Speaker 1: On December twenty seventh, two thousand and two, Jennifer del
Speaker 1: Prete was working at a daycare facility in Romeoville, Illinois.
Speaker 1: One of the children in her care, a nearly four
Speaker 1: month old girl, was struggling to breathe and was nearly
Speaker 1: limp del Prete claimed to have given the infant a
Speaker 1: slight shake to rouse her, in addition to a few
Speaker 1: pats in case anything was launched in her throat. As
Speaker 1: the child's condition deteriorated, Jennifer called nine to one one
Speaker 1: and reported that the child was not breathing and had
Speaker 1: no pulse. Paramedics were able to restart the little girl's heart,
Speaker 1: but she remained unconscious. Cat scans revealed recent as well
Speaker 1: as older bleeding within the coverings of the brain. A
Speaker 1: few days later, retinal hemorrhaging appeared as well, and physicians
Speaker 1: concluded that the child's injuries were the result of violent
Speaker 1: shaking at the hand of her most recent caregiver, Jennifer
Speaker 1: del Prete, who was charged with child battery, but just
Speaker 1: over ten months later, the child died and the charge
Speaker 1: was upgraded to murder. At trial, the state's four experts
Speaker 1: made their case that the evidence of the most recent
Speaker 1: brain bleed had to have been the result of violent shaking,
Speaker 1: while the evidence of older bleeds must have meant that
Speaker 1: the abuse was ongoing. It would seem unlikely that all
Speaker 1: these medical professionals would have missed some other lingering medical condition, right,
Speaker 1: but this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Today we have a shaken baby prosecution which there appeared
Speaker 1: to be warning signs that this young infant girl was sick,
Speaker 1: but the cause was just missed before it was too late,
Speaker 1: and instead her death was mistakenly attributed to alleged abuse
Speaker 1: at the hand of our guest today, Jennifer del Preet.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 2: Well, hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: You're very welcome and joining us to help tell this story.
Speaker 1: Is Jenny's a pellet counsel from Blagan and Garvey, Pat Blagan, Pat,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Now he became familiar with SPS shaking baby syndrome because
Speaker 1: of this case, and we've covered this multi hypothesis on
Speaker 1: wrongful Conviction junk Science with our host Josh Dubin and
Speaker 1: the executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic
Speaker 1: Science as Kate Judson, who will join us later to
Speaker 1: talk about how it relates to Jenny's prosecution. Now, back
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one, when this hypothesis was first posited
Speaker 1: by doctor Dorman guth Kelch, he was searching for the
Speaker 1: cause of these findings brain bleeds, retinal bleeds, and brain
Speaker 1: swelling that were being observed in infants who were either
Speaker 1: deceased or were struggling to survive, and he thought that
Speaker 1: maybe these findings could be the result of the bridging
Speaker 1: veins of the brain and eyes being severed by the
Speaker 1: acceleration and deceleration of violence shaking. Does anyone know how
Speaker 1: this went from a simple hypothesis to a widely or
Speaker 1: almost universally accepted but not yet exposed junk science that
Speaker 1: has ruined so many thousands of lives.
Speaker 3: I don't think he ever intended it to be that way.
Speaker 3: I think he just wanted parents in England to maybe
Speaker 3: stop handling their children so roughly. But he wasn't saying,
Speaker 3: oh my god, these things are diagnostic of this. But
Speaker 3: I think it's the difference between the old way that
Speaker 3: medicine operated, Like you know, medical students and doctors were
Speaker 3: taught Hey if you find these things, then the answer
Speaker 3: is x, this is what the patient has. In more
Speaker 3: recent years, there's been a move to what they call
Speaker 3: evidence based medicine, and.
Speaker 1: With that shift came folks who found, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: a growing list of eighty one non traumatic medical conditions
Speaker 1: that can cause these findings in addition to traumatic causes
Speaker 1: the car wrecks or even short falls. And increasingly studies
Speaker 1: find that if shaking could be the cause that we should,
Speaker 1: we almost must expect to see some other very specific injuries.
Speaker 2: Many cases will also have occipital bone samach, the neck bone.
Speaker 1: We now expect to see a spinal injury if we
Speaker 1: can even begin to suspect violence shaking. But before you
Speaker 1: had to know any of this stuff, of about SBS,
Speaker 1: shake and baby Singer, we'll call it SBS. Jenny, what
Speaker 1: was your life like and how did you decide to
Speaker 1: get involved in childcare.
Speaker 2: I come from a middle class family living in the
Speaker 2: Southwest suburbs off of Chicago. I was babysitting since I
Speaker 2: was ten, and I had my daughter at eighteen. But
Speaker 2: I was a good mom and I started babysitting so
Speaker 2: I could still be with my daughter and I would
Speaker 2: bring her with. I just really have a passion for children.
Speaker 2: They just love me, and I just get along with
Speaker 2: them a lot. I get along with them more than adults.
Speaker 1: You eventually had a second kid, too, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have two children. I have a daughter, Tia,
Speaker 2: she's thirty three, and I have a son, Draven, he's
Speaker 2: twenty five.
Speaker 1: I understand you are a very involved mom. You participated
Speaker 1: as a room mom at your daughter school. In addition
Speaker 1: to babysitting. You work part time at a library. And
Speaker 1: that's how things went for a while until a friend
Speaker 1: of your is another one of the room moms at school,
Speaker 1: Gleanne Care, gave you a new opportunity.
Speaker 2: Gleanne wanted to bring in more income, bought a home
Speaker 2: in Romeoville that was a daycare already. She remembered me
Speaker 2: working with children back in the room mom days and
Speaker 2: thought of me, so she asked me if i'd work
Speaker 2: at the daycare. But I didn't want to leave the
Speaker 2: library because I loved it, so I did both.
