Speaker 1: I've spent the last five years of my journalism career
Speaker 1: interviewing people who say they've been wrongfully convicted, and among
Speaker 1: the women I've spoken to, one of the most common
Speaker 1: charges against them is shaking their babies to death. I
Speaker 1: see these cases so often that I can't include them
Speaker 1: all on this show. The accusation of shaking a baby
Speaker 1: to death evokes a visceral reaction from many people. You
Speaker 1: might be feeling it right now, Horror, followed by sadness
Speaker 1: for the defenseless child, and maybe even discussed for the
Speaker 1: person accused of such a crime. Many jurors at trial
Speaker 1: certainly feel this way, and the prosecutors count on it.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, the medical diagnosis used to prosecute
Speaker 1: this type of crime has been contested time and time again.
Speaker 1: Last year, the New Jersey Court of Appeals even ruled
Speaker 1: that in many instances it was junk science. And let
Speaker 1: me be clear, people do abuse children. They get jailed
Speaker 1: for it all the time. But often when an infant
Speaker 1: ends up in an emergency room with what seems like
Speaker 1: inexplicable internal injuries and no other obvious signs of abuse,
Speaker 1: doctors and then prosecutors quickly determine. It's what's known as
Speaker 1: shaken baby syndrome, a scientifically disputed cause of death with
Speaker 1: often devastating consequences for the people charged. Today we hear
Speaker 1: from one of them.
Speaker 2: My name is Tania Miller, and I was incarcerated in
Speaker 2: Michigan Women's Aran Valley Correctional Facility for eighteen years for
Speaker 2: a crime I didn't commit.
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Tanya Miller.
Speaker 1: Tanya Miller was born May nineteen eighty three and grew
Speaker 1: up in Fulton, Michigan.
Speaker 2: Growing up, we lived in the country and my mother
Speaker 2: worked at a plastics company at the time, and then
Speaker 2: later on she started working for manufacturing company for car parts,
Speaker 2: and my father worked at General Motors.
Speaker 3: But we grew up, you.
Speaker 2: Know, not very financially secure. We struggled a lot financially,
Speaker 2: but we were like a really close family, all of
Speaker 2: the siblings.
Speaker 1: Tanya has a huge family.
Speaker 2: My father had been married and divorced a couple of times,
Speaker 2: and so I have siblings you know, from him from
Speaker 2: prior marriages.
Speaker 1: How many of you.
Speaker 2: My parents have five together, and then my mother had
Speaker 2: us sixth one later. But my father has four prior
Speaker 2: to yeah.
Speaker 1: Ten siblings. Okay, and where do you in the lineup
Speaker 1: of every in the middle?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 1: So what was that like?
Speaker 2: Maah and my older brother, my mom's oldest were like,
Speaker 2: we're two peas in a pod.
Speaker 3: So we were always together.
Speaker 2: So I was a little tomboy running around doing whatever
Speaker 2: my brother did. I admired him so much, and we
Speaker 2: just he would take something apart and I'd put it together.
Speaker 2: He'd want to climb a tree. I want to climb
Speaker 2: the tree if he broke a bone that year. I
Speaker 2: broke a bone that year.
Speaker 3: It was like we literally followed suit with each other.
Speaker 1: What were some of your interests.
Speaker 2: I love having my hands in the dirt. I just
Speaker 2: love I love gardening. I loved anything that had anything
Speaker 2: to do with nature. So we were always on four wheelers,
Speaker 2: on horses. We were doing four h raising chickens and
Speaker 2: turkeys and cornish tens and you know those kinds of things.
Speaker 2: So anything that had something to do with nature.
Speaker 1: Then when she was eleven, Tanya's parents separated.
Speaker 4: When Tanya moved in she was twelve, I was six.
Speaker 1: This is Whitney Wesner. She goes by wit.
Speaker 4: Tanya is considered well, I consider her my best friend
Speaker 4: and my older sister.
Speaker 1: When Tanya's parents split, her mom moved to the family
Speaker 1: to Battle Creek in the house next door to six
Speaker 1: year old Wit.
Speaker 4: We even had a shared driveway. I mean I literally
Speaker 4: could jump out my bedroom window and go up their
Speaker 4: backsteps right into their house. And I just automatically took
Speaker 4: a liking to her as like I looked up to her.
Speaker 4: I actually hung out with her more than I did
Speaker 4: her siblings.
Speaker 1: I just so, what was it about Tanya? Because I'm
Speaker 1: sure some of her siblings were closer in age to
Speaker 1: you as well.
