Drayton Witt and his wife, after his release in the spring
October 29, 2012 3:24 pm
Drayton Witt and his wife, after his release in the spring
The Arizona Superior Court dismissed charges today against Drayton Witt, convicted in 2002 of second-degree murder in the death of his son Steven, the Arizona Justice Project has announced.
As reported in the Arizona Republic in September, Steven Witt suffered a short lifetime of health challenges, starting with breathing problems at birth and including unexplained seizures that had him hospitalized for a week when he was four months old. At five months, he suffered another seizure while in the care of his father and collapsed.
Despite Steven’s health history, doctors at the Phoenix Children’s Hospital insisted that bleeding and swelling found in the boy’s brain meant he’d been abused, and Drayton Witt was convicted of second-degree murder. The Arizona Justice Project took up his case in 2008, under the leadership of attorney Carrie Sperling.
In the spring of 2012, Witt’s legal team petitioned successfully to vacate his conviction. The state did not oppose that decision, but began moving to retry the case. Then last week the district attorney’s office filed a motion to dismiss the charges without prejudice. This morning the court approved that motion, but specified that the dismissal was “with prejudice,” meaning that the state is barred from pressing this case again.
I wrote a bit more about this case earlier in the year, in this post.
Posted by Sue Luttner
Categories: abusive head trauma, AHT, Drayton Witt, parents accused, SBS, shaken baby syndrome
Tags:
Mobile Site | Full Site
Get a free blog at WordPress.com Theme: WordPress Mobile Edition by Alex King.
[…] started approaching him with their own shaking cases. He was a key player in the 2012 freeing of Drayton Witt, whose son died after a short lifetime of serious health problems, including a seizure disorder. It […]
By The Forensic Unreliability of the Shaken Baby Syndrome: The Book | On Shaken Baby on March 25, 2018 at 2:03 pm
[…] Guthkelch read Steven Witt’s medical records with growing dismay. He later told National Public Radio reporter Joseph Shapiro in a radio and podcast interview, “I think I used the expression in my report, ‘I wouldn’t hang a cat on the evidence of shaking, as presented’” in that case. Sperling’s team successfully petitioned to vacate Witt’s conviction, and later the charges were dropped. […]
By Dr. Norman Guthkelch, Still on the Medical Frontier | On SBS on February 20, 2013 at 11:51 am
One for our side!!!! The “falsely-accused of SBS”
By Belinda A Moran on October 29, 2012 at 7:20 pm