Speaker 1: And what about the family who we're going to refer
Speaker 1: to as the z family and the infant in this case, Iz,
Speaker 1: From what I understand, you had only known her for
Speaker 1: about the final eight weeks of her nearly four month
Speaker 1: long or short life. But you spent a great deal
Speaker 1: of time with her, feeding her, getting to know her idiosyncrasies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was very She would cry a lot. She
Speaker 2: seemed like she was in pain. So we went and
Speaker 2: talked to the mom a few times and told her
Speaker 2: maybe she has acid reflox. You should, you know, look
Speaker 2: into that and get her what she needs, because she
Speaker 2: was very, very, I would say, touchy, just cried a lot.
Speaker 1: I also read from the trial that Glenn had testified
Speaker 1: that he z the baby would often clench her fists
Speaker 1: after she ate, unusual for a baby, right, And it
Speaker 1: was later confirmed that there was evidence that she was
Speaker 1: having seizures. But all of these red flags had gone unnoticed.
Speaker 1: In addition to another glaring detail, what.
Speaker 3: Was not noticed at the time, even though you know
Speaker 3: the pediatrician visits they had been measuring the head circumference,
Speaker 3: was the head grew at an abnormally fast rate, which
Speaker 3: can be a sign of a chronic subdural hemotoma, meaning
Speaker 3: a bleed in the brain. It's one of the reasons
Speaker 3: why they take those kind of measurements. Brain bleeds are
Speaker 3: not uncommon at birth, and they're not always dangerous, but
Speaker 3: they do want to monitor them.
Speaker 1: What was missed by the doctors before and after, and
Speaker 1: was absent a trial as well, was that IS's head
Speaker 1: circumference went from the fiftieth to the ninetieth percentile in
Speaker 1: just ten weeks.
Speaker 3: You know, our belief is that's the old brain bleed
Speaker 3: probably existed at the time the head was growing too fast.
Speaker 1: Eventually, it turned out that these older brain bleeds were
Speaker 1: likely present before Jenny had even met the child, and
Speaker 1: were likely ongoing through the tragic end of her incredibly
Speaker 1: short life, which happened during that sleepy week between Christmas
Speaker 1: and New Year's when the whole world basically grinds to
Speaker 1: a hall. It was December twenty seventh, two thousand and two.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was the only one scheduled to work. Leanne
Speaker 2: had to go out of town for Christmas. It was
Speaker 2: a great week. It was the first week ever in
Speaker 2: my life as a single mom of two kids, and
Speaker 2: I paid for everything in cash for Christmas. It was
Speaker 2: a very good time in my life. I was about
Speaker 2: thirty four and I was doing well on my own
Speaker 2: for once.
Speaker 1: And what do you remember from the time you arrived
Speaker 1: at the daycare that day, so I.
Speaker 2: Got there and the Ze family came too. She had
Speaker 2: to work, I guess, but we didn't know that at
Speaker 2: the time that the baby was sick. She had a
Speaker 2: fever on Christmas Eve and went into the hospital. I
Speaker 2: wasn't aware of that. She brought me some medicine, said
Speaker 2: she was sick, some amoxicillin, the pink stuff, and I
Speaker 2: didn't think anything of it. Babies gets sick all the time.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that a maxicillan taken along with
Speaker 1: gas relieve medication can trigger seizures. So there were just
Speaker 1: so many things potentially happening inside this poor little girl,
Speaker 1: So please continue.
Speaker 2: Well, the mom was a little bit rushed, so she
Speaker 2: was kind of running in with the kids, and she
Speaker 2: told me to give her this medicine. At one I
Speaker 2: put it in the fridge and she didn't say anything
Speaker 2: else about it. I don't know if it was an
Speaker 2: ear infection or cold. So I just took the kids.
Speaker 1: And as I understand it, you had your hands full
Speaker 1: that day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I have two five year olds, a four
Speaker 2: year old, and a three year old all around me.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's a full squad. And as you said
Speaker 1: later to police and repeat it consistently ever since. Is
Speaker 1: that while trying to care for all of these other kids,
Speaker 1: you had fed iy and put her down for a nap,
Speaker 1: and when she awoke around noon, you set her on
Speaker 1: the couch, made a bottle, and when you returned you
Speaker 1: found that she was struggling to breathe. Now, according to police,
Speaker 1: you never said that you had vigorously shaken her, but
Speaker 1: you said you had given her a slight shake to
Speaker 1: try to rouse her. Then you checked her throat for
Speaker 1: a blockage and gave her a pat on the back.
Speaker 1: And soon her condition worsened.
Speaker 2: And I called nine one one. They asked me to
Speaker 2: do CPR, which I did. They came in within minutes
Speaker 2: and they took over and she went off to the hospital.
Speaker 2: I had to stay there with the kids.
Speaker 3: So the baby goes to Saint Joseph's Hospital and the
Speaker 3: administer of epinephrine, they do get the heartbeat restored. They
Speaker 3: start doing X rays and the sea scans trying to
Speaker 3: find out what's wrong with the baby, and it is
Speaker 3: early on that they find acute, meaning like newer brain bleeds,
Speaker 3: but they also find chronic, meaning older brain bleeds. And
Speaker 3: I think one of the initial treating doctors said something like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: when you see a brain blead like that, you know
Speaker 3: you have to assume it's shaken baby or baby abuse
Speaker 3: or something. They said that the old brain bleed was
Speaker 3: also caused by abuse, even though we don't know anything
Speaker 3: else about it other than there was a brain bleed.
Speaker 1: Right, there was no other information about those older bleeds,
Speaker 1: and as the days passed, the preediatric critical care doctor
Speaker 1: noted some retinal hemorrhage and eventually brain swalling, which just
Speaker 1: confirmed what they believed. While a procedure performed on is
Speaker 1: led findings, it should have again made them question their
Speaker 1: conclusions and their resolve.
