Speaker 1: In November of two thousand and one, Zavion Johnson was
Speaker 1: bathing his four month old daughter Nadia in preparation for
Speaker 1: a visit with family, when, according to Zavion, she slipped
Speaker 1: out of his hands and hit her head on the top.
Speaker 1: At first, she appeared to be fine, and so Zavion,
Speaker 1: his girlfriend, Raquel, and Nadia made their way to great
Speaker 1: grandmother's house, but by the time the young family of
Speaker 1: three arrived, Nadia was breathing irregularly, so they called nine
Speaker 1: one one, Then Zavian began CPR. Nadia was rushed to
Speaker 1: the hospital, where a CT scan revealed a slight skull
Speaker 1: fracture in addition to brain bleeding and swelling, as well
Speaker 1: as bleeding behind her eyes. These are the findings that
Speaker 1: are typically associated with shaking baby syndrome. A day later,
Speaker 1: she was taken off life support and passed away. Although
Speaker 1: Zavion denied ever shaking or abusing Nadia and tried to
Speaker 1: explain that she had slipped out of his hands in
Speaker 1: the shower and hit her head, the established medical opinion
Speaker 1: at that time was clear. Three expert witness has testified
Speaker 1: at Zabion's drial that Nadia symptoms could mean only one
Speaker 1: thing that, absent any other major injuries, Zabion must have
Speaker 1: violently shaken Nadia. The defense presented their own expert with
Speaker 1: theories that were considered outside the mainstream. Plus there's no
Speaker 1: way that just one expert could possibly have refuted the
Speaker 1: state's battle of three. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to wrongful conviction, where today our show involves one
Speaker 1: of the worst tragedies any parent can ever experience, the
Speaker 1: death of their child, And the only thing that could
Speaker 1: make matters worse is that that tragedy is so often
Speaker 1: compounded by our criminal legal system with a wrongful conviction
Speaker 1: by way of the guest it shaken baby syndrome or
Speaker 1: SPS prosecution, in which a medical professional will jump to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that a set of medical findings could have
Speaker 1: only one cause abuse, usually at the hand of the
Speaker 1: most recent caregiver. And today we're speaking with another survivor
Speaker 1: victim of this faulty diagnosis, Zavion Johnson and Davion were
Speaker 1: very honored to have you here with us today. Thank you,
Speaker 1: You're very welcome. And with him, the supervising attorney at
Speaker 1: the Northern California Innocence Project Paige kaneb Page, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks for having me. Now we've covered SPS
Speaker 1: at length on Rawful Conviction Junk Science, in which our
Speaker 1: host Josh Dubin spoke with the executive director of the
Speaker 1: Center for Integrity and Forensic Science is Kate Judson, and
Speaker 1: we're going to have that episode LinkedIn the bio and
Speaker 1: Kate is going to be joining us again later to
Speaker 1: discuss how the faulty SPS diagnosis related to Zav's prosecution
Speaker 1: and wrongful conviction. But at the time of your wrongful conviction,
Speaker 1: the scrutiny of SPS was just beginning. It had really
Speaker 1: gone unchecked, starting way back in nineteen seventy one when
Speaker 1: a British neurosurgeon named doctor Norman Guthkell, which was looking
Speaker 1: for an explanation for a pattern that he had seen
Speaker 1: in some injured and even deceased children. Brain swellings of
Speaker 1: dural hemorrhaging and retinal hemorrhaging attended to be the three
Speaker 1: main medical findings that doctors were trained that when they
Speaker 1: saw these things, that meant it was child abuse, shaking
Speaker 1: baby syndrome, abuse of hetroma. Right. The findings again in
Speaker 1: Layman's terms brain swelling, brain bleeding, and bleeding behind the eyes. Now,
Speaker 1: guth Keltre he hypothesized that this pattern could have been
Speaker 1: caused by a common scolding method at the time in Britain,
Speaker 1: which was shaking an infant or unruly child, and he
Speaker 1: cautioned parents against the practice. But what we now know
Speaker 1: is that they're eighty one and counting. That's eighty one
Speaker 1: and counting medical conditions that can lead to these findings
Speaker 1: in addition to a traumatic event. They also believed that
Speaker 1: they could pinpoint the time of the occurrence, when in fact,
Speaker 1: if a traumatic event was the cause, we now know
Speaker 1: that the trigger of those findings could have happened begun
