Speaker 1: Amanda Broomfield considered her friend, Heather Murphy and her children
Speaker 1: to be extended family, often caring for Heather's one year
Speaker 1: old daughter, Olivia. On the night of October third, two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, Olivia had been sleeping in her playpen
Speaker 1: at Amanda's house when she woke up, attempted to climb
Speaker 1: out of the playpen, and fell head first on to
Speaker 1: the floor. Although she initially seemed fine, within two hours,
Speaker 1: she became unresponsive and later died at the hospital of
Speaker 1: a skull fracture and brain bleed. The medical examiner opined
Speaker 1: that the injuries weren't consistent with a playpen fall. In
Speaker 1: cases of the accidental death of a child, authorities often
Speaker 1: assume abuse and typically attributed to the last person to
Speaker 1: care for the child. In this tragic accident, that person
Speaker 1: was Amanda Broomfield, who was charged with multiple counts, including
Speaker 1: first degree murder ignoring a head injury in a different
Speaker 1: stage of healing. The medical examiner said that the injuries
Speaker 1: were of a verity, they could only have come from
Speaker 1: abuse or a car accident, and the state said that
Speaker 1: Olivia was too young to have been able to climb
Speaker 1: out of the playpen. Amanda's expert witnesses were barred from
Speaker 1: testifying due to untimely disclosure to the prosecution. Without expert
Speaker 1: testimony to refute the state's case, and with the added
Speaker 1: pressure of national attention, in part because of Amanda's longest
Speaker 1: strange famous father, actor Billy Bob Thornton, Amanda was convicted
Speaker 1: of manslaughter and sentenced to twenty years. It took the
Speaker 1: Innocent Project of Florida, along with the Center for Integrity
Speaker 1: and Forensic Sciences, to finally set her free after nine
Speaker 1: long years. This is Wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrangful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Today's episode, Well, this is going to upset you if
Speaker 1: you are apparent, if you are an uncle or an aunt,
Speaker 1: if you're someone who's ever babysat for someone's child, if
Speaker 1: you're someone who loves children, if you're someone who cares
Speaker 1: about justice. This story is it's important. Unfortunately, there are
Speaker 1: things about it that are typical and then there's some
Speaker 1: really extraordinary things about this case as well. And without
Speaker 1: further ado, I'm going to introduce our two guests today.
Speaker 1: One is going to be familiar to our audience. This
Speaker 1: is someone who I will I put her on a pedestal.
Speaker 1: Kate Judson is the director of the Center for Integrity
Speaker 1: and Forensic Sciences, one of the leading experts in the
Speaker 1: world on shaking baby syndrome. And Kate, I really appreciate
Speaker 1: you being back here again on the show. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me Jason, that's always such a pleasure.
Speaker 1: And with her is the woman who lived through this
Speaker 1: unspeakable tragedy and saga, Amanda Brumfield. Amanda was wrongfully convicted
Speaker 1: and when you hear her story, you're gonna want to
Speaker 1: scream and then you're going to do something about it.
Speaker 1: So Amanda, thank you for being here and for your courage. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. It's an honor to have
Speaker 1: the opportunity. And when I say this story is unique,
Speaker 1: I don't think we've ever covered the story of someone
Speaker 1: who was wrongly convicted who also happens to be the
Speaker 1: daughter of a major movie star. I think that's only
Speaker 1: important to mention because if this could happen to Amanda,
Speaker 1: it could happen to anyone. Of course, Amanda, you were
Speaker 1: born back in the nineteen seventy nine. I don't want
Speaker 1: to give away your age, but it's part of your story.
Speaker 1: And and your father was Billy Bob Thornton, right, correct.
Speaker 1: How was your childhood? My mom and my dad, Billy
Speaker 1: had me, and of course to Los seventy nine, mom
Speaker 1: and Billy split up and I was about one and
Speaker 1: my mom remarried my dad, Jimmy, who then raised me
Speaker 1: until I was eighteen years old, even after he and
Speaker 1: my mom divorced when I was about nine or ten
Speaker 1: in a small small town in Arkansas, graduated with all
Speaker 1: of thirty eight people and just kind of went from there.
Speaker 1: So would you describe your childhood? I mean, when you
Speaker 1: think back on it, was it a happy childhood? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't have a lot, but I didn't
Speaker 1: know that we didn't have a lot. I had great,
Speaker 1: great grandparents who were involved, and a wonderful dad who
Speaker 1: was there for me and and really instilled good values
Speaker 1: and morals and work ethic. So I had a great childhood. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now let's fast forward to two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: where we get to the heart of the story. Amanda,
Speaker 1: tell us about your life at the time this happened
Speaker 1: and your relationship with Heather Murphy and her daughter Olivia.