Speaker 3: So they ended up doing a burr whole procedure to
Speaker 3: alleviate some of the pressure in the brain and evacuate
Speaker 3: some of the blood. So we had the imaging showing
Speaker 3: the old brain bleeds, but then that was also confirmed
Speaker 3: by this surgery because they evacuated old blood from the brain,
Speaker 3: and they're also seeing evidence of seizures. There's like seizure
Speaker 3: activity that they're noting when the baby's asleep and at
Speaker 3: some other times there was evidence at least from Jenny
Speaker 3: herself and from Gleann Kerr about the cleansing of fists
Speaker 3: and the baby shaking after she ate that perhaps this
Speaker 3: seizure activity was happening before the baby collapsed, and would
Speaker 3: of course give an alternative explanation. But one of the
Speaker 3: doctors who said this must be shaking baby syndrome said, well,
Speaker 3: those seizures were a result of the shaking baby syndrome.
Speaker 3: And that's what I think. One of the things that
Speaker 3: made me realize how dangerous this kind of diagnosis is
Speaker 3: is they really are jumping to the conclusion. They say
Speaker 3: they're not trying to diagnose murder, but they are, and
Speaker 3: they're doing it from very very limited findings.
Speaker 1: So instead of paying mind to these sides that something
Speaker 1: else was clearly going on inside this poor little girl's
Speaker 1: body and had been potentially since birth, the doctors were
Speaker 1: doubling down, sticking to the diagnosis that they had made
Speaker 1: on day one, that they had already relayed to police
Speaker 1: and the Z family on the day I was brought in.
Speaker 2: I called the Z family a few times when I
Speaker 2: got home that day and at least for two to
Speaker 2: three days to find out how she was. They wouldn't respond.
Speaker 2: They didn't answer phone calls, voicemails, nothing.
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Speaker 2: I got a phone call and they asked if I
Speaker 2: could come in for more questioning. I thought I was
Speaker 2: helping them, so I just went in freely without a lawyer.
Speaker 2: Biggest mistake in my.
Speaker 1: Life at this point, with the certainty of most of
Speaker 1: the medical establishment behind them, the lead detective, Kenneth Kroll,
Speaker 1: interrogated you and let's face it. He had a clear agenda.
Speaker 2: The interview goes in steps, which I found out later
Speaker 2: at the evidentiary hearing when Kenneth Crow explained it. First,
Speaker 2: they try to just be your friend, and they told me,
Speaker 2: you know, if you heard her, you could tell us.
Speaker 2: You'll just have to go to parenting classes. I said, no,
Speaker 2: I did not do anything to her. I helped her.
Speaker 2: And then he said, show me with this bear. So
Speaker 2: he gave me a teddy bear and I had to
Speaker 2: show him the steps of everything I did, precautionary wise
Speaker 2: to see what was wrong with her. And then he
Speaker 2: told me I could keep the bear. I don't know
Speaker 2: why I didn't want the bear. Then he leaves me
Speaker 2: in the room. They both do for a long time.
Speaker 2: They do that so you can think about things and
Speaker 2: get stressed. So I sat there and when they came back,
Speaker 2: they told me they talked to a doctor and that
Speaker 2: she had a skull fracture, which she never had a
Speaker 2: skull fracture. They completely lied to me, and I said,
Speaker 2: there's no way she has that. I was with her
Speaker 2: the entire time. She never fell. And I was crying
Speaker 2: by that time because then I felt like they were
Speaker 2: trying to say I did something, and they kept going
Speaker 2: at it and going at it, and I kept crying
Speaker 2: and insisting no, and I think they used things that
Speaker 2: I said against me later they tried to turn the
Speaker 2: around that I said. So that's how the interrogation went right.
Speaker 1: Not only were they lying to you in order to
Speaker 1: try to extract the false confession, but then they skewed
Speaker 1: the innocent things that you had said, in particularly that
Speaker 1: you had given iz eight quote slight shake.
Speaker 3: So as you know that Jenny did not confess to
Speaker 3: shaking the baby, even though they tried to treat it
Speaker 3: as a confession in her trial, and the detective noted
Speaker 3: that the demonstration with the bear or the doll or
Speaker 3: whatever it was was a very minor, slight shake. But
Speaker 3: in the grand jury when they were getting Jennifer and dighted,
Speaker 3: they put in evidence that, you know, the kind of
Speaker 3: shaking necessary to hurt a baby like this would be,
Speaker 3: you know, extremely vigorous and progressive shaking. And then they said,
Speaker 3: did Jenny admit that she shook the baby? Answer yes,
Speaker 3: without any reference to the amount of force of the
Speaker 3: shake or that it was a very minor shake.
Speaker 1: So Jenny, that was February eleventh, two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: when you were indicted for aggravated battery of a child,
Speaker 1: which potentially could put you in prison for sa to
Speaker 1: thirty years, and you spent a long night in jail
Speaker 1: before bonding out, and your family and Cleanne put together
Speaker 1: the retainer for your attorney.
Speaker 2: So for the next year, I had to take care
Speaker 2: of my children and know that I could go away
Speaker 2: for six to thirty years. So that's why I lived
Speaker 2: my life every day. The library was so supportive of
Speaker 2: me that they paid me for I believe two to
Speaker 2: four months after this happened, but I was not allowed
Speaker 2: to work there because it was a public place. I
Speaker 2: also was told by my son's school, who was also
Speaker 2: my daughter's school back in the day, that I was
Speaker 2: not allowed to come on the property anymore. So I
Speaker 2: had to pull them out of school because I was
Speaker 2: on the front page of the town newspapers like I
Speaker 2: heard a baby.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Iz had been released to the care of her
Speaker 1: parents and some home healthcare workers, but she was never
Speaker 1: expected to recover, and she finally passed away tragically on
Speaker 1: November ninth, two thousand and three, and the autopsy was
Speaker 1: performed by a doctor Jeff Harki, who became critical to
Speaker 1: your defense. Actually, later on in the case.
Speaker 3: Doctor Harky performs the autopsy, he does brain sectioning, these
Speaker 3: other things, notably, you know, he says he looked for fractures,
Speaker 3: of course, and didn't find any. By that more in time,
Speaker 3: they wouldn't have been any bruising to look forward, because
Speaker 3: it's almost a year after the baby first collapsed.
