"We can't explain this trio of internal head/brain/eye trauma with lack of corresponding external trauma, but don't you dare make the reasonable claim that shaking a baby can/does nominally cause the symptoms we see when a baby is, in fact, shaken."
> to make that bullshit even worse, Texas continued to use hypnosis induced testimony until 2021.
That is a sentiment with which I sympathize. But then...
> It makes me wonder when the last death penalty sentence for "shaken baby syndrome" was in Texas.
This I don't get. Shaken baby syndrome is a real thing, and it seems to me that if someone shakes a baby to death they are guilty of murder (or at least negligent homicide) and should be treated no differently than if their victim had been older. What does it have to do with hypnosis?
Because 4th/5th amendment issues aside, if an interrogation or testimony via hypnosis is verifiable, who cares if hypnosis is 'real' or 'junk science'?
If a man shakes a baby and that baby dies, who cares if 'SBS' is 'junk science'? It's still murder.
The label shouldn't automatically validate (or invalidate/discredit) the underlying information/ action/ admission.
So saying it’s ‘shaken baby syndrome’ just because there are internal injuries is junk science.
As far as I understand, the claim is that internal head/brain/eye trauma can have many causes, so these symptoms do not automatically mean that the baby was necessarily shaken. Sadly, this combination of symptoms have been named "Shaken Baby Syndrome", which means that people naturally assume that the baby has been shaken, which is apparently a crime in Texas.
Had this same syndrome been named "Guthkelch Syndrome", or anything else, the man currently on death row might have been deemed innocent.
I, for one, find this scary. Just as (in a very different domain) the "movie piracy == slavery" equation I've seen float in Blockbusters many years ago. When people who don't know better start believing in names/PR/..., this can have very real (in this case, deadly) consequences.
According to the Mayo Clinic you can:
"While sometimes there's bruising on the face, you may not see signs of physical injury to the child's outer body."
It doesn't get into the nuance, nor is intended as a validation for facile forensic based witch-hunting.
But almost all have corresponding external trauma.
The cases that don't have matching external trauma narrow it down considerably.
Restrained in a car seat in a rollover wreck? Maybe.
Rolled out of her bed? Not really plausible. But might seem like a good excuse for someone looking to cover up abuse.
Sort of agree with it being scary that a diagnosis implies a crime, but this is a case where the girl died from bad parenting, whether you call it SBS or not.
Hell, even his excuses are giving a 2-year old too many opiates and letting her sleep somewhere she could fall from while sick. Plus lying about the pneumonia, which wasn't present on autopsy.
Many forms of trauma can cause these injuries (especially 'trio'), but alone and without matching external trauma, shaking becomes the most likely cause.
Which isn't to say that shaking couldn't also cause some external trauma.
Thanks for the details!
Just the fact it’s on mayoclinic doesn’t mean all that much.
Moreover, the Syndrome was used to justify suspicion of deliberate harm in cases where the triad was not observed at all, as I think in Roberson's case, if you read between the lines - no article about the case mentions the triad, only generic injuries that could, allegedly, only be caused by shaking.
You have absolutely no way to place any certainty on this "might" at all.