Speaker 1: My then husband worked for a restaurant chain and one
Speaker 1: of his employees, who was Olivia's mother. She just really
Speaker 1: didn't have much of anyone, and I kind of stepped
Speaker 1: in to take care of Olivia when she was born.
Speaker 1: She was actually my god daughter. We were in small
Speaker 1: town in Florida, just outside of Orlando, and I would
Speaker 1: take care of Olivia three or four nights a week,
Speaker 1: along with my own children, and a lot of times
Speaker 1: Olivia's sister Isabella as well. Heather. Now we're very good friends.
Speaker 1: Were functioned like an extended family. It sounds as wholesome
Speaker 1: as anything could probably be, and it's a scene that
Speaker 1: is probably taking place tonight, and households and small towns
Speaker 1: and cities all across the country, right just friends and
Speaker 1: godparents doing what they can for each other, helping out.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, everything went as horribly wrong as
Speaker 1: anything could go, although, as is typical in these cases,
Speaker 1: at the outset, it wasn't clear what had happened or
Speaker 1: what the extent of the problem was. And it started
Speaker 1: with a fall, as so many of these shaken baby
Speaker 1: cases do. And this is where I like to turn
Speaker 1: to you, Kate, and I'm so glad you're here, because
Speaker 1: it's so important for people to understand this because these
Speaker 1: type of accidents happened children. Fall is just part of
Speaker 1: growing up, but sometimes the consequences are dire. Kate set
Speaker 1: the stage for us what happened that night and how
Speaker 1: did it result in Amanda going to prison? Well, Jason,
Speaker 1: Amanda's case really progressed, like so many of these cases
Speaker 1: involving shaken baby syndrome or abusive head trauma. She was
Speaker 1: a person who had a loving relationship with this child.
Speaker 1: There was no reason to believe she would ever do
Speaker 1: anything to hurt her. And while she was babysitting her
Speaker 1: god daughter climbed out of a pack and play and
Speaker 1: fell onto a hard floor, a carpeted concrete floor. And
Speaker 1: what people sometimes say about these cases, and what was
Speaker 1: said in Amanda's case, is that that kind of a
Speaker 1: fall cannot be fatal or caused very serious injury in
Speaker 1: a child out And that's just not true, even though
Speaker 1: kids fall all the time, and most of the time
Speaker 1: they're not badly injured. In fact, kids have falls that
Speaker 1: we would expect to cause all sorts of problems and
Speaker 1: they walk away from it fine. Some children don't. Some
Speaker 1: children are catastrophically injured from falls that may not initially
Speaker 1: seem serious, and that can be for all different kinds
Speaker 1: of reasons, including reasons we don't know or understand. So
Speaker 1: it's fairly common to have a case like this where
Speaker 1: a child has an accident and then the last person
Speaker 1: caregiving is accused of abusing them, or the person to
Speaker 1: call nine one one is accused of abusing the child.
Speaker 1: And please anyone who hasn't already listened to our series
Speaker 1: Wrangful Conviction jug Science are coverage of shaking baby syndrome
Speaker 1: features our guest today, Kate Judson. She and the host,
Speaker 1: my great friend Josh Dubin, do an amazing job of
Speaker 1: really laying out in clear and concise terms why this
Speaker 1: is just absolutely junk science and we're certainly going to
Speaker 1: get into that today. And Kate, can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the origins of shaken baby syndrome. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: Dr Norman guth Kelch is often credited as being the
Speaker 1: first person to hypothesize about shaken baby syndrome, and Dr
Speaker 1: gut Kelch, in his later years was definitely very concerned
Speaker 1: about the way his hypothesis was being used, and he
Speaker 1: was the first pediatric neurosurgeon in Great Britain, and he
Speaker 1: had these medical findings that are often associated with trauma,
Speaker 1: but the children had apparently suffered no trauma. So what
Speaker 1: we're talking about is what's sometimes called the constellation of
Speaker 1: findings or the triad of injuries that some physicians believe
Speaker 1: allow them to make a diagnosis of shaking, and that
Speaker 1: is subdural hematoma which is bleeding between the brain and
Speaker 1: the skull under the protective coverings of the brain, retinal
Speaker 1: hemorrhage which is bleeding in the back of the eye,
Speaker 1: and cerebral edema or en cephalopathy basically brains dwelling and
Speaker 1: brain dysfunction. And he saw these things and he thought, wow,
Speaker 1: these are normally associated with some kind of a trauma,
Speaker 1: right an accident or abuse, but he was confused because
Speaker 1: there was not external injury. Children often didn't have fractures
Speaker 1: or bruises, so he was wondering if it could be
Speaker 1: because at the time where he was from, in Northern England,
Speaker 1: it was relatively common for parents to discipline naughty children
Speaker 1: by giving them what they often referred to as a
Speaker 1: good shake, and he was very concerned about this, and
Speaker 1: so he started cautioning in his writings against doing that,
Speaker 1: basically saying, we don't really know why these children have this,
Speaker 1: but we think one of the reasons could be that
Speaker 1: they were shaken, and so parents should be told not
Speaker 1: to shake their children, and if a child comes in
Speaker 1: with these kinds of medical findings, doctors should ask the
Speaker 1: parents if the child might have been shaken. He wasn't
Speaker 1: saying that these findings were exclusively diagnostic of shaking, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't saying any of the stuff that I'm later
Speaker 1: like that the last person with the child must have
Speaker 1: shaken the child, or that these findings could only come
Speaker 1: from child abuse. He was just wondering about one possible mechanism.
