SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Dr. John Plunkett died this week. He spent nearly 20 years arguing in court against bad forensic science, for which he was maliciously prosecuted and received false ethics complaints. Through his efforts, 300 innocent people were exonerated. (This sentence from fark.com)
Like a lot of other doctors, child welfare advocates and forensic specialists, John Plunkett at first bought into the theory of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS). It's a convenient diagnosis for prosecutors, in that it provides a cause of death (violent shaking), a culprit (whoever was last with the child before death) and even intent (prosecutors often argue that the violent, extended shaking establishes mens rea.) But in the late 1990s, Plunkett — a forensic pathologist in Minnesota — began to have doubts about the diagnosis. The same year his study was published, Plunkett testified in the trial of Lisa Stickney, a licensed day care worker in Oregon. Thanks in large part to Plunkett's testimony, Stickney was acquitted. District Attorney Michael Dugan responded with something unprecedented — it criminally charged an expert witness over testimony he had given in court. Today, the scientific consensus on SBS has since shifted significantly in Plunkett's direction.
[...] According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 16 SBS convictions have been overturned. Plunkett's obituary puts the figure at 300, and claims that he participated in 50 of those cases. I'm not sure of the source for that figure, and it's the first I've seen of it. But whatever the number, Plunkett deserves credit for being among the first to sound the alarm about wrongful SBS convictions. His study was the first step toward those exonerations.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sulla on Wednesday April 11 2018, @11:48PM (2 children)
More evidence that not only abortion but post-birth abortion need to be legalized. Mothers all stirred up by their emotions and dealing with postpartum depression cannot be left to felt like they murdered their child just because they shook their baby a few times in an effort to make them stop screaming. If we legalized post-birth abortion up to say the age of one (when SIDS risk dies off) then women who have their kids die on them won't have to feel responsible.
It is an unfair burden to place on women the thought that just a little shaking might kill their kid, also that if their kid dies to
some other cause entirely their faultnon-genetic SIDS that they should feel guilty about it.Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:10AM
More evidence that not only abortion but post-birth abortion need to be legalized.
Yes, all the way up to the 75th trimester
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tfried on Thursday April 12 2018, @08:32AM
To be honest, after reading the summary, I was highly sceptical of this guys contribution, thinking it was something along the lines of "violently shaking your newborn is not a problem, really."
But that is not it. This is not about the question whether confessed / proven shaking was the cause of death. This is about the question of whether certain pathological findings can prove the baby was indeed shaken, violently, against the suspects' testimony. And in many cases (short-distance falls) the suspects' alternative account, is in fact fully in line with the pathological evidence. (Note that this could still be "good" enough for criminal neglect charges, depending on the circumstances, but clearly it does change the case.)
Without a doubt this new knowledge does allow many real murderers to get of the hook, and so there's no reason to be cheerful. But it's also entirely beyond doubt that ignoring this knowledge does lead to very real very wrong convictions, which will hardly qualify as a good solution, either.