New Jersey's top court is first to reject evidence of shaken baby syndrome as unreliable
Testimony that merely shaking a baby can produce internal bleeding near the brain and in the retina is too unreliable for admission in criminal cases of child abuse, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in a 6-1 decision last week.
The New Jersey case is the first to conclude that evidence of shaken baby syndrome is unreliable, according to a dissenter in the Nov. 20 decison.
Shaken baby syndrome holds that shaking an infant can cause injuries that include subdural hematoma, retinal hemorrhages and encephalopathy. Despite testimony from a medical expert, prosecutors did not establish that shaken baby syndrome has gained general acceptance in the biomechanical community, the New Jersey Supreme Court said.
Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Reason, the New Jersey Monitor and the Associated Press are among the publications with coverage of the decision.
The state supreme court refused two admit shaken-baby testimony in two cases after summarizing the studies on the syndrome, also known as abusive head trauma. The defendants in the cases were fathers who were charged with criminal offenses that include aggravated assault and child endangerment.
The acceptance of shaken baby syndrome in the medical community built on a neurosurgeon’s 1968 study of whiplash injuries in car accidents that used monkeys as subjects. Three years later, a second neurosurgeon developed the theory of shaken baby syndrome based on the whiplash study and a review of 23 cases in which parental assault was strongly suspected.
A pediatric radiologist who studied 27 cases thought to involve shaking of infants published a 1972 study and concluded that “habitual whiplash-shaking for trivial reasons warrants a massive nationwide educational campaign” to warn of the dangers. In a second 1974 study, the same doctor reviewed cases involving confessions by the assailants and identified what he thought to be “essential elements” of the syndrome, including subdural and retinal hemorrhages.
Another doctor, however, conducted a biomechanical study in 1987 using infant models that were “shaken violently and repetitively,” the state supreme court said. The study found that the acceleration and velocity levels of the shaking were well below the threshold for injuries such as concussions and subdural hematomas that happened in primate studies. But when the model’s head was struck against a metal bar or padded surface, the force was sufficient for such injuries.
The doctor who performed the initial whiplash study later cautioned that it is improbable that a single shake of an infant or a short series of shaking could result in whiplash injuries like those he studied.
The New Jersey Supreme Court also noted that confessions are sometimes false, and in any event, a confession “does not equal the controlled setting of a scientific study conducted in a manner that can replicate and confirm the accuracy of results.”
New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis wrote the majority opinion.
Justice Rachel Wainer Apter dissented.
“The majority places individual biomechanical engineers on equal footing with the consensus perspective of every major medical society in the world and grants the former a veto over the latter,” Wainer Apter wrote.
The New Jersey public defender’s office released a statement welcoming the “landmark decision.”
The decision “is a critical safeguard against the tragic consequences that flow from unproven assumptions about how children are injured,” the statement said. “The Constitution demands more than speculation dressed in scientific language.”
See also:
Shaken-baby murder conviction overturned after defendant offers evidence questioning diagnosis
Unsettling Science: Experts are still debating whether shaken baby syndrome exists
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