Speaker 1: And so in his later years he started to right
Speaker 1: and speak, urging a lot more caution, saying, I was
Speaker 1: just wondering about this, and that's how science progresses. We
Speaker 1: come up with a hypothesis, and we learned about it,
Speaker 1: and we test it. And I'm really unhappy with the
Speaker 1: way that this has progressed. Yeah, it progressed. The words
Speaker 1: just stuck right. It's a catchy phrase, and it seems
Speaker 1: like in the hands of people who maybe we're intellectually
Speaker 1: incurious this became something that became a fallback when they
Speaker 1: didn't know what had really happened. And I believe too
Speaker 1: that there's part of us humans that have trouble processing
Speaker 1: the death of a child as being something that can
Speaker 1: happen naturally. So sometimes subconsciously it's easier to blame someone.
Speaker 1: So many of the problems that we see in forensic
Speaker 1: sciences come from an idea that's seductive, right, an idea
Speaker 1: like we can compare these two things and tell without
Speaker 1: error who did the crime, or in these kinds of cases,
Speaker 1: we can look at the medical findings of the child
Speaker 1: and be sure that what happened was a homicide. And
Speaker 1: then if you want to save kids, it becomes so
Speaker 1: easy just keep them away from bad people who will
Speaker 1: hurt them. And that's a much less complicated answer to
Speaker 1: a world in which kids can be hurt by disease
Speaker 1: or congenital illness, or falling down the stairs or falling
Speaker 1: out of their playpens. Okay, So, Amanda, if you could
Speaker 1: take us through this time period, this ten o'clock till
Speaker 1: the ambulance arrived, and what started off as a very
Speaker 1: normal average night with the child that seemed to be
Speaker 1: behaving normally after this fall, if you could just take
Speaker 1: us through the sequence of events, because I think people
Speaker 1: and really learn something from this. That night, Heather and
Speaker 1: I had taken all of the kids, meaning my children
Speaker 1: as well as her too, and we gone to Chick
Speaker 1: fil A. The kids played eight I stopped for ice
Speaker 1: cream for all the kids. Once we got back to
Speaker 1: my house, all the kids played, we could, did baths
Speaker 1: and all that good stuff, and the inn bedtime. Heather
Speaker 1: and I sat in the living room just chit chatting
Speaker 1: like normal, and Olivia was still up. Around ten ten thirty,
Speaker 1: Heather had set the pack and play up and I
Speaker 1: laid Olivia down so she could go to sleep. Shortly
Speaker 1: after that, probably round eleven, Heather went home because she
Speaker 1: had to work the next day. After she left, I
Speaker 1: was just watching TV. I had to get up to
Speaker 1: use the bathroom, and whenever I came back around the corner,
Speaker 1: Olivia was on the side of the playpen, which she
Speaker 1: had tried several times before to climb out the playpen,
Speaker 1: but just hadn't actually climbed out yet. When I saw her,
Speaker 1: I just said her name quickly. I just said Olivia.
Speaker 1: And when I did is when she went off of
Speaker 1: the side of the apen. When I came around the playpen,
Speaker 1: there was nothing to indicate that she had hit her head.