Speaker 1: at any time up to seventy two hours before the
Speaker 1: symptoms really came to light. So sadly, as we've seen,
Speaker 1: the most recent caretaker in this case, a parent comes
Speaker 1: under suspicion. But before all of that, Zapp, let's hear
Speaker 1: about you in your life. Where did you grow up
Speaker 1: and how would you describe yourself as a kid that
Speaker 1: was your childhood? I grew up in Sacramento, California. Was
Speaker 1: a pretty well mannered kid. I am the oldest of
Speaker 1: seven as the oldest. I'm guessing you probably help must
Speaker 1: have helped out a lot. Yeah, it's just a role
Speaker 1: you fall into. And my would baby said, I would
Speaker 1: You know, Cook just played a big brother slash father
Speaker 1: role by being responsible. And you were still pretty young
Speaker 1: when you actually became a father. How did you meet
Speaker 1: Natia's mother? Getting up to high school, that's where I
Speaker 1: met the young lady and we were together from the
Speaker 1: age of sixteen to pretty much when the incident happened
Speaker 1: at eighteen. And that young woman's name was Roquel, but
Speaker 1: you called her Rocky. So in January of two thousand
Speaker 1: and one you found out that she was pregnant. Now
Speaker 1: did you two you have your own place? Did you
Speaker 1: get a place? And did you feel like you were
Speaker 1: really ready to be a dad at that point? So young? Yeah,
Speaker 1: work for the State of California for cal TRANPS. I
Speaker 1: had a pretty good head on my shoulders. Our parents
Speaker 1: pretty much lived within walking distance from each other. We
Speaker 1: kind of just split time at her dad's house and
Speaker 1: at my mom's home until we kind of figured it out.
Speaker 1: You know. So Nadi was born that July, right, So
Speaker 1: what was that day like for you and Rocky? Oh, man,
Speaker 1: I remember she just woke up in the middle of night,
Speaker 1: was like, I think I peeted on myself. So I
Speaker 1: went in there and tell my mom. I'm like, Rocky said,
Speaker 1: she pete on herself. And then my mom was like, oh, no, boy,
Speaker 1: she didn't peel on herself. And so we made it
Speaker 1: to the hospital in nineteen four hours of labor. All
Speaker 1: I remember seeing was eyes. She had the most biggest eyes.
Speaker 1: For the longest time, I haven't had a chance to
Speaker 1: like really reflect on this because of the simple fact
Speaker 1: that for seventeen years plus, I talk about my wrong
Speaker 1: folk conviction, I talk about my wrong fo conviction. I
Speaker 1: talk about everything that wasn't me, you know, so I
Speaker 1: kind of I'm not gonna say I forgot about, you know,
Speaker 1: all this, but to remember it as good so you know,
Speaker 1: I'm appreciative of this interview. Yeah, twenty six hours, nineteen
Speaker 1: actual hours of labor. That's how long I waited from,
Speaker 1: you know, my gift. And as many people testified at
Speaker 1: the trial, you were in every way a fantastic, loving dad.
Speaker 1: But that unfortunately brings us to the faithful day of
Speaker 1: November twenty fourth, two thousand and one, when Nadia was
Speaker 1: just four months old. Now, this would have been just
Speaker 1: a day or two after Thanksgiving Day that the accident
Speaker 1: took place. I showered with my daughter and placing her
Speaker 1: back into the little bathtub that was inside of you know,
Speaker 1: the big shower, she basically kicked off of my chest
Speaker 1: and slipped out of my hands, and as a result,
Speaker 1: so she hit her head. I picked the rub. Look,
Speaker 1: there wasn't like any obvious well and or anything like that,
Speaker 1: so I just pretty much thought to myself, close call.
Speaker 1: Grandmother gets there and before we can get to our house,
Speaker 1: her breathing and stuff really changed. So we get to
Speaker 1: my grandmother's house and that's when nine one one is
Speaker 1: called and I try to perform CPR. So Paige the
Speaker 1: EMT showed up. It's around three twenty pm. They document
Speaker 1: that Nadia looks well cared for. There's no bruises or
Speaker 1: marks anywhere on her body. They also try and perform
Speaker 1: CPR and rush her to the hospital, and the MTS
Speaker 1: note as they're heading towards the hospital that like a
Speaker 1: thumb print type mark is appearing on one side of
Speaker 1: her forehead, like a red mark. And from what I understand,
Speaker 1: that thumb sized mark was later attributed to the work
Speaker 1: of the EMTs. The intubation process does volop stabilizing the head.