Speaker 4: I was just drawn to her as a person, as
Speaker 4: like her energy, and I was like, I want to
Speaker 4: hang out with her. You know, she was the older
Speaker 4: cool kid to me.
Speaker 1: And she kept Wit around even if it annoyed Tanya's
Speaker 1: older friends or boyfriends.
Speaker 4: Why is this ten twelve year old just constantly wround you?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean? Like tell her to go
Speaker 4: away and she's like.
Speaker 3: No, Why do you think?
Speaker 1: Because I think if I was when I was her age,
Speaker 1: I wanted nothing to do with kids, Like I'd be like,
Speaker 1: why is this ten year old around me? Why do
Speaker 1: you think she'll let you around.
Speaker 4: I don't know her, and I just there's just this
Speaker 4: connection there.
Speaker 1: Wit says Tanya and her did everything together from baseball.
Speaker 4: So she's pitching me and she's kind of probably underestimating
Speaker 4: the whole ten year old with the vat And she
Speaker 4: pitched me one and turned to talk to somebody, and
Speaker 4: I clocked it, and oh, she had the biggest black eye.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: We had to run into my mom's house and put
Speaker 4: peas on her face like she's like your daughter actually
Speaker 4: hit the ball.
Speaker 1: To soccer.
Speaker 4: She was a great soccer player. So she would take
Speaker 4: me rollerblading, roora skating around the neighborhood. She did. She
Speaker 4: taught me a lot of things. She taught me a
Speaker 4: lot of things that she doesn't even know that she
Speaker 4: taught me. And you know, to this day, she is
Speaker 4: my best friend and that has never changed.
Speaker 1: Tanya, by all accounts family and friends, was great with kids.
Speaker 4: It was natural. It was natural for her. I never
Speaker 4: once saw her lose her patience.
Speaker 1: As often happens with big families. Tanya stepped up to
Speaker 1: help her mom with all the kids.
Speaker 2: That was really difficult because then I became like the
Speaker 2: living babysitter I was the one making sure all the kids,
Speaker 2: you know, had their dinner, had their baths, had their
Speaker 2: homework done and stuff. When mom was working, and she
Speaker 2: had to work a lot to support all of us,
Speaker 2: so she was hardly there.
Speaker 1: Tanya played mom and then she became one.
Speaker 2: At fifteen, I got into a relationship with somebody that
Speaker 2: was significantly older, not significantly he was twenty four and
Speaker 2: I didn't know it.
Speaker 3: He said he was nineteen. So but I ended up.
Speaker 2: Pregnant, and so I had a daughter at sixteen.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yes, Tanya gave birth to a baby girl named Kayla.
Speaker 4: But she had with all her siblings, had already been
Speaker 4: mothering at that point in her life, so having her
Speaker 4: own it wasn't like a typical teenager having a baby,
Speaker 4: Like what do I do?
Speaker 1: But Tanya was still just sixteen.
Speaker 2: I ended up not completing the high school scene. I
Speaker 2: went to like a night school, and so I was
Speaker 2: able to take my daughter with me.
Speaker 1: And the relationship with Kayla's dad didn't last.
Speaker 2: It was not a very good relationship, and I ended
Speaker 2: up getting back into a relationship with a boy that
Speaker 2: I had been with before.
Speaker 1: A boy named Alan, and at eighteen, they had her
Speaker 1: second daughter, Alicia, you were going to school, were you working?
Speaker 1: How are you guys surviving?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we were working.
Speaker 2: I was a hostess and he I can't remember if
Speaker 2: he was a cooker, if he was doing dishes at
Speaker 2: the time, but he stepped up and really helped, like
Speaker 2: he get you know, he got jobs here and there
Speaker 2: when he could the teenagers. You don't always keep a
Speaker 2: job for long. But it was a struggle.
Speaker 1: But as always there was wit. Now in her teens,
Speaker 1: she was ready to help.
Speaker 4: So I would sit with the kids, you know, while
Speaker 4: she'd take a shower or you know. I was more
Speaker 4: involved than the child's father. Yeah, like I was there.
Speaker 4: It's not that she needed somebody else to help her,
Speaker 4: because Tanya was a great mother.
Speaker 1: And she still had plans for herself and her future.
Speaker 1: She earned herself a scholarship to community college.
Speaker 2: I wanted to go to be a pediatrician, ironically, but
Speaker 2: that unfortunately all fell through.
Speaker 1: Alicia was a very sick baby from birth.