Speaker 1: Right, Instead of relying on a fuller picture of the
Speaker 1: child's health from earlier medical records and the CT scans
Speaker 1: and radiology from December twenty seven, two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: a lot of his autopsy report relied on the reports
Speaker 1: of the state's eventual star witness at trial, doctor Emily Flaherty.
Speaker 3: And so eventually he just essentially adopts those findings that
Speaker 3: it was shaking baby Siner more abusive head trauma. Another
Speaker 3: critical piece that I really can't get out of my
Speaker 3: mind is despite doctor Flaherty knowing of the old brain
Speaker 3: bleed the chronics of berylhematoma, she never mentions that in
Speaker 3: her report to the corner. It's obviously a critically important
Speaker 3: issue of the case. I mean, she's not supposed to
Speaker 3: be writing a report saying the things that support what
Speaker 3: she thinks because she thinks of shake a baby syndrome.
Speaker 3: She's supposed to put in all the important medical findings,
Speaker 3: but she left that out and as a result, Harkey
Speaker 3: didn't know about it, and so he calls it a homicide.
Speaker 3: He has since said, if I knew there was this
Speaker 3: old bring blead, I would not have called it a homicide.
Speaker 1: Right to his credit, he was skeptical of the SBS
Speaker 1: hypothesis even back then, but based on Flarerty's selective reporting
Speaker 1: of IS's condition, he wrote in his autopsy report, quote
Speaker 1: multiple organ failure due to anoxic ischemic injuries due to
Speaker 1: abusive head trauma unquote or AHT, and he continued on,
Speaker 1: quote AHT occurred ten to eleven months prior unquote. So
Speaker 1: I mean, looking at IS's body, which had lived, healed
Speaker 1: and then died, how the world does he know of
Speaker 1: the condition of the body ten to eleven months earlier.
Speaker 3: He knows it based on doctor Flaherty's report.
Speaker 1: He also noted no external injuries or trauma, as did
Speaker 1: doctor Flaherty, which should have been an important red flag.
Speaker 3: Experts like doctor Flaherty do not think that's important They
Speaker 3: literally do not think it's important as to whether there
Speaker 3: is bruising or even a red mark on a baby
Speaker 3: who they say is shaken with such force that passerbys
Speaker 3: would know that serious injury was being done to the child.
Speaker 3: They think it doesn't even leave a mark, but have
Speaker 3: no explanation for the common sense question of well why
Speaker 3: wouldn't it.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, we're talking about an adult aggressively
Speaker 1: gripping and shaking a child. Anyone would expect to see
Speaker 1: some bruising, probably some significant bruising at the site of
Speaker 1: the alleged gripping. Right. Nevertheless, they had their declaration that
Speaker 1: this was a homicide and wrenched up the charge to
Speaker 1: first degree murder. Oh my god. In April of two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, do you remember when you got that news, Jenny.
Speaker 2: I was making breakfast for my children, trying to live
Speaker 2: a normal life. I was working at Target by this time,
Speaker 2: and got a call from my lawyer.
Speaker 1: Chuck Chuck Is Charles Brett's your trial attorney.
Speaker 2: I was sitting in my kitchen with my kids trying
Speaker 2: to eat breakfast when you call me. So I had
Speaker 2: to absorb all that and not react because my kids
Speaker 2: were there. And I was trying to just have them
Speaker 2: live a normal life, even though I was terrified.
Speaker 1: So you surrendered yourself and your parents bonded you out.
Speaker 1: As trial approached in February of two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: and rather than going in front of a jury, you
Speaker 1: chose to have your case heard by Judge Carla Alessio polychondriotes. Now,
Speaker 1: what made you opt for a bench trial over a jury?
Speaker 1: Most lawyers are almost always opposed to that.
Speaker 2: If you pull people off the street, they're not going
Speaker 2: to understand all this medical the brain bleeds, the colors.
Speaker 2: I just didn't feel they would comprehend all of that.
Speaker 2: And I've thought a judge was smarter and wiser and
Speaker 2: would understand the medical facts, because I thought that's what
Speaker 2: they needed to focus on here. But they didn't in
Speaker 2: my opinion.
Speaker 3: So you know, they presented the family members of Isazi,
Speaker 3: they presented some of the treating physicians. They presented the
Speaker 3: testimony of Detective Kroll, who put in this supposed confession.
Speaker 1: Right the interrogation in which she said quote slight shake,
Speaker 1: which was good enough for their trickery at the grand
Speaker 1: jury to get an indictment. But even Detective Kroll had
Speaker 1: written in his report that Jenny never confessed to shaking
Speaker 1: the baby.
Speaker 3: But the most important thing they presented was doctor Flaherty.
Speaker 3: I'm K.
Speaker 4: Judson, the executive director of the Center for Integrity and
Speaker 4: Forensic Sciences. In the case of Jenny del Prete, when
Speaker 4: the infant I was admitted to the hospital, scans revealed
Speaker 4: old and new bleeding within the coverings of the brain.
Speaker 4: Those earlier bleeds and their cause were not discovered or
Speaker 4: diagnosed prior to her collapse. Like many doctors at that time,
Speaker 4: doctor Flaherty believed that subdural hemorrhages indicated child abuse. Then
Speaker 4: when blood appeared in IS's retinas several days later, that
Speaker 4: served to confirm doctor Flaherty's beliefs. When she testified at trial,
Speaker 4: she said that those retinal hemorrhages can only happen in
Speaker 4: the case of an acceleration deceleration injury like violent shaking,
Speaker 4: When we now know that those findings can occur through
Speaker 4: shortfalls or underlying medical issues. I already had a history
Speaker 4: of general unexplained discomfort and seizure activity in just four
Speaker 4: months of life. In addition, her head circumference had expanded
Speaker 4: from the fiftieth to the ninetieth percentile in just ten weeks.