Speaker 1: You sort of two fingers on one side and your
Speaker 1: thumb on the other side of the forehead to keep
Speaker 1: the head still. And later they end up documenting that
Speaker 1: there bruises kind of on both sides of the forehead
Speaker 1: develop exactly where they would have been stabilizing her forehead.
Speaker 1: And that's just an example of what an innocent injury
Speaker 1: can add to the rush to judgment by hospital staff
Speaker 1: to rule an instance to be a case of child
Speaker 1: abuse upon a patient's arrival. And so when Nadia arrived
Speaker 1: at you see Davis Medical Center, these are the kinds
Speaker 1: of things being noted. And at this point she still
Speaker 1: had not been revived. She is placed on life support
Speaker 1: at the hospital, but they don't really ever revive her.
Speaker 1: You know, at the hospital they do set scans and
Speaker 1: they see a skull fracture and the thin layer of
Speaker 1: blood and one of the tissue layers that wrap around
Speaker 1: the brain, the one closest to the skull. She had
Speaker 1: retinal hemorrhagees tiny bits of bleeding in the back of
Speaker 1: her eyes, and she had brain swelling. And there it
Speaker 1: is the triad of findings that had been hypothesized to
Speaker 1: be caused by shaking and or abusive head trauma hypothesis
Speaker 1: that became accepted wisdom of the medical establishment without ever
Speaker 1: being tested. I mean, how would one test it without
Speaker 1: actually shaking and or abusing children and risking the potentially
Speaker 1: fatal results that doctor Gothkelch had feared. So this hypothesis
Speaker 1: was never tested, and yet it was and is taught
Speaker 1: at medical schools and even in law schools all over
Speaker 1: the world, including to the folks that you see Davis
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and one, and they have a
Speaker 1: child abuse team who has been trained to believe that
Speaker 1: when they see retinal hemorrhages, subdural hemorrhages, brain swelling, you know,
Speaker 1: with or without other injuries, that that means it's shaken
Speaker 1: baby syndrome. And there's nothing else really ever even contemplated.
Speaker 1: And so you can see it from when Nadia's first
Speaker 1: brought in. Child abuse is all over the medical records.
Speaker 1: So Zav, you must have been out of your mind
Speaker 1: with worry. Meanwhile, this child abuse team at U see
Speaker 1: Davis was setting a course for you your arrest had
Speaker 1: you ever even heard of shaking baby syndrome or SPS. No,
Speaker 1: never heard of it, never understood, never knew what it was.
Speaker 1: It wasn't any shaking, and so it just was a
Speaker 1: ball of confusion. When did it dawn on you that
Speaker 1: you were beginning to come under suspicion? When I started
Speaker 1: to see police's coming there, and I still, you know,
Speaker 1: I still kind of didn't know or fully understand what
Speaker 1: was going on and wanted to talk to a legal
Speaker 1: representation first, and just to be clear, because Zavitt told
Speaker 1: all his family about the fall. One of his aunts
Speaker 1: actually told one of the nurses, so they didn't know
Speaker 1: about the fall, even if not you know, directly from
Speaker 1: zav didn't When did the doctor said too, I don't
Speaker 1: want to paraphrase it, but it still wouldn't it mattered
Speaker 1: or it was still going to be too late or
Speaker 1: something like that. Well, yeah, they thought it was inconsistent
Speaker 1: with a fall, so it didn't matter. So after a
Speaker 1: couple of days on life support, the physicians say that
Speaker 1: they declare that she's brain dead and has to be
Speaker 1: removed from life support. All those years ago, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it still hurts to even think about it. But at
Speaker 1: the time it must have been absolutely devastating. And now
Speaker 1: you and Raquel, two very young parents, had to begin
Speaker 1: to plan a funeral for your little girl. That's just
Speaker 1: not supposed to happen. But it did happen a week
Speaker 1: later on December fourth, two thousand and one, and that
Speaker 1: day found a way to get even worse. Oh man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember being inside of the church, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's all of our family there and you know, whoever else,
Speaker 1: And then I just start seeing people that don't look
Speaker 1: like me in the church, and I'm just like, what's
Speaker 1: going on. I'm not really paying attention to it. And
Speaker 1: then I think when we go outside during a burial,
Speaker 1: I start seeing kind of like the same people. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I remember as taking pictures, making plans to
Speaker 1: me back up bad. I think of my mom's house
Speaker 1: or her dad's house. We said our you know, see later,
Speaker 1: give her a kiss. I got in the car with
Speaker 1: a friend of mine and she got in the car
Speaker 1: with I think either my mom or her parents. And
Speaker 1: before we can even get I don't know how far,
Speaker 1: pretty much was pulled over by undercover cars and six
Speaker 1: guns was drawn. I get exited out the vehicles placed
Speaker 1: on the hood of the car in handcuffs, saying I'm
Speaker 1: being arrested for murder and I was just like murder
Speaker 1: of who huh. This episode is underwritten by global law
Speaker 1: firm Greenberg Traurig. Through its pro bono program, Greenberg Trowg
Speaker 1: leverages it's more than twenty six hundred lawyers across forty
Speaker 1: four offices to serve the greater good of our communities
Speaker 1: and provide equal access to justice for all. In the
Speaker 1: field of criminal justice, Greenberg Trowing attorneys have exonerated and
Speaker 1: Freedom add at Philadelphia represent numerous individuals previously sentenced to
Speaker 1: life for crimes committed as juveniles and resentencing hearings, and
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Speaker 1: Award for Death Penalty Representation for their work on five
Speaker 1: death penalty cases. GT is reimagining what big law can
Speaker 1: be because of more just world only happens by design.