Speaker 2: They during labor and delivery, they did lose her heartbeat
Speaker 2: at one point and had to do an internal monitor
Speaker 2: on her. So then they were very quickly trying to
Speaker 2: get her born. Wow, And so they were kind of
Speaker 2: worried about her being low birthway. She was six pounds,
Speaker 2: you know, she was small, but she wasn't you know,
Speaker 2: premi or anything like that. Immediately, everything seemed to be okay,
Speaker 2: But then after a couple of weeks at bringing her home,
Speaker 2: things just were not the same. You expect it to
Speaker 2: kind of be like your first one where you don't
Speaker 2: really have any issues or anything, and so I knew
Speaker 2: something wasn't right, but I didn't know how to communicate
Speaker 2: it or what it was.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 4: My first experience with Alicia that scared me was she
Speaker 4: would she would you'd be holding her and she would
Speaker 4: just like gus for air out of nowhere. I would
Speaker 4: get nervous and just hand her back. I had never
Speaker 4: seen that in a child. She would space off at
Speaker 4: the bright lights and not even like blink.
Speaker 2: She didn't want to eat very much. She would almost
Speaker 2: chew on the nipple as if she was teething, but
Speaker 2: she wasn't teething. Her diapers weren't she wasn't, you know,
Speaker 2: urinating like she was supposed to. It was just a
Speaker 2: lot of little things, and then eventually it was she
Speaker 2: looked like she was staring right through you she would
Speaker 2: just go limp.
Speaker 1: Did you take her to the doctor multiple times? And
Speaker 1: what did they say?
Speaker 2: That I was a paranoid mom and yeah, So when
Speaker 2: she had quit breathing, they basically told me that she
Speaker 2: was angry and learn how to.
Speaker 3: Hold her breath.
Speaker 1: That's what they said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they didn't take me serious at all. I
Speaker 2: don't know if it was because I was a young,
Speaker 2: unwed mother of two children on Medicaid, and so that
Speaker 2: was why they didn't take me serious, but they put
Speaker 2: that in my file. So whenever I would call, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't even get the appointments.
Speaker 1: She says. Her family and friends also knew something was wrong.
Speaker 3: But we didn't.
Speaker 2: We couldn't pinpoint anything.
Speaker 3: We didn't know what.
Speaker 2: To call it, what it was, what to research, so
Speaker 2: I had no idea.
Speaker 1: October nineteenth, two thousand and one, started off normal for
Speaker 1: Tanya and her family.
Speaker 2: Alan had gone fishing really early in the morning, and
Speaker 2: so I was up with the baby trying to get
Speaker 2: her to eat a bottle.
Speaker 3: She absolutely refused to.
Speaker 1: Eat, so she laid her back down.
Speaker 2: Cayla got up a little bit later and had her
Speaker 2: cereal and was watching her movie and then eventually Alicia
Speaker 2: decided to wake up, and she was just as happy
Speaker 2: as could be.
Speaker 1: They played until Alicia got fussy, and then called Wit
Speaker 1: to come and help while she got ready, Can.
Speaker 4: You head over in about twenty minutes so that you
Speaker 4: can watch the girls while I jump in the shower.
Speaker 4: So I said, of course absolutely.
Speaker 1: While she waited for Wit, Tanya tried to feed Alicia again.
Speaker 3: So I'm holding her.
Speaker 2: I'm feeding her, and she coughs, and formula is like
Speaker 2: pouring out of her eyeballs, out of her nose, out
Speaker 2: of her mouth, and so I hold her upright, and
Speaker 2: her one eye like went to the back, and like
Speaker 2: it just rolled to the back, and then she went limp,
Speaker 2: and it was so unexpected.
Speaker 3: I had almost.
Speaker 2: Dropped her, and so I laid her on the floor.
Speaker 3: And I called nine to one one.
Speaker 1: Tanya also called Wit.
Speaker 4: All I hears frantically, is I Alicia's on the way
Speaker 4: to the hospital. She stopped breathing.
Speaker 1: Alicia was raced to the hospital, transferred to a pediatric unit,
Speaker 1: and qut on life support. Then doctors ordered act scan
Speaker 1: that showed mild swelling in Alicia's brain as well as bleeding.
Speaker 1: An eye examination also found retinal hemorrhaging. By this time,
Speaker 1: Alan and the whole family had gathered in the hospital
Speaker 1: waiting room, anxious for any information about what was going on.
Speaker 1: Then the doctor came in with news. He said, based
Speaker 1: on the symptoms, Alicia was showing she had quote abusive
Speaker 1: head trop or shaken baby syndrome.
