Tag Archives: Shirley Ree Smith

June 6, 2012 · 8:44 pm

Arizona Father Freed: Dawn of a Sunnier Era?

Drayton Witt and his wife
Courtesy Arizona Justice Project

After four years of hard work by a team of pro bono attorneys and physicians, the state of Arizona agreed last week to vacate the second-degree murder conviction of Drayton Witt, a young father whose 5-month-old son Steven had suffered a lifetime of medical problems before his final, catastrophic seizure in June of 2000.

Witt’s case was way beyond a triad-only conviction: Not only did the autopsy reveal no abrasions, grip marks, fractures, or other signs of assault, but the child had been born in respiratory and neurological distress, with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around his neck, followed by a relentless series of infections, fevers, and bouts of vomiting. A month before his meltdown, Steven spent 6 days in the hospital because of seizures that were never explained, only controlled with medication.

Prosecution doctors at Witt’s 2002 trial rejected the importance of Steven’s medical history, however, and testified that the presence of the triad proved he had been shaken immediately before he fell unconscious while in the care of his father.

Last year the Arizona Justice Project showed Steven’s medical records to other experts,* who unanimously rejected the shaking diagnosis. Several of them independently noted evidence of venous thrombosis.

Then the attorneys showed these reports to the medical examiner who conducted the original autopsy, and asked him to reconsider his 2002 testimony. In a declaration submitted in February of 2012, Dr. A.L. Mosley noted that medical thinking has changed about the significance of the triad and concluded:

Steven had a complicated medical history, including unexplained neurological problems. He had no outward signs of abuse. If I were to testify today, I would state that I believe Steven’s death was likely the result of a natural disease process, not SBS.

Prosecutors could still recharge Witt, but he has been released from prison for now, with no bail, house arrest, or electronic monitoring.

The vacation of Witt’s conviction joins a handful of other victories for the doctors and lawyers who are fighting for justice in SBS cases, beginning with the reversal of the Audrey Edmunds conviction in 2008 and including the commutation of Shirley Smith’s sentence earlier this year. Witt’s case was pressed by the Arizona Justice Project, a member chapter of the Innocence Network, which has started looking at child-death cases within the past few years. I look forward to more successes.

Emily Bazelon published this article in Slate about Drayton Witt while the case was still under appeal. The Wrongful Convictions Blog posted this item that names the attorneys.

*Forensic pathologist Dr. John Plunkett, pediatric radiologist Dr. Patrick Barnes, neuropathologist Dr. Waney Squier, pediatric opthalmologist Dr. Horace Gardner, biomechanic John Lloyd, PhD, and retired pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. A. Norman Guthkelch, the first person to suggest in writing that shaking an infant could produce subdural hematoma, in a 1971 article in the British Medical Journal. The Witt case is the one Dr. Guthkelch was talking about in the interview on NPR a year ago, when he said, “I wouldn’t hang a cat on the evidence of shaking as presented.”

If you are not familiar with the debate surrounding shaken baby syndrome, please see the home page of this site.

-Sue Luttner

12 Comments

Filed under abusive head trauma, AHT, SBS, shaken baby syndrome, Uncategorized

Tagged as Arizona Justice Project, Drayton Witt, Shirley Ree Smith

April 19, 2012 · 3:16 pm

Surfing the Web With Shirley Smith

Governor Jerry Brown’s decision earlier this month to commute the sentence of Shirley Ree Smith has given shaken baby syndrome another run in the news, where the coverage shows a new awareness of the changing landscape.

The day after the announcement, for example, NPR reporter Joe Shapiro said on a segment of All Things Considered, ”now doctors and scientists have a better understanding of other causes . . . that can mimic the signs of child abuse.”

In an excellent piece on ProPublica, reporter A.C. Thompson found room in the second paragraph to mention the new, conflicting analyses of the medical evidence released a few days before the clemency announcement. Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley had asked for expert reviews of the evidence in Smith’s case, and he received three quite different reports, two of them raising questions about the conviction.

From the District Attorney's letter to Governor Brown

The ProPublica web site has also posted a fascinating document, the letter from District Attorney Steve Cooley to Governor Jerry Brown, sent in January while Brown was considering the request to commute Smith’s sentence. The main point of the letter is not Smith’s guilt or innocence, but, as the letter puts it, “the current state of the science that forms the foundation for Abusive Head Trauma (AHT, which was formerly, colloquially referred to as Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS)).” Cooley cites informational materials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a journal article, and a legal decision to support his point that “AHT is widely accepted by both the medical and legal communities as a diagnosis and cause of death.”

Which strikes me as irrelevant to both Shirley Smith’s case and the debate surrounding shaken baby syndrome. The question at hand is is: Does the evidence prove that Etzel Glass died from a shaking assault? The larger question is: Does intracranial injury prove abuse without other signs of violence?

Presumably the letter to Governor Brown was drafted in response to the statement in support of clemency submitted by Ms. Smith’s attorneys in December. Although that document does quote from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s minority opinion in the Supreme Court decision, the bulk of the document addresses the evidence in Smith’s case. I have to conclude that the main goal of Mr. Cooley’s letter was to head off any reference by Governor Brown to the debate surrounding a diagnosis of shaking.

