Appeal court in UK overturns "shaken baby" convictions

Jul 25 2005

London's Court of Appeal has cleared two people who were jailed over so-called "shaken baby" cases.

The ruling follows a series of high-profile trials where women have overturned verdicts of murdering their babies, after joining a long list of parents to challenge the medical evidence used against them.

The three judges said in the ruling, that the presence of the three features of "shaken baby syndrome" did not necessarily mean that that was the cause of death.

Those three features are a swollen brain, bleeding around the brain and bleeding in the eye.

Four people appealed against convictions secured on the basis of medical experts' evidence.

Lorraine Harris, 36, was cleared this week, of the manslaughter of her four-month-old son in 2000, she had already been released from prison but is still banned from seeing her other child who was put up for adoption.She was unable to go to her baby's funeral.

Her lawyer Campbell Malone said she was still suffering the terrible consequences of her conviction.

Michael Faulder, 34, who was jailed for two-and-a-half years in 1999 for grievous bodily harm to a seven-week-old boy was also cleared.

But an appeal by a third man, Raymond Rock, was upheld and his verdict was reduced from murder to manslaughter. A fourth appeal in a separate case was dismissed.

Lord Justice Gage, along with Justice Gross and Justice McFarlane, all agreed that the presence of the three typical symptoms of "shaken baby syndrome" did not automatically mean that a crime had been committed.

But the panel did however insist that the "triad" of injuries had not been undermined in the way the defence suggested, and remained valid, with limitations.

In all of the four cases experts told jurors the children's injuries showed they had been violently treated. This was despite a lack of any other evidence.

In June at the Court of Appeal, lawyers argued medical opinion had changed, making the convictions unsafe, as new research since 2001 had led to a reappraisal of these symptoms.

The lawyers presented fresh evidence that the same injuries could be caused by children falling from a relatively low height.

The appeals have been seen as a test case on the reliability of expert evidence used to establish shaken baby syndrome in the past.

It is expected that more than 90 other convictions could eventually be challenged.

The ruling could also affect hundreds of family division cases in which a parent, usually the father, has been denied access to their children on the basis of alleged violent treatment.

These appeals resulted from a review ordered by Attorney General Lord Goldsmith following the successful appeal by Angela Cannings against her conviction for murdering her two baby sons.