Speaker 4: Rapid growth like this is unusual and can predispose a
Speaker 4: child to bleeding within the coverings of the brain or
Speaker 4: signal other problems. It's why that growth is monitored in
Speaker 4: the first place. However, none of this information was considered
Speaker 4: by the doctors who examined iz. Doctor Flaherty went on
Speaker 4: to say that in addition to subdural hematoma, subarachnoid hemorrhages,
Speaker 4: and diffuse injuries, there were parentamal lacerations and contusions. However,
Speaker 4: those injuries were not present, and no other doctor ever
Speaker 4: corroborated that claim.
Speaker 3: I mean she gave what we know is medically wrong
Speaker 3: in accurate testimony. There were no lacerations or contusions, as
Speaker 3: confirmed by all the radiology and the autopsy.
Speaker 1: So not only did she entirely omit the existence of
Speaker 1: the older brain bleed from her reporting and ultimate conclusions,
Speaker 1: which then misled doctor Harkey in his autopsy report, but
Speaker 1: also now she's making up internal injuries that don't exist,
Speaker 1: all while ignoring the complete and total lack of injuries
Speaker 1: you would expect to see on the baby's chest where
Speaker 1: an adult would have had to have gripped the child.
Speaker 1: But the doctor said, it's pretty uncommon to find bruising
Speaker 1: in a case of shaking baby syndrome.
Speaker 3: That's like saying it's uncommon to find bruising in boxing
Speaker 3: or football, Like, oh, really, so.
Speaker 1: I just referenced doctor Harky, who, unbeknownst to the defense,
Speaker 1: was not exactly a proponent of the SBS hypothesis, although
Speaker 1: he's still at least as was evidence in his testimony,
Speaker 1: he still agreed that it was a valid theory. What
Speaker 1: did he say a trial?
Speaker 3: He essentially mirrored doctor Flaherty's conclusions at the trial, but
Speaker 3: because his questioning of shaking baby cinder min this case
Speaker 3: was hidden from the defense, and because his conclusion seemed
Speaker 3: so straightforwardly consistent with doctor Flaherty, they didn't know there
Speaker 3: was any reason to ask him about these kinds of things.
Speaker 1: And to combat the state's witnesses, Jenny's attorney put on
Speaker 1: an expert in pathology and pediatrics, doctor Wayne Tucker, who
Speaker 1: certainly did a more thorough assessment than doctor Harkey. In
Speaker 1: addition to Flarerity's report, he reviewed the medical records, the
Speaker 1: initial CT scans and radiology, police and paramedic reports, pictures
Speaker 1: and the autopsy, and he testified that the gas drops
Speaker 1: in conjunction with amoxicillin can cause seizures. He then concluded
Speaker 1: that IS's CT scan revealed acute and chronic brain bleed,
Speaker 1: as well as saying that he never saw an SBS
Speaker 1: case without bruising, and that IS's injuries occurred eighteen to
Speaker 1: twenty four hours before her collapse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was at home.
Speaker 3: Yes, doctor Tucker did know about the old brain bleed
Speaker 3: but didn't date it properly. The reality is it could
Speaker 3: have happened two or three weeks before the baby collapsed
Speaker 3: at day care, and doctor Tucker's essentially said that it
Speaker 3: was not shaking baby syndrome in a nutshell.
Speaker 1: So then it just comes down to who the judge
Speaker 1: believed on timing more, the state's four consistent experts or
Speaker 1: the one dissenting expert, doctor Tucker. So despite glowing character witnesses,
Speaker 1: including your coworkers, who corroborated IS's history of discomfort, to
Speaker 1: put it moldly, Judge Polychondriodes ultimately sided with the state's experts.
Speaker 2: You look at me, and you look at baby Iz,
Speaker 2: and of course you're going to have heartfelt emotions and
Speaker 2: feel sorry for her. Who wouldn't, so of course you're
Speaker 2: going to lean towards that. If she had not said guilty,
Speaker 2: I feel like she would have too much pressure. She
Speaker 2: didn't want to deal with that.
Speaker 1: And that was March fourth, two thousand and you were
Speaker 1: sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Speaker 2: So March fourth was a horrible day for me. I
Speaker 2: dropped my son off at my best friend's house. It
Speaker 2: was eight almost state told them I'd be back later
Speaker 2: and never came back. My daughter was at a high
Speaker 2: school sleepover function. I was supposed to be there for
Speaker 2: Sunday Family Day and instead the day I was convicted
Speaker 2: was a Friday, so it was not a good day.
Speaker 2: And then they took me in a room in the back,
Speaker 2: took off my blazer because they don't want you to
Speaker 2: kill yourself, so they take off your loose clothes that
Speaker 2: you can hang yourself with. I guess, and I could
Speaker 2: hear all my family crying. I just I did not
Speaker 2: want to live, so I went into shock by the
Speaker 2: time I got to the jail, and I literally fell
Speaker 2: down in the room and I just remember laying there
Speaker 2: in this room and there were officers that came. They
Speaker 2: were all around me and I could see their boots
Speaker 2: because I was laying there. And I remember when officers said,
Speaker 2: what's wrong with her? The other officers said reality that
Speaker 2: they were just sitting there laughing. So that was my
Speaker 2: March fourth. I went into medical for two months. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't eat or talk. My family came to visit me.
Speaker 2: I ended up gathering enough strength to live in medical.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to go to General Pop. And I
Speaker 2: wrote my son a book for his eighth birthday with
Speaker 2: a two inch pencil, and I sent it home so
Speaker 2: they could type it out and create a book for him.
Speaker 2: And when they came to visit, my daughter smuggled the
Speaker 2: book in the jail so that he could open it
Speaker 2: in front of me. And that was my son's birthday.