Speaker 2: When the originally when the doctor walked in and said it,
Speaker 2: Alan kind of went after him, like the nerve of you,
Speaker 2: like this is not no, this didn't happen. And then
Speaker 2: they separated us and they started questioning him and started
Speaker 2: questioning me. But when they asked me to do like
Speaker 2: I just did with you and go through the entire
Speaker 2: day and tell them what happened throughout the day, they
Speaker 2: kept stopping me and leaving the room talking to whoever
Speaker 2: and coming back in and saying, well, that couldn't have
Speaker 2: possibly happened. You must have dropped her, or you must.
Speaker 3: Have this, or you know.
Speaker 2: It was always it was just like what I was
Speaker 2: saying was not what they wanted to hear, and so
Speaker 2: they kept making it seemed like I was changing my
Speaker 2: story when I'm simply just trying to tell you what
Speaker 2: happened from the beginning to the end.
Speaker 1: It was harrowing and it was about to get worse.
Speaker 1: Alicia was taken off life support on October twentieth and
Speaker 1: died at seven twenty seven pm. She was eleven weeks old.
Speaker 1: Two days later, Tanya was brought to the station for
Speaker 1: questioning by Detective Tim Hurt of the Battle Creek Police Department,
Speaker 1: but they didn't get far. Tanya asked for an attorney
Speaker 1: and was released the next day.
Speaker 2: I guess they didn't have enough to even arraign me
Speaker 2: at the time, so they just let me go.
Speaker 1: But Tanya's life was falling apart. The state eventually took
Speaker 1: away her two year old and placed her in foster care.
Speaker 2: It was very difficult being home and looking over and
Speaker 2: seeing a toddler bed with no toddler in it, you know,
Speaker 2: a bass in that with no baby in it, and
Speaker 2: just to know like it's never going to be the
Speaker 2: same again.
Speaker 1: And at eighteen she was being investigated in her newborn
Speaker 1: baby's death.
Speaker 2: It was so traumatic and having no help, not getting
Speaker 2: any kind of help therapy wise, having no way to
Speaker 2: really truly grieve, and just knowing every move was being watched,
Speaker 2: every conversation I was having, you know, anything I'm just
Speaker 2: all over the newspapers. I didn't want to have a TV.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to see the news. I just didn't
Speaker 2: want the trauma of all of it anymore. I seriously
Speaker 2: had contemplated suicide. Just life was meaningless at that point.
Speaker 1: Were you even able to grieve Alicia?
Speaker 3: Not like I should have.
Speaker 2: No, I would find myself at the cemetery a lot,
Speaker 2: just you know, laying there with her basically, but to
Speaker 2: actually grieve. Looking back, No, I never did have that opportunity.
Speaker 1: Even though she wanted out of life, Tanya knew she
Speaker 1: had to stick around.
Speaker 2: I couldn't follow through it that I had Kayla, and
Speaker 2: I truly believed that I was going to be found innocent.
Speaker 1: Of that, but she wasn't. Tanya was arrested, charged, and
Speaker 1: tried for the death of her baby Alicia on April eighth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. Trial prosecutor Daniel Buscher called multiple
Speaker 1: experts to prove his case that Tanya had shaken Alicia
Speaker 1: to death. The star was the man who performed the autopsy,
Speaker 1: doctor Brian Hunter.
Speaker 5: His testimony was that she had retinal hemorrhages and bleeding
Speaker 5: on the outer layers as a brain and swelling of
Speaker 5: the brain, and those was the classic tryad of symptoms
Speaker 5: for shaking baby syndrome.
Speaker 1: This is Dave Moran.
Speaker 5: I am the co director of the Michigan Innocence Clinic
Speaker 5: at University of Michigan Law School.
Speaker 1: Dave says, this tryaud of symptoms is the gold standard
Speaker 1: for shaking baby syndrome. Brain injury, bleeding around the brain,
Speaker 1: and bleeding around the eyes. That's what every doctor at
Speaker 1: the time was taught, including pathologist doctor Hunter.
Speaker 5: So to him, this was a slam dunk case of
Speaker 5: shaking baby syndrome.
Speaker 1: Wit was thirteen during Tanya's trial, and she remembers every
Speaker 1: moment of it.
Speaker 4: Honestly. To sit there and listen to how they portrayed
Speaker 4: this person that I've known for so long on a
Speaker 4: daily basis, it broke my heart.
Speaker 1: What were some of those things that they were saying
Speaker 1: about her that you knew not to be true.
Speaker 4: Oh, she's a young mother and she just.
Speaker 1: Snapped, got headaches. You're strussing out living at the Dolls house.
Speaker 2: You have no money, no job, you're not getting along
Speaker 2: as your boyfriend.
Speaker 4: You take care of your child ninety nine point.