Speaker 1: She had looked to me like she had hit her butt,
Speaker 1: and that's where she had a small cut on her tongue.
Speaker 1: And Dad did it with a paper tawel to make
Speaker 1: sure it was okay and checked her. She was fine,
Speaker 1: and then I let her down so she could play
Speaker 1: for a little while, and she played with some balls
Speaker 1: that we had in a little container there, and after
Speaker 1: some time she laid down the love seat beside me
Speaker 1: and went to sleep. After she had been a sleep
Speaker 1: for a little while, my then husband was on his
Speaker 1: way home and would call just to let me know
Speaker 1: that he was on his way, and I went to
Speaker 1: move Olivia into the playpen so that she could sleep,
Speaker 1: and uh, something just didn't feel right. She just didn't
Speaker 1: feel right. After I got off the phone with him,
Speaker 1: once he came in the door, I knew something was wrong.
Speaker 1: Her breathing steamed shallow, so I had started CPR. He
Speaker 1: called one, and shortly after the first responder got there
Speaker 1: and began CPR himself, and the next thing I knew
Speaker 1: was being at the hospital and them saying that she
Speaker 1: was pronounced stead at the hospital. This episode is underwritten
Speaker 1: by a i G, a leading global insurance company, and
Speaker 1: by Accenture, a global professional services company with leading capabilities
Speaker 1: in digital, cloud and security. Working to reform the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system is a key pillar of the A i
Speaker 1: G pro Bono Program, which provides free legal services and
Speaker 1: other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in
Speaker 1: need as part of Accenture's commitment to racial and civil justice.
Speaker 1: Accenture's Legal Access Program provides pro bono legal services in
Speaker 1: partnership with more than forty organizations, bringing meaningful change to
Speaker 1: people and communities worldwide. So doctors examined Olivia and determined
Speaker 1: that she died of a skull fracture and her brain bleed. However,
Speaker 1: a medical examiner also opined incorrectly that the injuries were
Speaker 1: not consistent with a playpen fall. Right, so we know
Speaker 1: that in cases of accidental death of a child, the
Speaker 1: authorities default is to say that there was abuse, and
Speaker 1: as Kate pointed out, they typically attributed to the last
Speaker 1: person who was around the child. That part would be
Speaker 1: logical if there was actual abuse, but of course in
Speaker 1: this case it was an accident, and you were the
Speaker 1: last person known to be with the baby. The case
Speaker 1: on top of all the other problems due national tension
Speaker 1: because of the fact that you had a father who
Speaker 1: was by now a famous actor, right, And we know
Speaker 1: that has a big impact as well. When the media
Speaker 1: gets involved, it wraps up the messure and it also
Speaker 1: creates an environment in which it's less likely that you'll
Speaker 1: get a fair trial because it's hard to be an
Speaker 1: impartial juror when you've been reading that this woman as
Speaker 1: a monster who killed this baby, right, especially a small
Speaker 1: town with a famous father. But the fact is you
Speaker 1: weren't arrested for quite some time, right, right, It was
Speaker 1: approximately six months later. Olivia passed in October two and
Speaker 1: it was May of two nine, and by now, of
Speaker 1: course it may have two thousand nine who were charged
Speaker 1: with first degree murder, among other things. So now let's
Speaker 1: go to trial. Orange Ossio. A chief medical examner, jan Garavalia,
Speaker 1: determined that Olivia's death was a homicide based on the autopsy.
Speaker 1: She found a three and a half inch fraction on
Speaker 1: Olivia's skull, obleedient swelling in her brain, hemorrhaging behind her eyes,
Speaker 1: and cuts on her tongue. Now, at trial, Garvelia and
Speaker 1: another expert testified that the skull fracture was quote inconsistent
Speaker 1: with an accident ental fall, and could only be caused
Speaker 1: by a car accident or being slammed against a wall,
Speaker 1: proving that Olivia was abused end quote. The state also claimed,
Speaker 1: and this is bananas, that Olivia was too young to
Speaker 1: climb out of her playpen, as if there's an exact
Speaker 1: age when kids can climb out of her playpen, right,
Speaker 1: Kate tell us some of the other things that went
Speaker 1: wrong here at this critical critical stage, Well, there were
Speaker 1: a couple of things about Amanda's case and about Olivia's
Speaker 1: death that really complicate the picture. One of the things
Speaker 1: that we were very concerned about when we looked at
Speaker 1: her case on post conviction was that the medical examiner
Speaker 1: did not preserve, as far as we could ever discover
Speaker 1: a piece of the bone the fracture itself, So there
Speaker 1: was no way to look at the fracture itself to
Speaker 1: tell how old it was. And that's important because Amanda
Speaker 1: had been nowhere near Olivia for the weeks leading up
Speaker 1: to her death. She was visiting her dad, she was
Speaker 1: out of the state, So it was really important to
Speaker 1: know how old this fracture was. And the reasons that
Speaker 1: we had to believe that it was older was that
Speaker 1: upon careful inspection of the tissues that were preserved from
Speaker 1: autopsy that were above and below the fracture, those appeared
Speaker 1: to have blood protinaceous material in them that was older.
