"Shaken Baby Syndrome:" All Shook Up?
Many forensics experts have been raising questions about so-called "shaken baby syndrome" for years. Their concerns only intensified after the term entered the pop culture lexicon after the Louise Woodward trial in 1997. That trial sparked an increase in diagnoses around the country, raising concerns that parents and caretakers of children who tragically died in falls or accidents were wrongly being prosecuted for manslaughter—or worse.
Critics of the diagnosis are now starting to make some noise and, more importantly, they're gaining traction in courtrooms.
I'm working on a story for the magazine that's tangentially related to all of this; there are at least two men currently on death row in Mississippi due in part to questionable shaken-baby diagnoses.
Given the sharp divide among forensic pathologists over the validity of the diagnosis, it seems that at the very least, courts should require more evidence of abuse than merely the conventional signs of shaken baby syndrome in order to allow a conviction.