Speaker 2: Behind plate glass. I finally had enough streth to go
Speaker 2: down to General Pop and I became a tutor and
Speaker 2: I taught women general math and reading skills for a
Speaker 2: long time with a nice nun networked there for the prison,
Speaker 2: named Sister Vivian. Helped me live a better life than
Speaker 2: sitting in a room. She helped me have some motivation
Speaker 2: in there, gave me a purpose and I focused on
Speaker 2: constantly connecting with my children through phone calls and phone
Speaker 2: calls which cost tons of money, so we had to
Speaker 2: do a lot of fundraising at home, and the community
Speaker 2: in Willow Springs and Hickory Hills and Bridge View, they
Speaker 2: just immensely helped me for the whole time, and even
Speaker 2: the church there gave me ten thousand dollars for my lawyer.
Speaker 2: They believed it me too, and we just did the
Speaker 2: first appeal. The first appeal got denied. I honestly thought
Speaker 2: I'd be in there for about a year and I'd
Speaker 2: be home. I never thought in a million years it
Speaker 2: would take this long.
Speaker 1: And your initial appeal was based on the fact that
Speaker 1: there was insufficient evidence to convict you.
Speaker 3: Insufficiency of evidence claims are very difficult to win on
Speaker 3: appeal because there's a very high standard of review, and
Speaker 3: by this point in time, the questioning of shaken baby
Speaker 3: syndrome and the legal community was building, but it was
Speaker 3: not at the state that it is today.
Speaker 1: Right, the first case to even win on the overwhelming
Speaker 1: doubt in the SBS hypothesis was a Wisconsin case, Audrey Edmonds,
Speaker 1: who we are actually going to have on the show
Speaker 1: in a few weeks, but her case didn't come undone
Speaker 1: until two thousand and eight. And here it was in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven in Illinois where your state appeals
Speaker 1: had been denied, first on the insufficient evidence claim and
Speaker 1: later on the ineffective assistance of counsel that you filed
Speaker 1: with a new appellated attorney, Tom Bradstraighter.
Speaker 2: Tom brad Straighter stated somewhere in an interview that he
Speaker 2: is to stay up all night. He couldn't sleep after
Speaker 2: this case. He just felt like something was not right,
Speaker 2: and he in thirty years of practice, this case bothered him.
Speaker 1: The most, and his frustration led him to refer you
Speaker 1: to the Northwestern School of Journalism Medil Innocence Project, and
Speaker 1: those students later made a huge discovery at just the
Speaker 1: right time. But for now, Europe moved on to federal
Speaker 1: court in twenty ten with Pat at Blagen and Garvey.
Speaker 3: So Jenny initially got put in contact with my law
Speaker 3: partner and wife, Jody Garvey, who sort of specializes in
Speaker 3: appeal post conviction and federal habeas corpus work. You know,
Speaker 3: the thing that started us down the road of getting
Speaker 3: Jenny's conviction overturned was my wife's brilliant idea to raise
Speaker 3: the issue of the trial lawyer did not challenge shaken
Speaker 3: baby syndrome under Daubert, meaning the case that says, hey,
Speaker 3: scientific evidence has to be sufficiently accepted in order to
Speaker 3: be admitted in court, and no Illinois case had ever
Speaker 3: said that shake and baby syndrome does not meet the qualifications.
Speaker 1: Of Daubert and Daubert, of course, is the nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: three Supreme Court decision which allowed courts to be gatekeepers
Speaker 1: of what is relevant and reliable expert testimony. So the
Speaker 1: aim was to raise in federal court this issue that
Speaker 1: had not been raised in state court, which is typically
Speaker 1: not allowed. The procedurally defaulted.
Speaker 3: Jody had this brilliant idea because one way to get
Speaker 3: an evidentiary hearing in the federal court is if you
Speaker 3: can establish what's called actual innocence. That means you get
Speaker 3: to raise in the federal court issues that you had
Speaker 3: never raised below.
Speaker 1: And so by establishing actual innocence, you could get an
Speaker 1: evidentiary hearing in federal court. And for the first time
Speaker 1: in Illinois challenged the reliability of the SBS hypothesis.
Speaker 3: And it worked. That's what got us the hearing which
Speaker 3: brought all of this bad science is garbage testimony to light.
Speaker 3: We drew Judge Connelly, who was a very intelligent judge,
Speaker 3: and that was the first step towards Jenny's case getting reversed.
Speaker 1: So this evidentiary hearing in front of Judge Connelly happened
Speaker 1: in December twenty twelve through January twenty thirteen, in which
Speaker 1: over the course of nine days, a number of experts
Speaker 1: testified for the defense, this time including doctor Patrick Barnes,
Speaker 1: who said that Isz's first CT scan depicted a dark
Speaker 1: band between the infant skull and the frontal lobe of
Speaker 1: her brain, which he said constituted old collections fluid. He
Speaker 1: stated further that those chronic collections were at least two
Speaker 1: to three weeks old, but could have existed since birth.
Speaker 1: Barnes said that cortical venus thrombosis or CVT was a
Speaker 1: likely cause of Isa's brain abnormalities. Also, a biomechanical engineer,
Speaker 1: doctor Michael Prang, testified.
Speaker 3: So what doctor Prang and others in that field say,
Speaker 3: and it's undisputed now by the other side to things one,
Speaker 3: there has never been any threshold yet established for how
Speaker 3: hard you have to shake a baby supposedly to tear
Speaker 3: the bridging veanes, which is what the shaking baby proponents
Speaker 3: say is the real injury. Right, You tear the bridging
Speaker 3: blanes and a bunch of blood leaks into the subgirl space.
Speaker 3: So that's important fact number one. Important Fact number two,
Speaker 3: which undercuts years and years of testimony by shaken baby experts,
Speaker 3: is that biomechanical engineers proved with studies that shortfalls and
Speaker 3: especially to a hard surface, creates much more force than
Speaker 3: any shaking back and forth can do. So that's one
Speaker 3: of the things that caused the shaken baby proponents to
Speaker 3: change the name from shaking baby to abusive head trauma.