Speaker 1: So it indicated that there could have been some older
Speaker 1: injury there, and that made it very likely that the
Speaker 1: fracture was an older fracture. And that's important because a
Speaker 1: child can, and you know, it doesn't happen very often,
Speaker 1: but a child can be critically injured or die from
Speaker 1: a fall like that, from a fall out of a
Speaker 1: playpin onto a hard floor, but a delicate child, a
Speaker 1: child with an injury, is more likely to be seriously
Speaker 1: injured in that kind of a fall. It makes more
Speaker 1: sense that someone who's already hurt would re injure their
Speaker 1: existing injury, So that was really problematic. It was also
Speaker 1: really problematic the way that they tried to place the
Speaker 1: blame upon Amanda. So the story that the state told
Speaker 1: at trial to accused her was really internally inconsistent. The
Speaker 1: timeline was very fuzzy. They said all sorts of things
Speaker 1: that weren't borne out by the physical evidence. I'll give
Speaker 1: you one example. After Olivia had her fall, Amanda sat
Speaker 1: up with her for a little while, and, you know,
Speaker 1: as you might do with a child who's upset, let
Speaker 1: her play, gave her a snack. She had banana and
Speaker 1: some fruit snacks, and those were found in her stomach
Speaker 1: at autopsy. So there's pretty clear physical evidence corroborating what
Speaker 1: Amanda said. And yet at the trial, doctors testified that
Speaker 1: Amanda couldn't have been telling the truth because Olivia had
Speaker 1: a cut on her tongue that would have prevented her
Speaker 1: from eat. But that doesn't make any sense. We had
Speaker 1: in controvertible physical evidence that she indeed eight, but instead
Speaker 1: the subjective speculation of the medical examiner seemed to sort
Speaker 1: of trump that objective evidence and that testimony. It's going
Speaker 1: to hit hard with a jury because why would they
Speaker 1: doubt what this guy that's very learned and educated person
Speaker 1: is saying. Right, one would need to see evidence to
Speaker 1: the contrary in order to have any degree of healthy skepticism,
Speaker 1: even though we know that the standard is supposed to
Speaker 1: be beyond a reasonable doubt. But that's not the way
Speaker 1: it works in courtrooms unfortunately, especially in cases like this,
Speaker 1: is really guilty until proven innocent, and that takes us
Speaker 1: to the defense. Was there any defense expert presented anything
Speaker 1: to counter this false narrative that the medical examiner was
Speaker 1: putting out there? There were two defense experts that were
Speaker 1: in it at the time. My experts had information to
Speaker 1: the effect, for example, the videos showing other children of
Speaker 1: similar age climbing out of play pens and cribs and such,
Speaker 1: of the old injury and what happens with when that
Speaker 1: iron starts to build up, and how that indicates that
Speaker 1: it's an old injury and had to have at least
Speaker 1: been I be least seventy two hours of healing that
Speaker 1: had already started. There was a lot of evidence that
Speaker 1: was critical to my case that my experts were not
Speaker 1: allowed to discuss because it had not been disclosed to
Speaker 1: the prosecution prior to the trial date. Their entire testimony
Speaker 1: wasn't even allowed. Oh so that's a big mistake on
Speaker 1: your defense team side. They had the evidence but couldn't
Speaker 1: present it because they had either forgotten or just botched
Speaker 1: it right. Well, my attorney has changed so many times
Speaker 1: through the public defender's office. My initial attorney had moved
Speaker 1: to another state, and then someone else came on, and
Speaker 1: then the very last attorney was added about ten days
Speaker 1: prior to trial, maybe forteen days before trial. Wow, how
Speaker 1: long was the trial? Four days? Four days for a
Speaker 1: first degree murder case? And there was even a comment
Speaker 1: made on the first day of trial that they were
Speaker 1: sure they could get it wrapped up by the weekend
Speaker 1: because it was Memorial Day weekend and the prosecutor had
Speaker 1: plans for Memorial Day weekend, right, And I'm sure the
Speaker 1: inference there was a new jury members probably want to
Speaker 1: get home too, You probably have some great stuff going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sit very well. So okay, four day trial,
Speaker 1: everyone's trying to get home for Memorial Day. You're facing
Speaker 1: a charge of continue to prison for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life for claim that you know and everybody should
Speaker 1: have known you didn't commit, and the jury goes out.