Speaker 1: My name is Kate Judson. I'm the executive director of
Speaker 1: the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences, and I am
Speaker 1: familiar with Zevian Johnson's case and shaken baby cases in general.
Speaker 1: In the case of Zeviane Johnson. On one hand, we
Speaker 1: have Zevian retelling his account that Nadia had taken a
Speaker 1: fall of three or four feet and hit her head
Speaker 1: on the bathtub. But back in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: the medical establishment had not yet accepted the idea that
Speaker 1: a short fall, even coupled with an impact on a
Speaker 1: hard surface, could cause the triad of findings associated with
Speaker 1: shaken baby syndrome and abuse of head trauma. Now at
Speaker 1: the time of trial, the States experts testimony aligned with
Speaker 1: this incorrect assumption. A forensic pathologist who performed Nadia's autopsy
Speaker 1: testified that he found bleeding behind her eyes, which was
Speaker 1: associated with what he called a rotational head injury. He
Speaker 1: was unequivocal in saying that the injuries could not have
Speaker 1: been the result of a fall. Doctor Claudia Greco, a neuropathologist,
Speaker 1: testified that she found a brain injury that was what
Speaker 1: she called the most convincing evidence that the baby died
Speaker 1: from shaking and not from a fall of four feet.
Speaker 1: And doctor Kevin Colter was the pediatrician at the University
Speaker 1: of California Davis Medical Center who treated Nadia in the hospital.
Speaker 1: He testified that physicians only see the constellation of injuries
Speaker 1: that Nadia had with shaking, with falls from what he
Speaker 1: called great heights of ten feet or higher, motor vehicle
Speaker 1: accidents or similar events where there is what he called
Speaker 1: a really significant, high velocity impact. These physicians were totally
Speaker 1: under estimating the danger the short falls can represent. The
Speaker 1: defense witness doctor Richard Robertson, referring to what was then
Speaker 1: very recent biomechanical research, He testified to what we know
Speaker 1: now that the injuries and naudio were consistent with a
Speaker 1: short fall onto a hard surface. However, one of the
Speaker 1: state's witnesses, doctor Greco, attacked that research, claiming it was unreliable,
Speaker 1: even though it later became part of the basis of
Speaker 1: our current understanding of shaken baby syndrome, and studies have
Speaker 1: shown that falls, even from short distances far exceed the
Speaker 1: thresholds for injury then even the most vigorous shaking. Yet,
Speaker 1: it appears that Demon's trial came down to a contest
Speaker 1: of experts. However misinformed the state's experts were at the time,
Speaker 1: the contest was outweighed in the State's favor of three
Speaker 1: to one. You know, I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that really makes them so compelling. Besides that their doctors
Speaker 1: and their experts is they don't have any reason to
Speaker 1: lie about this, you know, and they believed what they
Speaker 1: were saying. I know, you'd think that nearly the entire
Speaker 1: medical community, including these three expert witnesses, would have recognized
Speaker 1: much sooner that this SPS diagnosis requires a huge leap
Speaker 1: in logic that ignores all the other potential causes, which,
Speaker 1: like I said before, we now know there's at least
Speaker 1: eighty one others. And the whole thing seems antithetical to
Speaker 1: the scientific method. I mean, do you have any theories
Speaker 1: at all as to why these otherwise learned and probably
Speaker 1: well intentioned people were testifying this way in case after case.
