Doc Who Came Up With SBS Thinks Innocent Parents Are Being Prosecuted for Killing Their Babies

By Emily Bazelon|

Posted Wednesday, March 14, 2012,

Norman Guthkelch

In 1971, pediatrician Norman Guthkelch helped come up with the medical diagnosis of shaken-baby syndrome. Guthkelch and another pediatrician each wrote a paper proposing that unexplained bleeding in the brain of infants could occur because of whiplash—via shaking—without causing a visible neck injury and without direct impact to the head. That diagnosis became the basis for “do not shake” campaigns and, over the years, hundreds of criminal prosecutions for child abuse.

Now Guthkelch is worried that medical examiners and prosecutors have been too quick to turn to the shaken-baby diagnosis—and that innocent people may be in prison as a result. He called me to express that concern after I wrote about some questionable shaken-baby prosecutions for the New York Times Magazine last year. Guthkelch told Joseph Shapiro of NPR about an Arizona case he found particularly troubling after reviewing it for the defense. “I think I used the expression in my report, ‘I wouldn’t hang a cat on the evidence of shaking, as presented,’ ” he said.

Guthkelch, who is 96, was talking about the conviction of Drayton Witt, who was an 18-year-old when he was charged with shaking his 4-month-old son, Steven, to death in 2000. Based on the standard medical theory of the time, the case looked like a classic case of abusive shaking to doctors who treated Steven in the hospital as well as to the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy. Later at trial, these doctors testified against Witt, who was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years.

But now the case doesn’t look so clear-cut. It may, instead, be an example of doctors applying an outdated method of diagnosis—one that ignored Steven’s troubled medical history and thus missed an alternate explanation for his death. It’s not just Guthkelch who is raising the alarm: The medical examiner who testified against Witt, pathologist A.L. Mosley, has recanted his position at trial. Mosley now believes that Steven died of natural causes. Which raises a couple of questions: Is Drayton Witt serving time for a crime he did not commit? Will prosecutors in Arizona continue to argue that his conviction should stand?

Read the full article here:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/03/when_babies_die_are_doctors_too_quick_to_blame_it_on_shaken_baby_syndrome_.html

 

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