NJ high court rules shaken baby syndrome testimony unreliable and inadmissible in child abuse cases

New Jersey’s highest court has ruled that expert testimony about shaken baby syndrome is scientifically unreliable and inadmissible in two upcoming trials. The New Jersey Supreme Court found in its Thursday decision that a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome is not generally accepted within the “biomechanical community” and is therefore not “sufficiently reliable” for admission at the trials. But Justice Rachel Wainer Apter said in a strongly worded dissent that the other justices put more weight on the views of individual biomechanical engineers over the “consensus perspective of every major medical society in the world.”