Speaker 1: Medical school doesn't focus on what is the evidence for
Speaker 1: various propositions right. They're not spending their time looking back
Speaker 1: at like was the scientific method followed or how well
Speaker 1: did this work out? They spend their time being trained
Speaker 1: to recognize various things right and diagnose based on them.
Speaker 1: And pediatric deaths is a tiny part of what most
Speaker 1: there's practice, and so they may just remember that they
Speaker 1: were trained. When you see these things, it's abuse, and
Speaker 1: only abuse, you know. The American Academy of Pediatrics put
Speaker 1: out a two thousand and one policies statement. They called
Speaker 1: it a technical Report on Shaken Baby Syndrome, and it
Speaker 1: literally says, this constellation of injuries does not happen with
Speaker 1: short balls. And the National Association of Medical Examiners had
Speaker 1: the same thing, and the DOJ published guy it's saying
Speaker 1: the same thing. But Xavion's lawyer had his own expert, right,
Speaker 1: doctor Richard Robertson, And this guy raised doctor John Plunkett
Speaker 1: study to say the opposite. My trial attorney, I don't
Speaker 1: got no grievous with the man. I believe he tried
Speaker 1: his artists. You know, yeah, he not only presented your
Speaker 1: own expert testifying the current understanding of SPS, but in addition,
Speaker 1: there were also over a dozen character witnesses. Man, it
Speaker 1: was so many people. I don't remember everyone, but the
Speaker 1: main people who should have been up there was there,
Speaker 1: you know, the mother of child, my mom, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess the people who know who knew our character.
Speaker 1: And Zav also took the stand, right, Zav's child attorney.
Speaker 1: He remembered Zav testifying and that it was super powerful
Speaker 1: and the jury was really moved. We have this letter
Speaker 1: from one of the jurors talking about how Zav seemed
Speaker 1: like a really good young man, seemed like a very
Speaker 1: loving father, seemed horribly out of character for him to
Speaker 1: have done anything to harm his daughter. But the medical
Speaker 1: experts said the only possibility was abuse, and so they
Speaker 1: felt like they had no choice but to convict. So
Speaker 1: you were given two concurrent life sentences, one for child
Speaker 1: abuse and one for child abuse resulting in death, which
Speaker 1: results in a sentence of twenty five to life. I
Speaker 1: do recall like when I got sentence. I remember hearing
Speaker 1: every guess eighteen years old, I had to go and
Speaker 1: start a double life sentence, would you know, just me
Speaker 1: not being able to agree, me not being able to
Speaker 1: you know, just fully processed, you know, the loss of
Speaker 1: my child. It just was, it had to be bottled up.
Speaker 1: I had to, you know, like I said, going to
Speaker 1: survival model inside of prison. So fast forward to me
Speaker 1: being nineteen. Now I'm sending this to life and I
Speaker 1: go start my time off at a level four high
Speaker 1: desert Stay penitentiary. I didn't know how I would survive.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how I would manage, but I walked
Speaker 1: with something someone and I know who it is. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I've seen in front of me,
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I've seen behind me, a
Speaker 1: lot of things that I've seen on the side of me.
Speaker 1: For seventeen years. Thankfully, nothing agreed to happened to me.
Speaker 1: But yeah, just surviving, I had to pick up fast.
Speaker 1: It's like I did as being an oldership. I spoke
Speaker 1: less and I looked more, and I listened more. For
Speaker 1: surely there is PTSD. For surely there is counselor needed.
Speaker 1: For surely I am not whole, but I'm not broken either,
Speaker 1: So you know there is hope. And while grinding through,
Speaker 1: I understand you spent a lot of time in the
Speaker 1: law library. Yeah, it turned into what we call on
Speaker 1: the inside a legal bigle. And in two thousand and
Speaker 1: four you followed an appeal with the Third District California
Speaker 1: Court of Appeals, which unfortunately upheld the conviction. And then
Speaker 1: you continued to file appeals for pretty much the next
Speaker 1: ten long years until the Northern California Innocence Project got involved.