Speaker 1: What were you thinking at this time? I still had
Speaker 1: this belief in this system that my entire life I
Speaker 1: had believed worked. I went in there knowing that I
Speaker 1: was going home because innocent people don't go to person.
Speaker 1: And when they said not guilty on the first two counts.
Speaker 1: I was like, finally, and then they say guilty on
Speaker 1: the third count, which was manslaughter. My entire world crumbled
Speaker 1: right then because what I knew is a working system failed,
Speaker 1: not just me, but my children. Right then, I mean,
Speaker 1: all I'm thinking is who's gonna raise my daughters? What's
Speaker 1: going to happen? Now you just fall to the deepest
Speaker 1: pit of despair. There's no one who can hear you
Speaker 1: at that point. It's just a lonely dark place. They
Speaker 1: took me too Low Correctional which is in Ocala, Florida.
Speaker 1: It's a maximum security women's facility. And of course other
Speaker 1: than this, I've never been in trouble, arrested anything. So
Speaker 1: I'm going into one of the worst women's prisons in
Speaker 1: Florida and was there maybe two weeks and was placed
Speaker 1: into protective because to be because someone tried to extort
Speaker 1: money from my family because it was a high profile case.
Speaker 1: And then they sent me all the way to Homestead,
Speaker 1: which is basically the end of Florida because of liability reasons.
Speaker 1: They didn't want me close to where family and the
Speaker 1: situations could all be close to the facility. So now
Speaker 1: you're far away from your family. Did you have opportunities
Speaker 1: to get visits while you were there? I did. In
Speaker 1: the beginning. My daughters went to stay with my mom
Speaker 1: because that was just the safest place for them to
Speaker 1: be at the time, and for about the first year
Speaker 1: she was good to bring them, and after that she
Speaker 1: just kind of used that situation to push me out
Speaker 1: and take them under her own wing. So then I
Speaker 1: was isolated for my children too. So for those first
Speaker 1: couple of years, it was nothing but crying in sadness
Speaker 1: and just loneliness. And on my second year, I just
Speaker 1: decided that I wasn't going to allow an injustice to
Speaker 1: completely strip me of who I was, and so I
Speaker 1: just turned it all around. I started taking college classes,
Speaker 1: I started into culinary arts, some exercising and doing things
Speaker 1: that would better myself in my mind and keep me sharp.
Speaker 1: So good that you did, too, because you had a
Speaker 1: lot of work to do, and I think it's safe
Speaker 1: to say you wouldn't be here today if not for
Speaker 1: the fact that you did find that extra gear. Right,
Speaker 1: So you originally denied a new trial. Right direct appeals
Speaker 1: concluded in late two thousand thirteen, and the court didn't
Speaker 1: even have anything else to say. No additional comments. But
Speaker 1: then in two thousand and fifteen, the Innisis Project of Florida,
Speaker 1: and of course the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences
Speaker 1: Welson on the c i f S took on representation
Speaker 1: for you. Did you at this point started to see
Speaker 1: the light at the end of the tunnel? I did,
Speaker 1: And it couldn't have been at a better time, because
Speaker 1: I had hit a point that I was just done.
Speaker 1: It was so hopeless, and I was right on the
Speaker 1: verge of giving up, and then the Inniscence Project showed
Speaker 1: up and it was like everything started to turn around
Speaker 1: right at that moment. Right, So, hey, how did you
Speaker 1: get involved? As many villains as they're on this case
Speaker 1: or a number of heroes as well, and you're one
Speaker 1: of them. So tell us what happened back then take
Speaker 1: us through it. So Amanda's case came to me when
Speaker 1: I was still working at the University of Wisconsin Law School,
Speaker 1: and she had a team of people who believed in
Speaker 1: her innocence, who wanted to see her get exonerated. And
Speaker 1: one of those was actually Dr John Plunkett, one of
Speaker 1: the experts who testified at her trial. He was so
Speaker 1: troubled by this case. He was very upset about the
Speaker 1: way that things had gone, and so I started to
Speaker 1: hear about her case from a number of different folks
Speaker 1: um and as I dug more into it, it was
Speaker 1: so clear that it was so similar to the other
Speaker 1: cases that I had done with innocent clients who'd been
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted with very similar facts, And so I knew
Speaker 1: that we would need a team that included local council
Speaker 1: in Florida and the best person I can think of
Speaker 1: there with Steth Miller at the Innocence Project of Florida.