Speaker 3: And it now causes some of them to say things like, well,
Speaker 3: I think the baby was shaken and then maybe thrown
Speaker 3: on the floor or thrown onto a couch or something.
Speaker 1: And there were even more defense experts, four more in fact,
Speaker 1: including doctors Patrick Lance, Joseph Scheller, Jan Leetzma, and Shahgutis.
Speaker 3: They were fantastic, They put in countless hours and all
Speaker 3: of them telling the truth. They get cross examined for like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're doing this for money, or you're doing this for
Speaker 3: some other reason utter nonsense. As Judge Kennelly found in
Speaker 3: his ruling, they weren't biased at all, They were just
Speaker 3: questioning what clearly was unsound science and unsound medicine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems at least one of the experts
Speaker 1: called by the prosecution had by now come to similar conclusions,
Speaker 1: a biomechanical expert, doctor Rannggarajuan, who said, quote the science
Speaker 1: of biomechanics could not determine the cause of IS's injuries
Speaker 1: and the threshold necessary to produce head injuries in infants
Speaker 1: end quote. So the state's case was imploding and continued
Speaker 1: to do so. There was also another state expert at
Speaker 1: doctor Rouric Adams, who was on the stand trying to
Speaker 1: conduct a demonstration about the injuries on the brain while
Speaker 1: holding the photo of the brain upside down and drawing
Speaker 1: erroneous conclusions. It was just a disaster all around for
Speaker 1: the state and it was about to get worse. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, the students at the Medill Innocents Project
Speaker 1: were also investigating this case. They had done a Freedom
Speaker 1: of Information Act request from the Romeo LPD, which gave
Speaker 1: way to a treasure trove of documents that had never
Speaker 1: been provided to any prior council.
Speaker 2: They were all assigned to different packs, different piles of
Speaker 2: transcripts to go through. And Alex Hampel was a student
Speaker 2: in his twenties at the time. He had his pile
Speaker 2: of papers and he found the letter.
Speaker 3: It's really like a memo that Kroll wrote, but we
Speaker 3: call it the Kroll letter. And just to summarize the
Speaker 3: Kroll letter is Kroll memorializing that doctor Harkey had expressed
Speaker 3: doubts that this was shaking baby syndrome, and of course
Speaker 3: therefore expressed doubts that this was a homicide. And from
Speaker 3: then on we knew we had a very strong Brady claim.
Speaker 1: And I'm just going to quote from this memo from
Speaker 1: Detective Croll to doctor Flaherty right after doctor Harky performed
Speaker 1: the autopsy. Quote, I'm writing to inform you of a
Speaker 1: twist in our case. The pathologist does not agree with SBS.
Speaker 1: A Plainfield Police evidence tech who was president at the autopsy,
Speaker 1: advised that doctor Harky did, in fact question the diagnosis
Speaker 1: of SBS. Looked for fractures in the ribcage and found none.
Speaker 1: Doctor Harkey intends to summon all of IS's medical records
Speaker 1: to see who determined this was SBS. Please call me
Speaker 1: when you have a few minutes to discuss the case, unquote.
Speaker 1: And I've got to imagine that that phone call involved
Speaker 1: some sort of a plan to keep their prosecution on track.
Speaker 2: If Alex Hample didn't see that letter, and I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be sitting here right now. So I give him a
Speaker 2: lot of thanks, and it's like an angel to me.
Speaker 1: So the hearings were reopened in June twenty thirteen, and
Speaker 1: from what I've read, Flaherty and Kroll were bending over
Speaker 1: backwards to cover their asses with the I do not
Speaker 1: recalls that they kept repeating on the stand.
Speaker 2: They recalled it was their safe, safe answer.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, thankfully, Judge Connelly saw through the farce of
Speaker 1: the SBS hypothesis and granted you a new trial, and
Speaker 1: you were released on bond on April thirtieth, twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: released in this sort of limbo to await a potential retrial.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 2: It was a wonderful day, But then I had to
Speaker 2: I wasn't really free. I couldn't leave the state. I
Speaker 2: missed my brother's wedding in California because the judge wouldn't
Speaker 2: let me go. I missed all my nieces and nephews
Speaker 2: births except for one. It's hard to find work, and
Speaker 2: that was still they were talking about a retrial, so
Speaker 2: I was going to go through the whole nightmare over again.
Speaker 1: So your team filed successive post conviction motions in state
Speaker 1: court citing the clear and super relevant Brady material that
Speaker 1: Kroll letter, and after initial denial, the appellate court forced
Speaker 1: hearing and which your trial judge vacated your conviction and
Speaker 1: ordered a new trial in May twenty sixteen. And at
Speaker 1: this point the challenges to SBS prosecutions were continuing to build,
Speaker 1: while fewer and fewer doctors were willing to support this
Speaker 1: faulty hypothesis, although clearly there were still many left for
Speaker 1: the state to scrounge up. While they dragged this along
Speaker 1: for over six long years.
Speaker 2: I felt like Will County just could not admit, okay,
Speaker 2: we were wrong. They just were not going to do that.
Speaker 2: They were going to fight it to the end.
Speaker 1: So finally we come to the fateful day of October fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: I had gotten their expert report, I think the evening
Speaker 3: before that, this new expert report from Bennett.
Speaker 1: And doctor Bennett was the state's new pathologist. So what
Speaker 1: did this report say?
Speaker 3: The report was certainty, not confident at all that there
Speaker 3: was even a homicide here, and was sort of like in, well,
Speaker 3: if this and if that, then maybe you could conclude this,
Speaker 3: which is not really the level of certainty needed to
Speaker 3: advance a crime. But I remember reading it thinking, I
Speaker 3: don't know how they're going to prove their case after this,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to have to talk to the prosecutor
Speaker 3: about this tomorrow morning because this is ridiculous. The prosecutor
Speaker 3: texted me while I was driving to Joliette, said Hey,
Speaker 3: I need to talk to you before court, and she
Speaker 3: was waiting for me in the lobby, meaning like downstairs,
Speaker 3: not even near the north the courtroom.