Speaker 1: So he'd written to us before his appeal was denied,
Speaker 1: and then again afterwards he's you know, filing his own
Speaker 1: habeas petitions, you know, with a lot of help from
Speaker 1: my mom. She made sure I met deadlines, like she
Speaker 1: made sure I got help with copies of Yeah, so
Speaker 1: his mom would print out like abstracts of medical articles
Speaker 1: and then Zab would attach those to habeas petitions, and
Speaker 1: the court just kept denying him, saying, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't have an expert saying how this applies to your case,
Speaker 1: And he also kept writing to us. And then around
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, I had been working on a shaking baby
Speaker 1: s and germ case, a different one, and had been
Speaker 1: learning all about the science or lack thereof, and I
Speaker 1: decided to go meet Zav And it was hard to
Speaker 1: walk away from him. She had to help me. But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: like it's just it's a testament to who I am.
Speaker 1: It's a testament to the father that I was, to
Speaker 1: the son that I was, to the cousin that I was,
Speaker 1: to the big brother that I was. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I just appreciate her seeing that. And you know, not
Speaker 1: too much has changed. I'm still Karen. I still love kids,
Speaker 1: I still you know, have a zestful life, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm hoping to be in that role again. Well,
Speaker 1: it looks like, you have that chance now, But how
Speaker 1: did that come about? What was the strategy that brought
Speaker 1: him home? From our perspective, the beautiful things about Zav's
Speaker 1: case was he had always been so consistent, right, he
Speaker 1: had just always said she fell in the shower. I
Speaker 1: never did anything to intentionally deliberately harm her in some
Speaker 1: kind of way. And all of the laywitness evidence was
Speaker 1: that he was this great, gentle, loving person and caretaker
Speaker 1: and father, And so we knew this really turned on
Speaker 1: the medical So this was all about getting new or
Speaker 1: the same original medical experts. So one of the first
Speaker 1: people I approached was doctor Ryber, who had done the autopsy,
Speaker 1: and I asked him if he would be willing to
Speaker 1: take another look. I knew a lot of the science
Speaker 1: around pediatric head injuries had evolved and changed, and especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to short falls, and eventually he agreed
Speaker 1: to do that, which was amazing. I also got another
Speaker 1: independent forensic pathologist who had never looked at the case,
Speaker 1: doctor Judy Melinik, asked her to do just a clean,
Speaker 1: independent review based on what we now know. We got
Speaker 1: a skull fracture expert, doctor Roger Hout, who had been
Speaker 1: doing all sorts of experiments with pig skulls. Actually, so
Speaker 1: doctor Rybert, in a lot of ways, was really the
Speaker 1: key piece, especially in terms of the District Attorney's office's
Speaker 1: view of the case. He eventually wrote a declaration that
Speaker 1: explained why he'd felt like he had to say this
Speaker 1: was shaken baby syndrome in two thousand and one, in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, and why now he would say
Speaker 1: that it's consistent with a short fall, and more so
Speaker 1: than shaking, because you know, as it turns out, the
Speaker 1: forces from human shaking aren't nearly what we thought they were,
Speaker 1: and the forces from falls are much greater. And so
Speaker 1: he wrote this beautiful declaration that explained this whole trajectory
Speaker 1: and what has changed and why it has changed. The
Speaker 1: way he teaches, the way he practices, the way he
Speaker 1: does his autopsies, and the way he would have mannered
Speaker 1: and given an opinion on this case. And now i'd
Speaker 1: like to quote doctor Ryber's very powerful statement, and just
Speaker 1: for context, there are only three ways that an autopsy
Speaker 1: can be categorized natural causes, homicide, or undetermined. So this
Speaker 1: is what doctor Rybers said. Quote. While the consensus view
Speaker 1: at the time of the autopsy, which I shared, led
Speaker 1: to a conclusion that the manner of death was homicide.