Speaker 1: So I called him up and we agreed to work
Speaker 1: on this case together. She had appending deadline, so we
Speaker 1: actually had to pull it together fairly quickly. Amanda had
Speaker 1: some family members who were very devoted to her innocence
Speaker 1: who actually drove from Indiana to my office where I
Speaker 1: was working in Wisconsin with boxes and boxes of discovery
Speaker 1: and files and spent probably two days in my office
Speaker 1: scanning everything in And so we started working on basically
Speaker 1: this big brief, and we filed at the beginning of
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, and some of the things in the
Speaker 1: emotion scientific and medical expert witness opinions were cited that
Speaker 1: proved that short distance falls like the one that little
Speaker 1: Olivia took from the playpen, can cause serious injury and death,
Speaker 1: and had led the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to
Speaker 1: warn about the potentially lethal danger of short distance falls
Speaker 1: from playpens, shopping carts, child seats, and high chairs. They
Speaker 1: also presented evidence demonstrating that the States claimed that Olivia
Speaker 1: was too young to climb out of her playpen was
Speaker 1: patently false. They presented a two thousand eleven study examining
Speaker 1: the injuries associated with cribs, playpens, and bassonets of a
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty one thousand, six fifty four children younger
Speaker 1: than two years old. So this is like boom right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What that study showed is that children fall out of
Speaker 1: playpens and cribs relatively frequently, and they relatively frequently do
Speaker 1: it on their own. So fast forward now to two
Speaker 1: thousand and twenty, when Amanda was granted an evidential hearing,
Speaker 1: they could have led to a new trial, right, but
Speaker 1: within days of the hearing that was planned for early September,
Speaker 1: the state prosecutors came along and offered you a deal, Amanda. Right.
Speaker 1: They said that if you stopped pressing your innocence in
Speaker 1: court that you could go home immediately rather than roll
Speaker 1: the dice, I guess, because even if the conviction was
Speaker 1: overturned at the new trial, you could still faced an
Speaker 1: additional twenty years if you've been convicted again. Of course,
Speaker 1: who knows what they could have convicted you up. So
Speaker 1: how did you feel at this point? I mean, here
Speaker 1: you were. Now you've got the fantastic representation, people who
Speaker 1: not only really believe with you, but are eminently qualified
Speaker 1: and had actually done exactly what they set out to do,
Speaker 1: which is proven that you were as innocent as you
Speaker 1: always said that you were. And now here comes this
Speaker 1: Sophie's choice. Really, right, after a certain amount of time
Speaker 1: that I had been incarcerated, I actually became a law
Speaker 1: clerk and started helping others on their cases. And after
Speaker 1: time and time again of seeing just how badly the
Speaker 1: system would railroad people, I just lost all faith in
Speaker 1: justice period. So I just came to a point where
Speaker 1: it's like, what do I do here? And at that
Speaker 1: point my family needed me more than I needed to
Speaker 1: keep the fight going and risk still not being able
Speaker 1: to be there for them because it was no longer
Speaker 1: about right or wrong. It was all about making sure
Speaker 1: that I was doing what was right for family, even
Speaker 1: if it meant that I had to just accept the
Speaker 1: deal and go home. It's not hard for me to
Speaker 1: understand why you did what you did, even as hard
Speaker 1: as it must have been. So now you're free, And
Speaker 1: how has it been now that you've been free and
Speaker 1: home for a year. I have been incredibly blessed because
Speaker 1: I have an amazing husband, I have an amazing support system,
Speaker 1: so I didn't require a lot of external resources to
Speaker 1: get back on my feet. If it wasn't for that,
Speaker 1: I don't know how well I could have fared well. Amanda.
Speaker 1: All I can say is you are a hero to
Speaker 1: me and so many other people hearing your story. Now
Speaker 1: we have what I always say is my favorite part
Speaker 1: of the show. This is the part of the show
Speaker 1: that I think our listeners have come to expect them
Speaker 1: look forward to as well, which is called closing arguments.