Speaker 2: So we were just outside in the lobby in front
Speaker 2: of the courtroom and Pat came over and told me
Speaker 2: and my Dadad they were dropping all charges and dismissing
Speaker 2: the case, and I just cried. I said, finally, finally,
Speaker 2: I remember saying that, and then I had to maintain
Speaker 2: my composure because we had to go into court and
Speaker 2: put it on record. The judge had no idea and
Speaker 2: I was kind of overjoyed. I wanted to go skip
Speaker 2: up and I didn't just maintain my composure, and the
Speaker 2: state told her the judge, and the judge looked at
Speaker 2: me like she was shocked, and I said, I know,
Speaker 2: I said, hallelujah. I didn't know what else to say. It
Speaker 2: just came out and I cried, and the judge said
Speaker 2: congrats and good luck to you, and gave me a
Speaker 2: box of tissue, and that was it. It was over.
Speaker 1: We understand that you're currently litigating a civil suit. Obviously, nothing,
Speaker 1: no amount of money, could ever make up for what
Speaker 1: you lost, but we do hope that there's some semblance
Speaker 1: of justice is delivered. Do you have anything in the
Speaker 1: meantime that you'd like to ask of our audience, any
Speaker 1: action they could take.
Speaker 2: I would advise to always have be on camera if
Speaker 2: you're taking care of someone's child, if you have to
Speaker 2: get your own, get a nanny cam, your phone on,
Speaker 2: and just have enough camera on all times, because then
Speaker 2: you would never have to go through this if you
Speaker 2: had proof. So that is a huge thing that I
Speaker 2: would like to go fight to pass a law.
Speaker 1: Jennifer, thank you for that great advice. And now that
Speaker 1: brings us to my favorite part of the show, closing arguments.
Speaker 1: And closing arguments works like this. I'm going to first
Speaker 1: of all, thank each of you for being here and
Speaker 1: helping walk us through this insane saga. It's so important
Speaker 1: and so meaningful, and I tell you how much we
Speaker 1: all appreciate it. And then I'm going to turn my
Speaker 1: mic off, kick back in my chair and just listen
Speaker 1: for anything else you want to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I really wish there were an institutional way
Speaker 3: in the law to get these kind of exoneration claims,
Speaker 3: these you know, innocence claims done faster. You know it is,
Speaker 3: as Jenny has expressed, it is unbelievably traumatic. And I
Speaker 3: would urge well meaning doctors, you are doing good work,
Speaker 3: and you do see a lot of children who are
Speaker 3: actually harmed and abused, But don't let those thoughts overcome
Speaker 3: your logic and your sense of what's right and wrong.
Speaker 3: When you're looking at these shaking babysitroom cases, you think
Speaker 3: you're not diagnosing murder. But when you're coming into court
Speaker 3: and you're saying these things with such certainty, that's what
Speaker 3: you're causing to happen. Here. The medical community does need
Speaker 3: to focus more on evidence based science and not express
Speaker 3: such certainty about things that you know you're not certain about.
Speaker 2: So I just want to address a couple of things.
Speaker 2: What happened to me affected a lot of people, and
Speaker 2: my kids lost me for the time they needed me most.
Speaker 2: My son became an emotional cutter. He scarred from his
Speaker 2: shoulders all the way down to his legs. My daughter
Speaker 2: went through her Niamesh surgery while I was gone. She
Speaker 2: didn't have me there. She ended up in a wheelchair.
Speaker 2: She's overcome that now and doing great, just first place
Speaker 2: skateboarder in the world. But when people go in jail,
Speaker 2: the family goes to jail too, not just a person.
Speaker 2: I think it's sad that people in a high stature
Speaker 2: job like a doctor or an officer detective wouldn't do
Speaker 2: their job I protocol, and would alter things just to
Speaker 2: close somebody's case, just to throw somebody in prison. We're
Speaker 2: in America and we're supposed to be safe. We're supposed
Speaker 2: to believe in justice for all, and I took me
Speaker 2: forever to get justice. I know plenty of people in
Speaker 2: prison that ended their lives they couldn't handle, and I
Speaker 2: considered it once, but I thought about my kids and
Speaker 2: my family, and that love that I had from them
Speaker 2: was enough to get me through that moment not to
Speaker 2: do it, and there was more than one. I'm very
Speaker 2: sad about what happened to is she was someone I
Speaker 2: cared for and I generally loved, and I'm very sad
Speaker 2: for the family. But I'm also sad that they didn't
Speaker 2: believe in me enough, very hurt by that because everybody else,
Speaker 2: everybody else believed in me. So I just I'm grateful
Speaker 2: that I had the strength and the support that I had,
Speaker 2: and the attorneys that I had, and the judges that
Speaker 2: I had, except for Judge Goodie, I'm very grateful I
Speaker 2: had all of them, because I don't think I could
Speaker 2: have done this. I got here to now. I spent
Speaker 2: nine years, one month, and twenty six days in a
Speaker 2: place was full of misery. So now I know all
Speaker 2: kinds of things. I know about prison travesties in there,
Speaker 2: how inmates are treated, and now if I'm alive long enough,
Speaker 2: I could fight for some of these things to be changed,
Speaker 2: and that's my plan, especially the daycare camera think. So
Speaker 2: I just I'm grateful, and I'm also ashamed to live
Speaker 2: in a place and we say justice for all, but
Speaker 2: you have to fight for that justice. It's not just
Speaker 2: handed to you. And you're not innocent till priven guilty.
Speaker 2: You're guilty until proven innocent. I'm just grateful I can
Speaker 2: talk about it now and I survived it, and I
Speaker 2: can educate and hopefully help a lot of people. That's
Speaker 2: my goal for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I want to
Speaker 1: thank our production team, Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea, Lyla Robinson,
Speaker 1: Jeff Clyburn, and Kevin Warris. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
Speaker 1: all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Vlahm. Ravel Conviction is
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one