Speaker 1: The current reassessment has led me to conclude that accidental
Speaker 1: injury cannot be excluded, and therefore the manner of death
Speaker 1: should be considered as undetermined. End quote. Wow, I mean
Speaker 1: it takes guts to admit when you were wrong, especially
Speaker 1: when the stakes are so high, and we've seen so
Speaker 1: many other experts that did the opposite right, they just
Speaker 1: really dug in their heel on other cases. So I mean,
Speaker 1: better late than never, I guess you could say, and
Speaker 1: I commend him for that, honestly. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: for doctor Riiber, this was one of the hardest experiences
Speaker 1: of his life. I totally believe he believed what he
Speaker 1: was saying at the time, and the fact that he
Speaker 1: was willing to admit on paper that he was wrong
Speaker 1: is huge and fairly unusual. I think really speaks to
Speaker 1: his character and bravery, and that it wasn't something he
Speaker 1: was trying to deliberately send an innocent person to prison
Speaker 1: or something like that. And our other experts basically all
Speaker 1: said the same. Doctor Greco, the neuropathologist, she wasn't willing
Speaker 1: to do a full review of the case because she
Speaker 1: was retired. But what she did agree to do was
Speaker 1: just look at her own testimony and say what she
Speaker 1: would say differently today. Doctor Greco said, you know, look,
Speaker 1: there's new studies that have come out. We now know
Speaker 1: these findings appear in other things, and I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: that this proves that the child has been shaken. And
Speaker 1: so we had four expert reports, including two from theirinal experts,
Speaker 1: and we presented all of that to the court and
Speaker 1: to the District Attorney's office, and that was in April
Speaker 1: of twenty seventeen. You at the Northern California Insis Project,
Speaker 1: along with the law firm of Kecker, Van Nest and Peters,
Speaker 1: filed this habeas and the District Attorney actually did the
Speaker 1: right thing, which we don't see that often unfortunately, and
Speaker 1: they agreed that the petition for relief should be granted.
Speaker 1: And so on December eighth, twenty seventeen, Sacramento Superior Court
Speaker 1: Judge James Arguayas vacated Xavion's conviction. And even though the
Speaker 1: DA had joined the defense in granting relief, that didn't
Speaker 1: mean this was over. They had forty days to decide
Speaker 1: whether or not to retry or drop the charges. So
Speaker 1: though zav you're in this limbo for forty long days,
Speaker 1: you were finally on the outside for the first time
Speaker 1: in over fifteen years. I just remember saying, good look,
Speaker 1: and then I remember getting out in my paper suit.
Speaker 1: I remember getting dressed, you know, doing all that, and
Speaker 1: then I talked about it before I came home. But
Speaker 1: I wanted hopeyes, chicken and strawberry soda. You know, I
Speaker 1: went without fried chicken for so long, and they're all
Speaker 1: they do is bake it. All they do is bake
Speaker 1: it in a hot bath too. So yeah, it was
Speaker 1: pretty cool. And then on January eighteenth, twenty eighteen, the
Speaker 1: chargers were dismissed. There would be no retrial, and you were,
Speaker 1: at long last a truly free man. Must have been
Speaker 1: one of the best days of your life. It was
Speaker 1: it was I got the call, I think the night before.
Speaker 1: She shout out to coach k that's Carry Tillery who
Speaker 1: works for Kecker, Vanessa and Peters. I had an awesome
Speaker 1: team and now they even awesome family too. My team
Speaker 1: understood how much I did not want to stay in
Speaker 1: my hometowning in Sacramento, just because you know, my PTSD,
Speaker 1: you know, paranoia, you know, living out here, it just
Speaker 1: didn't sit well with me. And I was fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to live in a Bay Area with one of my
Speaker 1: legal team members for about four years. Talk about walking
Speaker 1: the walk. Not only did your legal team free you,
Speaker 1: they took you in to make sure that you got
Speaker 1: back on your feet. So what did that look like
Speaker 1: in the short and even medium or long term. I
Speaker 1: had a few few different jobs out there. I was
Speaker 1: a janitor, diswasher, and ultimately I settled up on to
Speaker 1: being a delivery driver. And you know, during that time
Speaker 1: also I got connected with another organization, Exonerated Nation, that
Speaker 1: helped me with my speakings, which in turn was counseling,
Speaker 1: which in turn, you know, like I said, just helped
Speaker 1: me not so much live inside of my head. I
Speaker 1: guess I was able to, you know, travel thanks to NCIP,
Speaker 1: and I've done, you know, numerous speakers here and there.
Speaker 1: I understand you were involved with other exonres and lobbying
Speaker 1: California to provide more resources to exonrees and in your case,
Speaker 1: I know it took some time, way longer than it
Speaker 1: should have, but eventually you were awarded compensation from the
Speaker 1: state of California in May of twenty twenty two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I would give every single dollar back to
Speaker 1: see my daughter be twenty two this, but it does
Speaker 1: make choices and for surely a little bit easier. Well,
Speaker 1: we're very glad that you're willing to tell this very
Speaker 1: painful story and just to let people know what kind
Speaker 1: of injustice can happen in our system. People need to
Speaker 1: hear it. They need to hear it, and they need
Speaker 1: to get angry and active about it. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: like I say all the time, you know, this could
Speaker 1: have been anybody's situation. Male, female, didn't matter to age,
Speaker 1: really didn't really matter the race. Because the simple fact
Speaker 1: that I'm a parent doing parent duties. It's really scary,
Speaker 1: and I want people to feel scared. None of us
Speaker 1: want to believe that these awful tragedies can happen, but
Speaker 1: they can and they do. We have the science now,
Speaker 1: and I hope we're getting this across to our audience. Now.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you like our wonderful audience to do.
