New from The Appeal: After More Than 20 Years in Prison, Georgia Man Wins New Trial in “Shaken Baby” Case

A Georgia judge ordered a new trial for Danyel Smith, who was convicted of a crime that may have never occurred.

A Georgia court has ordered a new trial for Danyel Smith, a father who was convicted of killing his two-month-old son, Chandler, more than twenty years ago. Prosecutors relied on a diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) to secure his conviction. In recent years, scientific evidence has emerged calling into question the basic assumptions behind the hypothesis.

In her decision, Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Kimberly A. Gallant ruled that the evolving research into SBS, also known as Abusive Head Trauma (AHT), constitutes new evidence that was not known at the time of trial.

“Mr. Smith’s evidence is not based on historical facts or eyewitness testimony, but on expert analysis grounded in the application of evolving scientific knowledge,” Gallant wrote in her decision.

Medical experts for the defense have concluded that Chandler was not the victim of abuse.

The defense experts surmise that on the day he fell unconscious, he had a seizure, went into respiratory distress, and stopped breathing. This was at least the second seizure Chandler, who was born five-weeks premature, had experienced, according to Smith’s legal filings. When he was less than two weeks old his mother called 911 and reported that he was breathing strangely and appeared to be having a seizure. The responding paramedics dismissed her concerns. (Smith was not home at the time.)

The expert opinions underlying his motion for a new trial, the judge wrote, “are informed by research advancements in medicine, scientific developments, peer-reviewed literature, and evolving medical standards.”

At the time of Smith’s trial, there was largely a consensus among the scientific and legal communities about the veracity of SBS/AHT. But in the decades since, exonerations and studies have revealed that the so-called triad of symptoms associated with SBS/AHT—bleeding around the eyes, bleeding between the skull and brain, and brain swelling—can be caused by strokes, short-distance falls, childbirth trauma, and disease.

What was once considered to be virtually unassailable evidence of abuse is now, in the words of one New Jersey judge, increasingly understood to be “akin to ‘junk science.’”

Read more at theappeal.org.