Abstract

Excerpted From: Maitreya Badami, Preventing and Correcting Wrongful Convictions for Abusive Head Trauma Using the California Racial Justice Act, 20 Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties 383 (November, 2024) (94 Footnotes) (Full Document)

On an ordinary morning, November 24, 2001, 18-year-old Zavion Johnson was giving his daughter Nadia, four months old, a bath. Mr. Johnson, by all accounts a loving and attentive young father, accidentally dropped Nadia while bathing her, and she hit her head on the bathtub. Although she immediately cried, she was able to be soothed easily. Hours later, she lost consciousness and Mr. Johnson called 911. Emergency personnel were able to revive her temporarily, but she never regained consciousness at the hospital. Although she showed no other outward signs of injury, Nadia had a small red mark on her forehead.

Doctors observed three specific medical findings in Nadia that they believed, at that time, could only occur in response to violent shaking. Those findings, known as “the triad,” were: brain swelling, intracranial bleeding, and damaged blood vessels in the eyes. Many medical professionals at that time believed it was impossible for the short fall Johnson had told them about to produce the findings that doctors equated with violent shaking. At the time of Nadia's death, “it was generally accepted that, in the absence of a major motor vehicle accident or fall from a multistory building, the triad was caused primarily or exclusively by shaking.”

In December 2001, on the day of Nadia's funeral, police arrested Johnson and charged him with second-degree murder for Nadia's death. A year later, on December 12, 2002, Johnson was convicted. Johnson's conviction was based almost entirely on the testimony of medical experts on the basis of Nadia having presented with the “triad” of symptoms. They each concluded that Nadia had been violently shaken--that she was a victim of what was commonly known as ““Shaken Baby Syndrome” (SBS) and is currently more frequently referred to as ““Abusive Head Trauma” (AHT). Despite multiple witnesses who testified that Mr. Johnson was a loving and calm father, the jury believed the medical experts and convicted Johnson of causing his baby daughter's death based entirely on the SBS/AHT diagnosis. The Sacramento Superior Court sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Many years later, in light of new scientific evidence, some of the very same experts who had testified against Mr. Johnson at his trial submitted sworn statements in support of his exoneration. In 2017, after over 16 years in prison for a murder that did not happen, Mr. Johnson was exonerated; and the State of California awarded him $818,720 in statutory compensation for the more than 16 years taken from him in wrongful incarceration.

Like so many of those wrongfully convicted, Mr. Johnson is African American. While there is no way precisely to confirm what effect those demographic factors had in his case, studies examining emergency room referrals to criminal investigation for child abuse, medical forensic testimony in general, and forensic pathologist conclusions regarding cause of death in infant death cases have all demonstrated that implicit racial bias plays a role in those moments along the journey toward a criminal accusation for AHT. Those findings support the hypothesis that Mr. Johnson's race may well have played a factor in his wrongful accusation and conviction.

The purpose of this article is to raise awareness of the controversial nature of Shaken Baby Syndrome/“Abusive Head Trauma” (SBS/AHT) charges, to point to literature that suggests that implicit racial bias in medical and law enforcement systems results in the disproportionate charging of this spurious crime against defendants of color, and to provide support in defending such a charge by application of the relatively new California Racial Justice Act (RJA).

This article offers guidance to criminal practitioners in using the RJA as one additional tool in a growing toolkit for preventing or correcting wrongful convictions for SBS/AHT, a medico-legal determination that is the source of enormous controversy in the medical community. Section II of the article discusses the impact in which implicit racial bias appears to operate in several key areas that may contribute to wrongful convictions of people of color for SBS/AHT: (1) referrals to criminal investigation of injured children upon admission in hospital emergency departments; (2) cause of death conclusions reached by forensic pathologists in infant death cases; and (3) opinions and trial testimony by forensic experts, generally.

Section III summarizes the provisions of the RJA and its legislative history, discussing how the California legislature has set out to confront implicit racial bias in criminal cases in the state. Section IV discusses the application of the RJA to theoretical cases at both trial and post-conviction stages of AHT cases, pointing to the remedies the RJA makes available to combat systemic racial bias of the type that appears to operate in emergency room referrals and forensic medical examinations leading to unreliable AHT charges.

The article concludes with concrete suggestions for practitioners to add RJA claims to their defense of clients of color, in any cases in which AHT is alleged.

[. . .]

The RJA gives California practitioners a new and potentially very effective tool in rooting out wrongful allegations of SBS/AHT against defendants of color. The over-representation of BIPOC among those accused of child abuse, particularly when the symptoms may also suggest non-abuse causes, represents the kind of statistical disparity that the RJA enables advocates to highlight in their efforts to end systemic racial biases in criminal law. It is particularly to be hoped that by including RJA discovery motions in their arsenal, advocates for those charged with SBS/AHT will be able to mount more effective defenses to the problematic forensic testimony that rests on a false presumption that the “triad” of findings signals an abusive cause. The enactment of the RJA thus signals a hopeful development in preventing wrongful convictions of people of color in California.

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice at California State University, Chico.