Speaker 1: And closing arguments works like this. I thank you both again,
Speaker 1: Kate Judson and Amanda Brumfield for being here and taking
Speaker 1: your time out to share this very very important story.
Speaker 1: And then I'm going to kick back in my chair,
Speaker 1: turn my microphone off and leave my headphones on and
Speaker 1: just listen. Kate. I'll due respect to you, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna say the best for last, and that's Amanda. She's
Speaker 1: the star, and we're going to let you share whatever
Speaker 1: else you want to share with our audience and with me,
Speaker 1: and then you can just pass the mic off to Amanda,
Speaker 1: and that's how we'll close out the show. Well, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I haven't gotten a chance to
Speaker 1: do yet is saying Amanda's praises. Amanda's story getting out
Speaker 1: there is I'm sure going to help others, But Amanda
Speaker 1: has already helped others. When she was inside the walls
Speaker 1: and she was helping in the law library as a
Speaker 1: law clerk, I know that she was helping other women
Speaker 1: with their cases, and in fact, she was a big
Speaker 1: part of why another one of our clients came to
Speaker 1: us and was also freed right around the same time.
Speaker 1: And so I know that Amanda has directly helped lots
Speaker 1: more people than I know about. But I can point
Speaker 1: to at least one person who's free today in part
Speaker 1: because of her advocacy. And I'm just so impressed by
Speaker 1: what she's been able to do since she's been out.
Speaker 1: I know not from personal experience, but from talking to
Speaker 1: other folks who have been released, how very, very hard
Speaker 1: it is. But she's handling it with such strength and grace,
Speaker 1: and I am so impressed. And what I would also
Speaker 1: like people to know is that there are still accusations
Speaker 1: being made under this same paradigm, under the same hypothesis,
Speaker 1: and they're happening all the time. And while it's true
Speaker 1: that children are abused, and that children can be seriously
Speaker 1: injured or killed because of abuse, it's also true that
Speaker 1: abuse can be misdiagnosed with absolutely tragic consequences. No tragic
Speaker 1: because an innocent person can go to prison like happened
Speaker 1: to Amanda. An innocent person can end up on death row,
Speaker 1: as has happened to um some of the other folks
Speaker 1: on Who's Behalf we advocate, And even if someone doesn't
Speaker 1: go to prison, it can tear families apart as it
Speaker 1: works its way through both the criminal justice system and
Speaker 1: the child custody system. The other thing is that if
Speaker 1: a child is ill and their misdiagnosed as haven't been abused,
Speaker 1: they don't get the treatment for their illness that they
Speaker 1: should get, or it's delayed, and so it's critically important
Speaker 1: that we re examine the way we look at these
Speaker 1: cases and the incredible power that we allow a small
Speaker 1: collection of doctors to have over people's lives. Amanda, First,
Speaker 1: I just want to say I'm incredibly humbled and grateful
Speaker 1: to even have the opportunity to get this word out
Speaker 1: and to be a part of something as big as
Speaker 1: an innocence movement like this. My biggest hope is that
Speaker 1: people will start to pay attention and not just allow
Speaker 1: media to determine how they see someone. That's how a
Speaker 1: lot of wrongful convictions happened. We don't use our own intuition,
Speaker 1: in our own minds to see what is real and
Speaker 1: what it's not. Instead, we're just quick to convict in
Speaker 1: our own minds and our own hearts, not knowing the
Speaker 1: circumstances or the facts, and just believing in theatrics and
Speaker 1: oh well, it must be right because it was on
Speaker 1: the news. We have to stand on our own feet
Speaker 1: and we have to listen. If it was not for
Speaker 1: the Innocence Project, if it wasn't for Kate, if it
Speaker 1: wasn't for Seth Melissa. In the beginning, Christa, everyone every
Speaker 1: step of the way worked so hard to get me home,
Speaker 1: and as much as it pained me to have to
Speaker 1: accept a plea, at the same time, we still one
Speaker 1: because now I can be out here and help someone
Speaker 1: else to not end up in this same situation, and
Speaker 1: I can be a voice for somebody who may not
Speaker 1: have one. Thank you for listening to ronfl Conviction. I'd
Speaker 1: like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden,
Speaker 1: Jeff Clyburn, and Kevin Wards, with research by Lila Robinson.
Speaker 1: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 1: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast,
Speaker 1: and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at
Speaker 1: Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also
Speaker 1: follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason
Speaker 1: flop ralevul Conviction is the production of Lava for Good
Speaker 1: Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one