Today, there is a long list of other conditions that can also account for the bleeding, but only a few years ago, it was believed that only trauma, not natural causes, could account for the bleeding. Sadly, many parents and caretakers were convicted, some even sentenced to death, based on this medical belief. Doctors would testify in court to a "medical certainty" that shaken baby syndrome was the only explanation. In time, this belief became pervasive throughout most of the medical community. But in recent years, this medical hypothesis has begun to unravel.One case that Professor Tuerkheimer discusses, is that of Jennifer Del Prete. At the time of publication, Del Prete was still in prison, serving a 20 year sentence. However, after a series of hearings involving witnesses for both the prosecution and defense, the federal judge wrote in his opinion that the evidence used to convict Del Prete, the hypothesis of shaken baby syndrome, was "more an article of faith than a proposition of science." He also stated that there was abundant doubt in her case, not merely reasonable doubt, and that she had established her actual innocence. In a very rare move, he then ordered her immediate release from state prison, while the lower state courts decide how to proceed. Today, she is free after nearly a decade behind bars.Del Prete is one of a growing number of those who have had their shaken-baby-syndrome convictions overturned on appeal, but there are likely dozens more innocent caregivers still in prison due to this misdiagnosis. Some suggest that number is in the hundreds. And for every innocent in prison, there are perhaps ten times as many innocent parents whose children have been sent into foster care based on a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, with no other indicia of abuse. And, of course, there are also untold numbers of those who have served the time and were released, but were nonetheless innocent.There is no conspiracy, but there are many doctors, prosecutors, social workers, and other professionals who were taught something that is likely untrue. Worse, our legal system has no procedures in place to right these wrongs en-masse. In the meantime, we continue to see the inexorable prosecutions of even more innocents in a system that embraces precedent over shifting scientific opinion.Professor Tuerkheimer's book addresses many of these problems and also offers some solutions. Years ago, both Canada and the United Kingdom made efforts to review these cases and have identified cases of actual innocence. Not only should we address this issue in the courts, but it should also be addressed within the scientific medical community. It is quite likely that any expense would be offset by the savings incurred by those who are released from prison, as well as by fewer and less contentious prosecutions.
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