Speaker 2: Nine percent the night, and you snapped that particular day,
Speaker 2: That's when happened, isn't it.
Speaker 4: And it's like, no, I never once saw her loser
Speaker 4: patience with children like that, never once saw her even
Speaker 4: get frustrated in that type of way. So to hear
Speaker 4: them portray ray somebody you love and know so deeply
Speaker 4: on the news and in the papers and in a
Speaker 4: courtroom where you can't say anything, it was just it
Speaker 4: was awful. It was awful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what did she look like during all that?
Speaker 4: In shock? And Matt was portrayed badly too. Oh look
Speaker 4: she has no emotion. Oh she's sitting there speechless. She's
Speaker 4: a teenager who lost her daughters, and you people, you know,
Speaker 4: you know she's being charged with these horrendous crimes.
Speaker 1: Tanya needed a great defense to beat the quote slam
Speaker 1: dunk case. The prosecution claimed they had.
Speaker 2: My mom, bless her heart, you know, went through the
Speaker 2: yellow pages trying to find an attorney who would agreed
Speaker 2: to take a murder case. She found Headinger and Headinger
Speaker 2: out of Kalamazoo. Her and my grandmother had to go
Speaker 2: through there fork just to get the funds to retain him.
Speaker 1: Tanya's family paid Edwin Hedinger for what they thought was
Speaker 1: going to be the best defense, but the defense actually
Speaker 1: agreed that it was shaking baby party. It wasn't.
Speaker 5: Yes, the original defense at trial did not contest to
Speaker 5: shaking baby syndrome.
Speaker 1: Dave says, in those days, there weren't many people disputing
Speaker 1: these science behind shaking baby syndrome, at least not locally.
Speaker 5: I really don't think that there was anybody in Michigan
Speaker 5: who was questioning any part of the shaking baby syndrome
Speaker 5: dogma at that point.
Speaker 1: So Tanya's attorney worked with the knowledge and resources he had.
Speaker 2: He believed that a crime had been committed, but didn't
Speaker 2: believe that it was me that did it, So his
Speaker 2: focus was on somebody else.
Speaker 1: Doing it, someone else like Alan.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to believe it, and I still to
Speaker 2: this day don't believe it. But it was just, you know,
Speaker 2: when they're saying that this is absolutely positively what happened,
Speaker 2: and I know I didn't do it, my mind is like,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe he did, but I don't believe he
Speaker 2: ever would have harmed her.
Speaker 1: Especially now that you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean I knew him back then and
Speaker 2: I knew that's not something that he would have done.
Speaker 1: But at the time that's the only defense she had
Speaker 1: casting reasonable doubt as to who may have shaken Alicia.
Speaker 5: Maybe the baby could have been shaken when she was
Speaker 5: in the custody of her paternal grandparents the day before,
Speaker 5: and then the symptoms only showed up the next day.
Speaker 1: Tanya also testified in her own defense.
Speaker 5: She tried to testify about Alicia's sickliness, her troubles breathing before,
Speaker 5: but that didn't really lead anywhere because again, that wasn't
Speaker 5: the defense theory. There was no expert to back that up.
Speaker 5: Maybe there was something else going on here.
Speaker 1: Is there any explanation why that wasn't Was it tried
Speaker 1: to be presented and then it was barred, or why
Speaker 1: wasn't any of this previous medical history entered?
Speaker 5: Well, I think the defense layer correctly recognized that it
Speaker 5: would have been treated as a red herring. The prosecution
Speaker 5: would have criticized him for creating a red herring because
Speaker 5: you've heard from all the experts that none of what
Speaker 5: happened before matters. All that matters now is this baby
Speaker 5: was shaken just before she died, so none of that
Speaker 5: would have worked.
Speaker 1: Tanya felt like there was no winning.
Speaker 2: At that point, I kind of felt like I'm going
Speaker 2: to prison.
Speaker 1: During jury deliberations, she remembers her lawyer saying.
Speaker 2: If the jury comes out and they refuse to look
Speaker 2: you in the eye, you're pretty much guaranteed that they're
Speaker 2: going to find you guilty.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly what happened. My heart just.
Speaker 2: Dropped watching them walk out of there, and only one
Speaker 2: of them looked me in the eye. The rest of
Speaker 2: them just looked at the floor and made their way
Speaker 2: back to their seats before they handed over their verdict.
Speaker 4: I was not actually prepared for them to find her guilty,
Speaker 4: because I knew she was innocent, so that and I mean,
Speaker 4: who can prepare you for that?
Speaker 2: My niece was in the background, and if you ever
Speaker 2: pull up the court documents, you will hear her like
Speaker 2: scream when they read the verdict teeth.