Brown’s commutation order did not in fact reference the wider debate, although it did quote Justice Bader’s minority opinion in the Supreme Court decision that “there has very likely been a miscarriage of justice in this case.”

Los Angeles Times reporter Carol J. Williams quoted from both Cooley’s letter and the new, conflicting reviews of the evidence in her follow-up story that ran the day after the governor’s announcement. That treatment also reveals a little bit more about Smith, who found herself homeless in Los Angeles for a time after her release from prison, because she was not allowed to leave the state and therefore could not rejoin her daughter and grandchildren in Illinois.

The day of the announcement, Emily Bazelon at Slate wrote a quick but thorough piece concluding that Smith’s case could give other innocent people in prison “a shot at getting their lives back.” Bazelon reiterated her position from the winter 2011 article in The New York Times Magazine, that “the science underlying shaken-baby prosecutions is shifting, with critics arguing that alternative explanations are not adequately explored. But a new concensus—legal or scientific—hasn’t yet emerged from the bitter fight, in some cases, over the diagnosis.”

In the on-line ABA Journal coverage, reporter Martha Neil wrote, “Smith’s case is one of a number of convictions in which evidence once thought to be determinative concerning shaken-baby deaths is now being questioned.” The two reader comments that made it past the moderator have both been in support of the commutation.

Shirley Smith is now living with her daughter in Minnesota, where CBS News in Minneapolis ran a touching interview that did not address the medical issues, and a CBS/Fox station prepared a feature segment that was even briefer. Neither posting on the internet seems to have received reader comments.

The Associated Press syndicated a story, picked up at least by USA Today, that did not refer to the larger debate but did cite a number of statements in Smith’s favor.

SFGate in San Francisco posted the Chronicle’s coverage, which evoked both positive and negative reactions from readers. The piece was short, but reporter Bob Egelko summarized the situation surrounding both Smith’s case and the larger question in one accurate paragraph:

Recently, however, a pathologist in the coroner’s office reviewed the case and found little evidence of traumatic injury. Some researchers have also questioned the validity of shaken-baby syndrome, a term doctors have used for 40 years to describe often-fatal head injuries suffered by small children with no outward signs of abuse.

A site called The Inquisitr pulled together an article of its own from a number of sources. For whatever reason, maybe the unfortunate headline, reader comments on that site have been 100 percent negative.

Blogger Kate Jane posted a short piece asking for reader comments, which hasn’t received much response.

I doubt I’ve found them all. Please let us know if you come across something interesting I’ve missed. Thanks.

-Sue Luttner

2 Comments

Filed under abusive head trauma, AHT, SBS, shaken baby syndrome

Tagged as Shirley Ree Smith

April 6, 2012 · 2:50 pm

Clemency Granted for Shirley Smith

Governor Jerry Brown commuted the sentence this morning of Shirley Ree Smith, whose case will remain a landmark in the arena. Shirley and her family are jubilant, of course, even though her conviction stands.

“I’ve been waiting so long for this day,” she said on the telephone this afternoon, “I can’t believe it’s finally here.”

Shirley said she was especially grateful to the people who helped her, directly and indirectly. ”I would like to thank everyone who stood in my corner and fought for justice with me all these years,” she said, “I did not have to stand alone.”

Justice is not complete, Smith conceded, as she still has a criminal record, “but I can get on with my life now, and the story will help people find out what’s going on with shaken baby syndrome.”

In an interview in January, while waiting for the results of the clemency petition, Shirley’s daughter Tomeka Smith reflected, “In a way we don’t want the clemency, because that means she’s done something wrong and she needs to be pardoned. That’s sad. That’s not what she wants.”

This morning, though, when the phone call came from the attorney, “We were all clapping and jumping and shouting and hugging, the whole family,” Tomeka said, adding, “Still, we’d like to see something official, a piece of paper, to let us know it’s really over.”

As followers of this blog know, Shirley Smith was convicted in 1997 for assault on a child resulting in death. The child was Etzel Glass, Tomeka’s youngest, 7 weeks old at the time. The family was staying with relatives and Shirley was sleeping in the living room with her grandchildren, while Tomeka slept in the bedroom a few feet away. Shirley says she found Etzel unresponsive at about 3 am and brought him in to Tomeka, who called 911.

At the hospital, doctors found only one of the three signs usually used to diagnose infant shaking: subdural hematoma. At Smith’s trial, Dr. Eugene Carpenter and Dr. Stephanie Ehrlich from the Los Angeles County coroner’s office testified that Etzel had died instantly when his brainstem was torn during a shaking assault, leaving no time for the other symptoms to develop.

Smith has had the full support of her family, from the moment a social worker first raised the question of abuse. “Of course my mom is innocent,” Tomeka said in January. “She would never hurt one of her grandkids.”

