Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Supreme Court has made another unfortunate decision in a child-death case, with Justices Sonia Sotomeyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan dissenting.

Yesterday’s ruling allows prosecutors to retry Alex Blueford in Arkansas on charges of capital murder and first-degree murder in the 2007 death of one-year-old Matthew McFadden Jr., the son of Blueford’s girl friend.

The jury in Blueford’s trial had been instructed to consider four possible charges in sequence, the most serious first:  Capital murder, first-degree murder, manslaughter, and negligent homicide. The jurors had agreed among themselves that Blueford was innocent of capital murder and first-degree murder, but then found themselves deadlocked on the manslaughter charge. The judge declared a mistrial and the prosecution prepared to retry Blueford on all four charges, but his lawyers argued that would be double jeopardy, since the jurors had agreed unanimously he was innocent of the two most serious charges.  The Supreme Court rejected that claim, saying the interrupted verdict did not constitute a legal finding.

At the time of Matthew’s death, Blueford reported that he had accidentally knocked the child to the floor, but prosecutors said he had slammed the child to death.

For more information see the Washington Post coverage and the decision itself.

For the story of the Supreme Court’s last unfortunate child-death decision, see this post.

Supporters of Russ Van Vleck report that the State of Vermont has dropped its family court case against him. Van Vleck is now free to live at home and be in the same room as his daughter without supervision.

August 2012 update:  Stephanie Spurgeon has been sentenced to 15 years. The information below for writing to the judge is obsolete.

Second, supporters of Stephanie Spurgeon, the Florida child-care provider convicted last month, have posted instructions for writing to the judge on behalf of Spurgeon before her sentencing on May 7—now postponed until July 24, 2012. The instructions are aimed at friends and family members, but our participation might help educate the  judge.  The key point for us is that it’s not OK to talk about the trial but it is OK to say the evidence against her was inadequate. The news report of the conviction seems to be off the web, but you can get more information from this article written during the trial: http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/medical-examiner-says-palm-harbor-infants-death-was-not-shaken-baby/1214742

Update:  Governor Brown pardoned Shirley Smith on April 6, 2012. See my blog posting here.

To almost eveyone’s surprise, meanwhile, there’s been no word from Govenor Jerry Brown in California about the requested commutation of sentence for Shirley Ree Smith, whose conviction was unfortunately re-affirmed in the fall by the Supreme Court. The good news is that the court granted Smith permission to move to another state, so she’s now living with her grandchildren. Her daughter, currently working in another state for financial reasons, will be joining them soon. The best news is that she remains free, at least for now. If you haven’t yet written in support of the pardon, instructions are on the governor’s web site:  http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php   If you want to submit your comments electronically:  Choose the “Pardon request” item in the drop-down menu. The box for comments doesn’t show up until you complete the first screen.

Emily Bazelon, the reporter who wrote last winter’s New York Times Magazine article about shaken baby syndrome, has published another piece on the subject, in the on-line magazine Slate, at this url.

This shorter piece is even more clear-cut about the issues, and the lead includes her conversation with Dr. A. Normal Guthkelch, the British neuropathologist who first proposed shaking as a mechanism of infant brain injury in 1971. Dr. Guthkelch now says he’s worried that shaking theory is used in the courtroom to target innocent caregivers, as reported last summer by NPR.

The Slate piece is especially welcome right now, when most of the press coverage seems to accept without question the classic model.  In Missouri, for example, a state legislator has proposed a bill to lengthen sentences for people convicted of abuse through shaking, as reported in the Missourian.

Today’s New York Times front section tells the story of an immigrant Queens couple in custody on Riker’s Island for four years now, waiting for trial in the 2007 death of their infant daughter, diagnosed as a shaking victim. Their former landlady is now raising their surviving daughter, and their community has rallied around them.

Read the article, by Jeffrey E. Singer and Corey Kilgannon.

The posted comments are encouraging:  Although many writers are adamant that the parents are guilty, others are skeptical.  One responder mentions the ProPublica piece from June, another Friday’s Canadian broadcasts.

Meanwhile, 500 miles southeast, prosecutors in Orange County, North Carolina, have announced that they will not retry child-care provider Cheryl Alston, who was found innocent on two out of three counts in a highly emotional trial this past fall. I heard the news from one of the experts who testified in her defense:  I haven’t found anything in the press about the decision to drop the third charge, but you can read about the case in this story , published after the trial.

July 2015 update: The page for this episode has been removed from the CBC archives, as we can’t really expect them to keep everything on line forever. Too bad. It’s an excellent program. I’m sure it’s archived somewhere, waiting to be revived when the rest of the world catches up with them.

the fifth estate, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news program, is taking a look tonight at infant shaking: http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2011-2012/diagnosis-murder

March 2014 update:  The program is now viewable in the U.S. on YouTube, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yuxEvN8gp0 March 2012 update: The program is excellent, and it’s posted on the internet in Canada. Alas, the Canadian web site does not let viewers in the U.S. see the program.  The good news is that everything on the site except the feature itself is viewable internationally. See, for example, an interview with the reporter, Gillian Findlay. The site also offers extended interviews with a few of the experts quoted in the story: law professor Keith Findley from the Wisconsin Innocence Project, pediatric neuropathologist Dr. Waney Squier, and forensic pathologist Dr John Plunkett.

Because of real investigative journalism by WBUR, Boston’s public radio station, a Massachusetts judge has reluctantly released a moving videotape of a heartless two-hour police interrogation of a teenage mother the day after her baby’s death.

In the video Nga Truang, a slight Vietnamese-American a few days shy of her 17th birthday, sits motionless and cries softly as two full-size Worcester, Massachusetts detectives badger her to come clean with them. The detectives tell her a number of lies, including the false information that an autopsy proved 13-month-old Khyle had been suffocated. In fact, the autopsy was inconclusive: her son had been sick with strep throat and tracheobronchitis when he died, and he had a history of breathing problems; his temperature an hour after death was still at 101°F.

Still, after the detectives make promises of leniency and help, she tells them, yes, she smothered her baby. Of course she received no help: She spent the next three years in jail while attorneys argued about the admissibility of the confession, which was ultimately rejected by a judge—the primary reason seems to be that she should have received more careful Miranda warnings at her young age.

This afternoon NPR ran a feature story about the case:   The story NPR ran today

WBUR also posted its own treatment, which starts at this link.

WBUR also posted excerpts of the videos and additional commentary by the reporter, at excerpts  and commentary.