Speaker 4: And it was not even a second after that that
Speaker 4: they were dragging her out, and I'm trying to reach
Speaker 4: over the banister and grab her hands, and you know,
Speaker 4: everybody's crying. Everybody's screaming, and we're all trying to grab
Speaker 4: at her. You know, they wouldn't even let her say anything,
Speaker 4: you know, they just drug her out like this. Horrendous criminal.
Speaker 4: They wouldn't even let her say about.
Speaker 1: It her family.
Speaker 4: So for me, you know, thirteen, seeing them my best
Speaker 4: friend away and my bigger sister to me like that,
Speaker 4: and it was heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: On April fourteenth, two thousand and three, then twenty year
Speaker 1: old Tanya Miller was convicted of second screen murder and
Speaker 1: was later sentenced to almost three decades behind bars. What
Speaker 1: were your first years in prison?
Speaker 2: Like, it's a very it's a huge culture shock to
Speaker 2: just have everything taken away and just be told what
Speaker 2: you can have or what you can do. And so
Speaker 2: they asked you a bunch of questions about, you know,
Speaker 2: your mental health, about your.
Speaker 3: Past and whatnot.
Speaker 2: And this man literally looked me in my face and
Speaker 2: was like, you can't tell me that you're twenty years
Speaker 2: old with a twenty year sentence and you've never done
Speaker 2: drugs or alcohol. Like he did not believe that you
Speaker 2: had never done drugs at aol, never never had an
Speaker 2: inclination to attempt anything, still don't. So it just blew
Speaker 2: me away that, like my attorney didn't believe in me.
Speaker 2: And now I'm sitting here and I'm telling you that
Speaker 2: I've never done this and you're like, I don't believe you.
Speaker 1: What and you had doctors not believing.
Speaker 2: You and doctors not believing me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine feeling so small when nobody believes what
Speaker 1: you're saying. Yeah, But Tanya's family believed her, and for
Speaker 1: as long as they could, they tried to support her.
Speaker 2: My family, you know, they're not financially secure really, so
Speaker 2: that drive and you know, having to buy like photo
Speaker 2: tickets or you know, a meal card or whatever to
Speaker 2: be able to sit comfortably and just chat and you know,
Speaker 2: eat with them and whatnot.
Speaker 3: It was a lot on them.
Speaker 2: And my mom had a really hard time leaving me there,
Speaker 2: and my baby's sister had a really hard time leaving
Speaker 2: me there, and so my mom kind of felt like
Speaker 2: it wasn't worth bringing her or coming when it was,
Speaker 2: it took so long for her to recover afterward.
Speaker 1: So they stopped visiting as much.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I have so many so if they just come,
Speaker 2: you know, once a month, I'll have somebody come, you know,
Speaker 2: every every month for a year. And it just didn't
Speaker 2: work out that way at all. So the longer you do,
Speaker 2: the less you'll see them, the less you'll hear from them.
Speaker 2: The less a lands of the phone, and that is
Speaker 2: one hundred percent the truth.
Speaker 1: That as always there was Wit writing and calling and
Speaker 1: checking in.
Speaker 4: I feared for her life in prison, you know, all
Speaker 4: the time, because of what they say she did and
Speaker 4: what people can do to people in prison at her children,
Speaker 4: even though she didn't so like. I constantly feared for her.
Speaker 1: But Tanya says she kept out of trouble by keeping busy.
Speaker 2: I worked the entire time, and I worked as much
Speaker 2: as they would let me, and I took as many
Speaker 2: classes as I could, whatever I could get into. I
Speaker 2: even applied for like AA and NA, just to be
Speaker 2: a part of something.
Speaker 1: And between work and classes, Tanya's life was passing her by.
Speaker 1: No twenty first birthday celebration, no college commencement ceremony.
Speaker 4: So many missed Christmases, birthdays, holidays. Life's not fair. Life's
Speaker 4: not fair.
Speaker 1: And Tanya was missing out on her daughter, Kayla's life
Speaker 1: as well. At first, Kayla staved with family, and Wit
Speaker 1: tried to remain a constant in Kayla's life too.
Speaker 4: I went out there every weekend. I bought we had
Speaker 4: matching pajamas. That was my little buddy, blues Clues. I
Speaker 4: took off his pictures as many pictures as I could
Speaker 4: every weekend that I went. I went out there every weekend,
Speaker 4: and I made this giant photo album for her and
Speaker 4: just added through it throughout the years of like the
Speaker 4: letters she would send me or the drawing she would
Speaker 4: send me. I just tried to keep her in the
Speaker 4: loop with the other child until I couldn't anymore.