Smith served a decade in prison before the Ninth Circuit Court vacated her conviction on appeal in 2006, declaring the evidence against her constitutionally inadequate. Since then she has been out of prison but constrained in her movements while the state appealed the circuit court’s decision.

That appeal reached the Supreme Court this past fall. The high court reinstated her conviction, but in a ruling that didn’t address her guilt or innocence: their argument was that the appeals court should not override a jury’s decision. The written opinion even recognized that doubts about her guilt are “understandable,” and it contained a potent dissenting opinion from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that outlined the substantial medical evidence against the traditional model of shaken baby syndrome. (The full opinion is available at this link.)

Through it all, Shirley Smith has kept her faith and her spirit, proving the value of a supportive family. DePaul University law professor Deborah Tuerkheimer, a critic of convictions based solely on the triad (see her op ed from fall 2010), recently called Shirley one of the “incredible figures in this saga.”

The LA Times report about today’s clemency announcement contains only the bare facts, but the news is good.

Shirley says she’s already been called by both national and local news teams, so look for more news stories on her case. Her first television interview is this evening.

If you’re not familiar with shaken baby syndrome and the arguments surrounding it, please see the home page of this blog.

13 Comments

Filed under abusive head trauma, AHT, SBS, shaken baby syndrome, Uncategorized

Tagged as Shirley Ree Smith

April 4, 2012 · 11:53 am

Shirley Ree Smith Update and More

While Governor Jerry Brown considers the clemency request for Shirley Smith, two new physicians have registered conflicting opinions about the cause of her grandson’s death, after Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley requested a review of the evidence.

The article in the Los Angeles Times about the new developments, by reporter Carol J. Williams, includes this fascinating paragraph:

In a letter to the governor that Cooley’s office made available, the district attorney said he was mindful of Smith’s lack of criminal history, age and good behavior in prison, indicating that he wasn’t opposed to clemency on “equitable grounds.” But he cautioned Brown against rejecting “the well-documented and widely accepted medical diagnosis, AHT,” saying that would undermine public confidence in diagnoses of child abuse.

I might be starting to understand why the district attorney won’t just admit that the medical facts don’t support a diagnosis of shaking in Smith’s case: If he concedes that she might be innocent, her trial demonstrates how easy it is for a jury to convict on the basis of sincere but unproven medical opinion.

Williams also posted a blog on the subject at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-shaken-baby-evidence-20120330,0,6785859.story

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post has published a poignant update on a tragic case of mistaken child-abuse diagnosis: Much too late for the parents, victims of an apparent murder-suicide, doctors now acknowledge that the couple’s 3-month-old daughter was suffering from a debilitating genetic disorder.

Shirley Smith’s Case: NPR, ProPublica, and FrontLine Still Covering SBS

Morning Edition aired a story about Shirley Smith this morning, at http://www.npr.org/2012/03/29/149576627/new-evidence-in-high-profile-shaken-baby-case

ProPublica also has a story posted, with excerpts from the FrontLine interviews: http://www.propublica.org/article/video-shirley-ree-smith-in-her-own-words

Can We Help Win a Pardon for Shirley Ree Smith?

April 6 update: Governor Jerry Brown has commuted Shirley Smith’s sentence. Shirley thanks everyone who wrote on her behalf, and I add congratulations to that.

I was expecting to hear by now from California Governor Jerry Brown about a possible pardon for Shirley Ree Smith (case summary), but there’s been no word yet.

Over the weekend, Shirley’s daughter Tomeka Smith told me they’re hoping to hear soon, because in a few weeks her mother will be taken back into custody—-but there’s still time for individuals to contact the governor’s office encouraging the pardon, as detailed below.

The Smith case continues to pop up in the press. On the bright side:

The New York Times last week published an editorial in support of the pardon, under the title “A Very Likely Miscarriage of Justice.”
Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times contained an editorial raising the larger question of child-death cases by A.C. Thompson, one of the Pro Publica reporters who reported on the subject last summer (his June story).

Distressingly, a bereaved grandmother in Fresno, California, has launched a campaign against the pardon, on the theory that Ms. Smith is guilty. You can read the press coverage here.

Meanwhile, the governor’s office makes it easy for individuals to voice their opinions on these questions. One click takes you to the contact page, at http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php

To make sure your comment is received in time, use the electronic form, which first asks for four pieces of information: Your first and last name, your email address, and the subject of your comment. Open the drop-down subject menu and select the “Pardon” item. The user interface is odd, because you then have to click the “Submit” button before you’re given a text box for comments, but if you soldier on, you can get there.

1 Comment

Filed under abusive head trauma, AHT, SBS, shaken baby syndrome

Tagged as abusive head trauma, child death, Shaken Baby Syndrome, Shirley Ree Smith

December 29, 2011 · 7:05 pm

Pardon Possible in Smith Case

It’s too early to celebrate, but the Sacramento Bee reports that Governor Jerry Brown is expected to pardon Shirley Ree Smith, the grandmother whose conviction in a shaking case was recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court:

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/29/4150363/calif-gov-brown-weighs-clemency.html