Speaker 1: For surely, just support a cause that matters to you.
Speaker 1: Support this if it matters to you. Also, just educate yourself.
Speaker 1: Educate yourself. And know that one life matters, one life matters.
Speaker 1: So yeah, just try to donate if you can't say
Speaker 1: no on the California Instance Project or organization similar to
Speaker 1: it to help save a life. That's the Northern California
Speaker 1: Innocence Project. They do amazing work, folks. This is the
Speaker 1: living proof of it, and we'll have a link to
Speaker 1: them in our bios. You can donate, get involved, learn
Speaker 1: more about other Exon reads they've helped. And now we
Speaker 1: come to the final segment of our show. Everyone knows
Speaker 1: it's called closing Arguments, And first of all, thank you Zav,
Speaker 1: thank you Paige for coming on the show and sharing
Speaker 1: this powerful, moving and important story. And now I'm going
Speaker 1: to turn my microphone off, kick back in my chair,
Speaker 1: my headphones on and my eyes closed and just listen
Speaker 1: to anything else you want to share with us. So, Paige,
Speaker 1: why don't you start us off and then we'll let's
Speaker 1: a have the last word. I think it's really important
Speaker 1: that we all be willing to admit what we don't know,
Speaker 1: what we're wrong about, or what we thought we knew
Speaker 1: that we didn't and look back at the things we
Speaker 1: think are true and have evidence for and actually track
Speaker 1: what is the evidence. And I don't think anybody was
Speaker 1: doing anything wrong in the first place. But when it
Speaker 1: switched from the idea that shaking could cause these things
Speaker 1: to the idea that you can diagnose shaking, you can
Speaker 1: infer violence and violent intentional trauma from findings that we
Speaker 1: now know happen without intentional trauma. I think it's time
Speaker 1: for us to really reckon with that and look back
Speaker 1: at all of the cases that have gone wrong. We
Speaker 1: need to fix that in some kind of way. And
Speaker 1: there's you know, there's people in prison still, there's people
Speaker 1: on death row. There's also people continuing to get accused,
Speaker 1: and there are also I want to be totally clear,
Speaker 1: of course, their children getting abused, and we also need
Speaker 1: to protect those children. But that doesn't excuse breaking up
Speaker 1: families where abuse isn't happening, or sending people to prison
Speaker 1: where there isn't actually any reliable evidence of abuse, and
Speaker 1: in fact, there is very reliable evidence that the child
Speaker 1: was sick or had an accident. And you know, instead
Speaker 1: of I think maybe worrying about what's going to happen,
Speaker 1: if we admit we're wrong, we can focus on all
Speaker 1: the lives we can help if we can just admit
Speaker 1: that we were all trained wrong, we all believed something
Speaker 1: that's turned out to not be true. If we can
Speaker 1: just flip that lens a little bit to make sure
Speaker 1: that people can be as brave as doctor Riber and
Speaker 1: can look back and say I wouldn't say the same
Speaker 1: thing today. Even just that would be huge. I would
Speaker 1: just like to say thank you for this opportunity, and
Speaker 1: I would just jill anyone and everyone in the situation
Speaker 1: or fighting for this cause to just be the lighthouse,
Speaker 1: remain that positive light and keep shining and keep shining
Speaker 1: no matter what, no matter what the storm is, no
Speaker 1: matter what's you up against, keep shigning and being at Lahouse.
Speaker 1: Thank you again for this opportunity. Thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to Wrongful Conviction Special Thanks to our amazing production team
Speaker 1: Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea, Jeff Clyburne, and Kevin Wordis with
Speaker 1: research by Lalla Robinson. The music in this production was
Speaker 1: supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Make
Speaker 1: sure to follow us on Instagram at Rawful Conviction, on
Speaker 1: Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction,
Speaker 1: as well as at Lava for Good On all three platforms.
Speaker 1: You can also follow on TikTok and Instagram at its
Speaker 1: Jason Flam. That's it's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is a
Speaker 1: production of Lava for Good podcasts in association Signal Company
Speaker 1: Number one. The