Speaker 1: Eventually, Kayla was adopted and denied contact with Tanya and
Speaker 1: her loved ones, and the years kept passing by until
Speaker 1: one day, out of the blue, a man reached out
Speaker 1: to Tanya by the name of Jeremy Perry.
Speaker 2: He was just a layman on the street. He had
Speaker 2: no interest in the whole system or anything. He was
Speaker 2: a I believe in a computer engineer. Maybe I might
Speaker 2: have that wrong, but he's seen my picture and he
Speaker 2: was like, your picture just stood in my mind because
Speaker 2: you were so young, with such a long time, and
Speaker 2: so he said it was probably a year later, like
Speaker 2: my name kind of fell back into his mind and
Speaker 2: he looked me up and he said he immediately believed
Speaker 2: that I didn't do that, And so he wrote to
Speaker 2: me and he asked me if I had heard of
Speaker 2: the Michigan Innocence Clinic.
Speaker 5: I'm thinking it was about twenty fifteen when we first
Speaker 5: reviewed the case. We by that point had litigated several
Speaker 5: other shaking baby syndrome cases. We had our first case
Speaker 5: in twenty ten out of Julie Bomber, and we had
Speaker 5: taken on several other cases.
Speaker 1: Dave says that in the decade since Tanya had been convicted,
Speaker 1: there had been a sea change in shake and baby
Speaker 1: syndrome science.
Speaker 5: What we've learned about shake baby syndrome really as twofold is,
Speaker 5: first of all, it may not exist at all because
Speaker 5: of the biomechanical difficulties.
Speaker 1: Dave says, it's virtually impossible to shake a baby hard
Speaker 1: enough to cause the triad of symptoms without breaking its neck.
Speaker 5: If you could shake a baby hard enough to cause
Speaker 5: these particular symptoms, you would almost certainly fracture the neck
Speaker 5: and that would be the cause of death. And there
Speaker 5: was no neck injury to Alicia.
Speaker 1: And then there was Alicia's medical history.
Speaker 5: One of the important things is is there a prior
Speaker 5: history and have there been prior instances of the baby
Speaker 5: not being well which can lead us and especially of
Speaker 5: course our experts to see are any of the alternative
Speaker 5: causes for the symptoms present, and we had all of
Speaker 5: that in spades.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 5: We had medical records showing that Alicia had had a
Speaker 5: series of collapses before our student attorneys went out and
Speaker 5: interviewed the people who had seen Alicia have these problems.
Speaker 1: And there was a smoking gun that came from the
Speaker 1: prosecution's own expert in.
Speaker 5: One line on page seven of the autopsy report, which
Speaker 5: was the very last page of the report. The forensic
Speaker 5: pathologist who did the autopsy on Alicia after she died,
Speaker 5: and he actually noted that Alicia had a cute bronchial
Speaker 5: pneumonia pneumonia.
Speaker 1: The slides from Alicia's lungs during autopsy showed a cute
Speaker 1: bronchial pneumonia. Tanya had been right all along. Alicia was
Speaker 1: really sick. In so many of these cases, women are
Speaker 1: just not believed. Is this a pattern, you see? And
Speaker 1: how is the pneumonia not caught? It's just kind of
Speaker 1: mind blowing.
Speaker 5: It is it is. It's amazing that you could have slides.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's so obvious that there's something terribly terribly wrong,
Speaker 5: but it's this dogma that it still exists today.
Speaker 1: A dogma that leads doctors to almost instinctively diagnosed shaken
Speaker 1: baby syndrome, ignoring the pleading mothers in front of them.
Speaker 5: This was somebody who is doing her level best to
Speaker 5: try and get the appropriate help for her infant and
Speaker 5: was getting blown off. Shaking baby syndrome results in lots
Speaker 5: and lots of wrongful conviction of women, probably more than
Speaker 5: anything else, because women are usually the primary caregivers for
Speaker 5: young infants.
Speaker 1: Dave hired four of the leading experts in shaking baby
Speaker 1: syndrome to look at Tanya's case.
Speaker 5: They all came to very similar, overlapping conclusions about what
Speaker 5: had actually happened to Alicia. Doctor Francis Green, who is
Speaker 5: one of the world's leading experts in pediatric lung pathology,
Speaker 5: who looked at the slides and he said, those slides
Speaker 5: are inconsistent with life because Alicia had a case of
Speaker 5: acute pneumonia that was so serious that she could not
Speaker 5: have survived it. So we filed the case.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, they were granted a hearing and up
Speaker 1: against the experts and the facts, the judge ruled in
Speaker 1: favor of Tanya and granted her a new trial.
Speaker 5: It was really no contest between the prosecution's one expert
Speaker 5: from two thousand and three coming back and our experts,
Speaker 5: and so the prosecution knew they could not win a retrial,
Speaker 5: and so in early twenty twenty one, Tanya was released,
Speaker 5: and that was a glorious day.
Speaker 1: Tanya remembers leaving the prison and the people inside she
Speaker 1: had grown up with.
Speaker 2: And so then when I was leaving, there all banging
Speaker 2: on the windows and you know, waving their goodbyes and everything.
Speaker 2: Eighteen years, eighteen years, Yeah, it becomes a family unit
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 1: But now Tanya was free to be with her family
Speaker 1: on the outside.
Speaker 2: So I took some time just to really get to
Speaker 2: know all of my siblings' children, how my nieces and nephews,
Speaker 2: because they were all married and divorce and having kids
Speaker 2: and everything while I was gone. You know, I lost
Speaker 2: my father, I lost my grandparents. I have one surviving
Speaker 2: grandmother right now, and so it was I took a
Speaker 2: lot of time just kind of focusing on family.
Speaker 4: I'm surprised I didn't break her bones from houganers so.
Speaker 1: Hard, and that family includes wit.
Speaker 4: Wait, is this real? Like she's really out, Like Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm immediately going to Michigan. I spent the night there
Speaker 4: with her. You know, we had a bonfire and hung out,
Speaker 4: and we'd never been able to hang out as adults.
Speaker 1: And remember the photo album Whit made while Tanya was
Speaker 1: in prison.
Speaker 4: She gave it to her, pictures of when we were
Speaker 4: kids together. I had all her letters she wrote me
Speaker 4: from jail in it, even her newspaper clip things. I
Speaker 4: clipped them all out as a kid.
Speaker 1: Wit still admires and looks up to Tanya after all
Speaker 1: these years.
Speaker 4: You see her and she's always laughing. And you know,
Speaker 4: she's not sitting over there like with a nasty look
Speaker 4: on her face or you know what I mean. She's happy.
Speaker 4: She's living her life that she deserved to live. And
Speaker 4: I tell her, live your life than she is.
Speaker 2: I've kind of done a few things I probably never
Speaker 2: would have done.
Speaker 3: What jumping out of a plane. Oh my gosh, she
Speaker 3: went skydiving. I went skydiving. Yeah, how was that? It
Speaker 3: was incredible? To be honest, yeah it was.
Speaker 2: I can't even describe the free inness that you feel
Speaker 2: just doing that.
Speaker 1: But there's still one part about her life that's on hold,
Speaker 1: her relationship with her first born Kayla, now twenty three
Speaker 1: years old. Tanya's reached out a couple of times but
Speaker 1: has been shut out.
Speaker 2: Trying to put myself in her shoes and just give
Speaker 2: her that time, in that space and hope that eventually
Speaker 2: she'll understand that I loved her all of these years,
Speaker 2: and I didn't do this to her little sister, and
Speaker 2: I would have been in her life if I had
Speaker 2: the opportunity, and you know, just that her family really
Speaker 2: truly does love her. Everybody wants to get to know her.
Speaker 2: Everybody wants a part of her life. They were all
Speaker 2: kind of tol that they couldn't be a part of
Speaker 2: her life, and so nobody abandoned her. She's never been abandoned,
Speaker 2: She's never been forgotten. We celebrate her birthday every year,
Speaker 2: you know, we talk about her all the time.
Speaker 3: We just wish her well.
Speaker 1: According to the National Registry of Exonerations, at least thirty
Speaker 1: shaken baby syndrome convictions have been overturned in the last
Speaker 1: three decades. Prosecutors continue to charge parents and caretakers with
Speaker 1: this crime. Thank you for listening to wrongful conviction with
Speaker 1: Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go
Speaker 1: to the links in the episode description to see how
Speaker 1: you can help. This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling,
Speaker 1: with story editing and mixing by senior producer Rebecca Ibada.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Kathleen Fink. Our researcher Shelby Sorels, with
Speaker 1: additional mixing by Josh Allen and additional production help by
Speaker 1: Jeff Clyburn and Connor Hall. Thank you to the podcast
Speaker 1: Life of the Law and the Midial Justice Project for
Speaker 1: letting us use their audio of Tanya's trial. Executive producers
Speaker 1: are Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis. The music
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Make
Speaker 1: sure to follow us on all social media platforms at
Speaker 1: Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also
Speaker 1: follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good
Speaker 1: Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One